Watching You Without Me. (Part 2/4)
title: Watching You Without Me. (Part 2/4)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Mini-Series, and the episode "Black Market"
pairings: kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 13,500
notes: This is a continuation to the short piece I wrote for the December 4, 2011 challenge in
the_applecart, originally posted here. Thanks to
sci_fi_shipper for the prompt! I have included the initial piece in the first part for anyone who hasn't read it yet.
summary: In an AU where the cylons never attacked, Kara and Lee reunite on the Battlestar Galactica Museum five years after its decommissioning.
Part One available here.
Fourty minutes later, Lee and Kara both sat at his kitchen table, their pair of beer bottles having multiplied into a few more empty ones littering the tabletop, their plates nearly clean of the neon orange noodles and breaded chicken. Kara went for the last one, still barely warm from the oven they’d been pulled out of just before they’d begun to burn, dragging the side of it in the ketchup that remained on Lee’s plate, her own reserve having gone dry two nuggets prior.
“Gods, you can really put it away,” he laughed his words out as he finished his third beer and set it with the rest of the other empty bottles in what was now the beer bottle graveyard.
Her shoulder shrugged as she devoured the last one in three bites, rinsing it down with her own drink. With a childish smirk, she spoke. “Best meal I’ve had in ages.”
“Very funny.”
“I mean it!” Both of her hands gestured to her barren plate, only crumbs and sauce remaining. “Don’t I get dessert for finishing?”
“What do you want?”
She licked her lips, tasting the yeasty remains of her last sip of beer. “What do you have to give me?”
Lee wasn’t sure if it was his head playing tricks on him, a wish fulfillment of sorts, or if she really was asking for more than a scoop of ice cream to finish the night off. Lee knew what he wanted, what he’d wanted for what was now getting close to a decade, but when it came to her, he never quite knew where he stood. He took the chance though, prepping his cheek for the feel of her palm, as he leaned in and touched his mouth to hers, forceful and urgent.
It was like all those years ago again suddenly, since the last and first time they’d done this. There had always been tension between them in those months after their meeting but before Zak’s death, but they’d never acted on it, despite how much either of them may have wanted to. What had happened that first night had been a mistake, a poor drunken decision, and the betrayal of the worst kind to Zak. As much as Kara had thought about how his lips felt against hers in the days, weeks, and months afterward, she hadn’t let herself give in. Kara had never been one with good self control, but when it came to Lee Adama, she had become something of a saint, letting herself live in denial of what she wanted.
Without hesitation, she returned the warmth of his mouth, lips parted to welcome him in fully and hungrily, like she was starving despite her stomach being freshly full. Kara fisted her hand into the shoulder of his shirt, using it to pull them both closer together, and before she knew it, Lee’s arm was blindly sweeping at the table, shoving dishes and utensils back and away to clear a space for her. She followed his lead, pushing off from the floor and her chair until she was seated just on the edge of the table. Lee likewise abandoned his seat, standing between her parted legs to keep his mouth locked to hers. This kiss was unlike the first though, in that they were so much sure of it now, all this time later.
Kara’s hand reached back to the table to support her, coming in contact with one of the empty beer bottles as it tipped over and rolled towards the side. Gravity took over, just as it had done to a similar bottle in her apartment, sending it hurtling towards the wood floor. It didn’t break, but made a clatter nonetheless, that sent them both pausing in an eerie sense of deja vu. She pulled away from Lee as he did to her, both of their faces coming in to focus as they took in the other.
“Lee-we…”
“We don’t have a reason not to do this anymore,” he said with determination, afraid to let her slip through his fingers again.
“There’s a million reasons-you’ve got a son, Gianne-”
“Joseph’s not here,” he shook his head as he fought with her. “It’s just me and you, there’s no one else.” Without saying the name of the elephant in the room, he was trying to remind her of the timeframe they actually existed in. “I’m not married, Kara, and you-” He stopped, brows furrowing as he pulled back just a little more. “You’re not, are you?” His words nearly froze in his lungs as he asked. He hadn’t heard anything from his father about it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be true. Back on Galactica, he hadn’t ever asked, and now he was regretting nestling himself between her legs without knowing the answer to such a question.
“No-no, I’m not,” she answered and the look of relief she saw on his features broke her resolve. “Just… we can’t do this, not-here-you understand?”
It was a different kitchen in a different home, a different year and a different lifetime away from what had happened before, but it still felt like a betrayal to her. Lee understood her words and he took her by the hands, tugging at her until she was on her feet again. His skin tingled all over at the prospects of what her words brought, though he knew there was a lot of ground to cover between the kitchen and his bedroom upstairs. A lot of time and space for Kara to run and shy away from whatever this was between them. As if to solidify it all, Lee kissed her again, hand on her cheek, relieved when he felt her respond.
“Which way?” She asked in a whisper as she went for his hand.
Without so much as a word, Lee interlocked his fingers into hers and followed the path back into the hall and up the lone staircase in the home. They passed by a series of doors on the way to their destination, those belonging to a closet, an extra bath, and even his son’s room, before they met with the door ajar to the room where he spent his nights.
It was the first time she’d seen a real space of Lee’s before. When they’d been friends previously, he had been making his home within the Colonial Fleet, his belongings shared between his mother’s home and whatever bunk was his elsewhere. Now though, he had a space for all the things that made him… him. There would be a million details she would have to take in later, and in a clearer head she would have started to memorize them already, relishing the fact that she could take such an intimate peek into the man that he was behind closed doors.
There was something else more important, though, and that was the man attached to the hand she held, looking at her with heavy lidded blue eyes. He was so unlike his brother in almost all regards, from the lighter hue of his hair to the color of his eyes, from his bone structure to his stiffer attitude. Sometimes, there was a look Lee would give her and all she saw was his younger brother. With his son in his arms on Galactica, Kara had seen Zak in him. Staring at him now, though, she didn’t see Zak or any number of her past lovers. No, he was just Lee Adama, and she was thankful for it. She hadn’t ever wanted to see anyone else when she looked at him, didn’t want to be haunted by the memories of the past. For them now, whatever this in fact was, it was just a clean slate.
She curled herself in close to him, gripping again into his clothing just as he did to hers, content to feel his mouth. It wasn’t enough though and Kara nearly ripped at his shirt, tugging it up and over his head with the kind of force she hadn’t brought to her frakking in the last few years.
“There’s no rush,” he said to her jaw, though he equally felt the temptation to put everything into motion as fast as possible.
“Like frak there isn’t,” she said with her laughter loud in the dim lighting.
He returned her smile, giving in to remove her shirt almost as quickly as she had his. The truth was they were both making up for lost time, a lost nearly eight years between them. Though the feeling in his gut and his groin often told him he should have stopped at nothing to make Kara his, his head and his heart knew he had done right by Zak years ago. Even if he and Kara could have been happy, the happiest people in the twelve worlds, what they had would have always been tainted by the faint memory of how they got there. Who they broke to have what they wanted. What he compromised in himself to get her for himself.
The number of times over the years he had wished to see her again, that he had begged for the strength to locate her and see her just once more, was innumerable. Lee had thought about her every day and all the possibilities that could have been. Sometimes, he would try to talk himself out of his feelings for her that still lingered, by saying that their explosive personalities would never have worked together. They would make each other miserable. By not being together, they were doing the best thing for one another, but then he would remember the sound of her laugh or the taste of his mouth against hers, and that would remind him of all the things he wanted from her and loved about her. That electric personality that got her into trouble so often was what he adored about her, maybe they could have made it work.
His body functioned on auto-pilot as his brain worked a million miles a second and he would regret not being able to recall every detail as to how he got her pants unzipped and unbuttoned later. As it was, she was toeing off her shoes and socks before stepping out of them, her hands slightly shaking as she went to start the process of his own. The quake to her appendages wasn’t lost to him and for a second, fear flared inside of him that maybe this wasn’t what she wanted and he had been too forward with her. That wouldn’t be like Kara at all, since she was usually the one calling the shots and pushing others back into line, and when she lifted her eyes to meet his, all of that fear was pushed away. No, she was nervous, just as much as he was.
Lee’s hands covered her own, hoping to act as a beacon of steady and calm to her, despite how little of it he had for himself. Perhaps together, he thought, they could share what they each had. “Are you okay?” He whispered.
Kara looked away and nodded. This hadn’t ever been an aspect of her life she’d approached with such a coil of nerves in her stomach, except maybe that first time when she was a teenager. She didn’t know where it came from or why, but it was overwhelming her on top of everything else, sending her world tilting off its axis as she tried to cope. “Your zipper-it’s stuck,” she said in frustration, but also a distraction from herself.
His fingers helped her out and when the metal teeth of the zipper were fully separated, they both worked to remove his slacks, his shoes and socks having been removed minutes ago and laid scattered across the floor of his bedroom. Kara took his hand and this time she had the lead, pulling him towards the bed as she climbed upon the solid colored bedspread he slept beneath every night. “Ow-frak!” She called out and the spell of the mood was slightly broken as her barely dressed form twisted and shifted on the bed, her hand pushed beneath her until it captured the small toy dump truck in her hand and held it between them.
“Sorry,” he apologized and took the child’s toy from her, tossing it towards the laundry hamper in the corner of the room. He would have to remember to fish it out later on.
Kara laughed. “This is not how I ever imagined this going.”
“No,” his head shook but he smiled anyway, praying that the constant reminders of his fatherhood and the fact that in some way he would always belong partially to another woman weren’t enough to drive her away at the last minute. “This isn’t how I imagined it would go either.” He kneeled on the bed and took charge, one hand sliding around until he felt the notches of her spine, fingers pushing together the fabric of her bra until the clasp released. Lee was careful as he slid the straps down her shoulders, almost reverent in fact, until the cups of the bra fell down and away, leaving her exposed. He had never seen her like this before, despite their trips to the beach and the lake, and even that time they’d talked about at the cemetery, when each of them had to strip down and soap up in the lake to get any kind of clean. No, back then he’d been the gentleman, envying his brother for what he got to see every night.
Nudity had never been a thing that she shied away from after all her time in the military, but the look of him as he drank her in was something she had never felt before, not even with any other kind of lover in the past. It was like she had given him all his wildest dreams in that moment, just by being there, and it set a kind of excitement that she didn’t even know existed in her stomach and even lower. She leaned back on her elbows as Lee came nearer, watching his head dip down to kiss from the center between her breasts until he chose a side, favoring one over the other. He was hardly touching her and yet she felt the build of a moan in her throat and she let it out as his mouth came to capture one hard nipple. He was gentle at first, kissing and his tongue lapping over it, then she felt the sharper tug of his teeth against it, pulling and plucking. One palm of his came to cup the rest of the fullness of her breast as he suckled against her, then departed entirely to treat the opposite breast with the same kind of devotion.
His lips trailed southward over the flat plane of her stomach to her navel, kissing at the waistband of her panties. They weren’t the ones given to her by the military, that much he knew, but still reflected the job she held, with the grey coloring she chose of them and more sensible cut. He wondered if her entire drawer was filled with underwear like this, or if Kara Thrace would have worn something else if she knew that this was what she would be doing that night when she dressed for the day. Either way, it didn’t matter, and Lee would admit that all his fantasies of her usually involved undressing her from the uniform she seemed to always wear.
“Move back,” he ordered from her waist, and Kara, dizzy because of his touch, complied, her body shifting up and back until she was as far as she could go. Her head rested against his pillows, neck craned to the side to breathe in the smell of shampoo and cologne on the fabric. Gods, she was lost in him, so surrounded in every meaning of the word that she couldn’t even think straight. It was consuming, just as she always dreamt it would be with him.
Lee hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties and tugged them down, leaving the last portion of her that was a mystery to him, finally and fully bared. He helped coax her into parting her thighs, one hand at her outer thigh as he held it steady, kissing up the unimaginably soft skin of the inside of that same thigh. Her legs shook again, just as barely as her hands had minutes before, and Lee made soft soothing sounds against her skin. “I’ve got you, Kara,” he said and looked up the length of her body to find her watching him, teeth biting at her lip in anticipation of what she knew he was about to do.
His own body laying across the bed on his stomach, Lee dove in, finding her already sopping wet between her thighs. The taste was like nothing he’d ever had before, unique and completely her, and all Lee knew was that he wanted more of it. His tongue ran the length of her, from her entrance to the swollen and red bundle of nerves higher up, reading her body for physical and audible responses as he began to learn what she loved for the very first time. He hiked one of her legs up over his shoulder, immediately feeling her heel digging into his back as his tongue ran slow circles around her clit. From where he was, he could see the fabric of his comforter bunched up in her tight fist while she simultaneously let out a call of his name.
She was close and he’d hardly even begun, something which brought a stirring of pride inside of him to know that long before he’d even touched her, Kara’s body had been anticipating all of this. He wasn’t ready to let her go though, so he backed off his focus, slowing himself down. Lee wanted to enjoy her, a part of him inwardly fearing that this would be not only the first, but the last time she would allow them to join together after guilt and worry washed over them both when their raging hormones had faded and cleared from their systems. He was going to enjoy her as long as he could. Lee slipped a finger inside of her, then another, feeling her tightly clench around him instantaneously, leaving him begging to actually, fully be inside of her and experience that in another way. The pads of his fingers rubbed her internally as his mouth once more took action and not more than a few seconds later, Kara’s keening moan was let out as she came, hips bucking on pure instinct. His other hand curled around her and palmed the skin below her navel, holding her as still as he could as he continued to work, carrying her through every last wave of pleasure she could feel.
Kara ran a hand over her face, ears ringing with the sound of her own voice and the steady thump of her pulse jumping loudly inside of her. Her body pleasantly hummed with the comforting echo of orgasm, her senses sharpening and coming back to her slowly. She opened her eyes and looked down to him, down to the man that had given her that overwhelming roll of ecstasy and had finally ceased his ministrations against her to more delicately kiss to her inner thigh yet again. “Come here,” she demanded of him, hands reaching to encourage him closer, though Lee didn’t exactly come as quickly as called, instead taking his time to leave a trail of her own wetness over her abdomen and breasts until their mouths met. She could not only taste herself on him, but feel some of the warmth the core of her body had passed on to him, his mouth still slightly slippery from what he’d done for her.
“You don’t know how long I’ve thought of doing that,” Lee said into her neck, his body laid against her own.
“Lords of Kobol, Adama, you can do that the rest of your frakking life and I wouldn’t complain.”
He laughed, his body vibrating against hers which elicited her own matching giggle in the room. Kara’s hand pushed through his hair, slightly longer than she’d ever seen on him, but matched the years that had been put on him. He was no longer that boy anymore and the change suited him. “Please,” Kara begged against his ear as her teeth tugged on the lobe. “I want you-” she paused and corrected herself. “I need you inside of me, Lee.”
She wasn’t just speaking as Kara Thrace, thirty year old woman bedding the slightly older father of one on top of her. It was every version of herself since they’d first met. That girl that had so desperately wanted him to frak her on her kitchen table despite knowing how wrong it was. The Kara that saw him every time afterwards and thought about what it would be like to see his face when she came instead of Zak’s. A grieving no longer wife-to-be that had wanted to drown her sorrow in her lover’s older brother. The lonely soldier tucked away on battlestars or bases throughout the Twelve Colonies, using dreams of him to help her come to completion by her hand when she was alone in her bunk late at night. Every person she’d ever been since she’d seen his face, they were all begging aloud for him.
Her words were his undoing, as if he had any resolve left at all while he was throbbing against her thighs. It had been Gods knew how long since he’d been inside of a woman. There had been Gianne and after things had finally and fully fallen apart, there’d been another woman that he sought comfort in casually, but never seriously. If he was honest with himself, he was always waiting for her again, fearing the worst but always hoping for the best. Lee pulled back and looked down to her to memorize her in this instant, the pink of her cheeks, the way her golden green eyes looked when heavy with desire, how her hair fell against his pillow. He wanted to keep her there forever, never let her go again, but he knew that would be her choice to make.
“I need to get…” He trailed off and began to climb off to begin a frustrating search for what he hoped wouldn’t be now expired condoms. Kara’s hands stilled him, though, pulling him back before his weight had even shifted off of her.
“I’m up to date on my shot, don’t worry about it.” With others, one night stands especially, she would have insisted on the extra layer of added protection between them to guard against disease and pregnancy, but the thought of losing the warmth of him against her was absolutely unimaginable. That, and she wanted to feel him, really feel him, for the first time, and she knew he craved the same.
Lee nodded, kissing her lips as both of her hands came to his cheeks to steady him. He couldn’t get over how absolutely right it felt with her and they truly hadn’t even begun. All the women he’d been with in his past, the sex had been good, great even, but it was nothing like this. Even knowing he had loved Gianne and coming to terms with the fact that she was the mother of his child so much so that he was unbelievably happy and thankful for it - not once had he ever felt so lost inside of her like he did with Kara.
Her hands slipped from his cheeks and down to his lower half, her hands pushing inside the elastic of his boxer-briefs to force them down. He helped her the rest of the way until he was truly free, feeling her warm palm grasp around his cock, already stiff and waiting for her. He groaned into her neck, face buried there temporarily as her body shifted slightly, legs parting wide around him in a sign of welcoming. Lee lifted his head and kissed her once more, hips and legs angling himself at her heated entrance. One hand joined hers, rubbing the head of his cock against her teasingly and he reveled in the look she gave him that admonished him for such an action, but also gave away how much she enjoyed it. He gave in not long after, though, pressing against her until he slid in just barely, Kara’s eyes shutting tight as she bit roughly at her lip to hold back the moan in her throat. A second later Lee pushed in the rest of the way, careful not to force himself inside too hard and fast out of fear of hurting her. That moan Kara had been trying to rein in escaped finally as she felt the fullness of him inside of her, her finger nails digging into his back as she called out to all the Gods she fervently believed in.
She was hot and tight, wet and soft around him, and it was a kind of perfection Lee had come close to finding but hadn’t ever experienced before. One leg curled around him and she pulled him in closer, forcing him inside just a fraction of an inch deeper, Lee letting out his own matching moan to join her. The pressure of her leg relinquished a moment later, however, and Lee took the hint, pulling out of her slowly and then pushing back into her tight fit. He built a rhythm with her, his mouth abandoning her own to find her breast again, this time a little rougher than the first. His hand squeezed and his mouth tugged as she sharply moaned with each thrust inside of her. Lee could feel her clenching around him even tighter than before, pleading with himself to hold on just a little longer for her. The focus paid off as Kara came, back arching and toes curling, this orgasm more intense than the first he’d given her. The tightness of her orgasm forced his own as well, and he felt himself tighten and release, spilling deep inside of her for what he hoped would be the first time, rather than the only time.
Spent and exhausted, Lee nearly collapsed against her breast, one of Kara’s arms weakly curling around him as she stroked over his sweat-sticky skin. Her chest rose and fell as she worked to gain balance, though she never honestly wanted it to fade away. Lying in his bed with him on top of her, she wanted to stay there forever, without complication of what this was or what it meant. She didn’t know her own answers to those questions and she feared Lee’s, it was far easier to exist in a place where neither of them had to think of such a thing.
With reluctance, Lee eventually pulled out and rolled off, lying on his back beside her. He groped around for her hand, drawing it to his lips when he found it. “Kara?” He asked.
She swallowed hard, her head full of all the possibilities of what he was going to ask next. Were this anyone else, she would have already been planning how to slip out of their bunk or apartment with as little sound as possible. For one of the few times in her life though, Kara didn’t want to wait for the man beside her to fall asleep so she could visit the bathroom to clean herself off between her thighs and redress in darkness, making a clean and quick getaway. “Yeah?”
“You’re going to stay the night, right?”
Every worry she had faded away, though a million new ones began to slowly grow. She would ignore them for now. “Yeah, Lee, I’ll stay.”
He sat up slightly, leaning over to kiss her again, though it wasn’t his only intention. Lee pulled at the blankets beneath them, their bodies both shifting until the fabric was free. He covered them both, but her first, like he was shielding her from prying eyes or perhaps just the chill of the room. When they were both beneath them, he curled himself to her and she reciprocated, turning on her side until he was spooned up against her, holding her tight.
-
Lee woke in the morning to the sound of a ringing doorbell. He could tell immediately that it wasn’t the first push or the second, perhaps not even the third, by the way it was urgently pressed a few times in rapid succession, as if it could actually indicate the changing mood of the person standing on the stoop. Kara stirred but didn’t wake beside him, and though they’d separated during the night, he leaned back over the gap of space between them to kiss her shoulder.
The doorbell sounded again, this time even angrier than the last, and Lee climbed from his bed and immediately went for his dresser to pull out a pair of clean boxers and a t-shirt for his torso. He could hear the front door downstairs opening roughly and the clack of shoes on the hardwood entrance way as he dressed speedily, closing the bedroom door shut behind him to keep Kara safe. He ran his hands through his hair as he stepped into the bathroom, trying to work out any signs of sleep before quickly brushing his teeth with the kind of quickness he hadn’t had since alert drills on Atlantia. Some semblance of cleanliness restored to him, he moved down the stairs, catching sight of Gianne and Joseph shutting the front door behind them.
“I used my keys,” she said, words somewhat terse as she set down the small spare bag that carried a few of their son’s items he tended to shuttle from one home to the other.
“Sorry-I was asleep,” Lee offered as an excuse before he finally made it down to the main floor, leaning in to politely kiss Gianne’s cheek in greeting as Joseph took off towards the living room, wide awake and ready to make himself at home.
“I bet,” she said, her lips upturned slightly as her eyes rose to the staircase he’d previously descended. “Saw a car in the driveway…” Her words trailed off and she looked back to him, this time a little more stern than she was before. “If you need me to take him because you’ve got something better to do, Lee,” Gianne didn’t finish.
He had no real intentions of keeping it all from her, but he hadn’t intended on it coming out that way either. “No, it’ll be fine,” Lee insisted and looked to where his son bounced on the couch, TV already on and cartoons streaming in.
“So who is she?” Gianne asked as she and Lee both proceeded towards the kitchen which featured a mess he had planned to clean up before mother and son had arrived. “Don’t tell me it’s that girl you were seeing again-”
“No,” he laughed with a shake of his head as he began to collect the bottles of beer quickly, like the movement would keep her from realizing how much the two of them had imbibed the night before. “She’s…”
Meanwhile, Kara had found full consciousness returning to her when she woke alone. The space beside her was still warm though, and she vaguely recalled his touch only moments before. She forced herself out of bed, pulling on her underwear and shirt, the rest of her clothing in hand as she peeked her head outside of the bedroom door. Finding the hallway vacant, she hurried across to the bathroom she’d seen on their way to his room the prior night. Dressed and cleaned, at least as best as she could get without fully taking a shower, Kara reopened the door, only to be stared down by the pint-sized version of the man she’d made love to the night before. She could remember now, how Lee had said Joseph would be there starting today, but had assumed it would be later on, long after she’d had time to leave. “Hi,” Kara said, echoing the greeting they’d first shared. “Do you remember me?”
Joseph stared at her and shook his head, face crinkling in something akin to fear at the stranger in his house. “Daddy!”
“She’s…” And Lee’s words were cut off as he heard the call of his son, sharing a look with Gianne as he quit the kitchen and headed up the stairs to find his lover and his son in something of a stand off.
“Lee, Gods I swear, I didn’t do anything!” She was frantic, comically so, hands held up in a mock sign of surrender to the child.
“Joseph,” he started, and scooped the boy up in his arms. “You know Kara, we saw her at the museum. She flies Vipers, remember?”
This time, in the comforting arms of his father and given some facts to remember, the four and a half year old did recall her, his little head nodding as he looked across to her without all the apprehension.
Kara was visibly relieved though somewhat shaken by the encounter with the child, this time for entirely different reasons than the first. She followed father and son down the stairs, the elusive Gianne already waiting. Kara had never seen her before in anything more than the photo Adama had shown her of the day his grandson was born, but she would know her just the same, some of her features reflected in her child’s face.
“So, Kara, Zak’s fiancee?” Gianne asked as she looked from Kara then to Lee pointedly. Clearly she’d heard of the her at some point, whether that be in tales from Lee’s father or the showing of photographs of the Old Man’s late son and the woman that had once been promised to be his wife.
It made Kara feel guilty all of a sudden, but she held herself together, nodding as she offered a hand. “Nice to meet you, Gianne.”
Lee watched the exchange between both of the blonde women as they forced themselves to shake hands with one another in the common expression of greeting.
“It’s good to finally meet you.” Gianne looked back to Lee and their son curled up in his arms. “You sure you don’t want me to take him?”
Part of him wanted to take her up on the offer, but he didn’t. His time with his son was precious, every last minute of it, and he knew the next time he saw Gianne, he wouldn’t hear the end of it. Deep inside of him, as well, there was some ounce that wanted Kara to get to know his son better than she had briefly gotten to on Galactica, having already subconsciously decided that she was going to be a permanent fixture in their lives, though he didn’t know how she would feel about it. “No, we’ll be okay. I’ll have him back to you tomorrow after dinner,” Lee said with a nod to her.
Kara felt out of place in the exchange, avoiding looking at any member of the family. Her thoughts were irrational, going back to her own father and his abandonment. She was proud of Lee for sticking with it, despite the fact that he could have easily run away and just been a father by way of sending his support payments. Though she knew Lee and Gianne hadn’t been together in quite some time, if they ever were even happy together at all, she couldn’t help but feel like she was some wedge in their lives and their routine. She didn’t want to be the thing that pushed them further apart, or the woman that inserted herself into the life of his son and tried to act as a replacement mother. Aside from all of that, she wasn’t even sure if she should be trusted around children at all, having never had any real experience with them in her life.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Joseph,” his mother said as she leaned in to kiss the boy and he returned it wet and sloppy to her own cheek. “Don’t be late, Lee, he’s got school Monday,” she reminded him, as if he could forget. Gianne headed the few steps to the door, turning to Kara before she left. “Again, nice to finally meet you,” she spoke and departed.
Lee mouthed his words of apology to Kara, leaning in to kiss her cheek. She hesitated, though, pulling away at the last second as her eyes motioned directly over to the boy still in his arms. He understood, though he wished he didn’t, and finally set Joseph down as he followed him into the living room. “Did you have breakfast?”
“No,” the boy said with a shake of his head, going for the small bin of his toys kept in the corner of the room. “You said,” he stopped, sputtering over his words and starting again. “You said you’d make pancakes.”
“That’s right,” Lee leaned down to kiss his son’s head, ruffling his blonde hair out of place. “I did. Kara’s going to help me, all right? We’ll be in the kitchen.”
He met Kara in the kitchen, arms going to pull her into a hug as he kissed her cheek, finally making contact this time. “Gods I’m sorry,” he said, feeling how stiff she was in his arms. “What’s wrong?”
Kara pulled away and shook her head, looking back to the open entranceway towards the hall that connected to the living room. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Listen, sometimes they come early depending on what Gianne’s got to do today. I didn’t think…”
“Last night was great,” she started, trying to disconnect herself. “But you’ve got a family and I don’t fit in, I know how this goes.”
His brow rose as he moved around the kitchen, gathering their plates from the night before and piling them in the empty dishwasher, then pulling out the box of pancake mix from the cupboard. “Well I don’t, so how does it go?”
She let out something between a sigh and a groan, working hard to not let her frustration come out in the volume of her voice. “Your son, he’s got a mom and a dad, he doesn’t need this,” her hands turned, gesturing to herself “on top of it all.”
“So I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life alone?” He questioned.
“No,” she replied quickly. “Just, me?”
“Yeah, you.” Lee smiled at her over the mixing bowl of pancake mix as he added the proper measured liquid into it and began to stir.
She took a seat at the counter off the island he worked at in the middle of the kitchen, elbows resting into the cool granite as her fingers pushed through her sex-mussed hair. “I’m not the person for you, Lee. Did you see the way Gianne looked at me? Oh,” she stopped, this time doing her best to imitate the tone of voice the other woman had used, “Zak’s fiancee?”
“She’s harmless,” he insisted, his spoon coming to rest on the edge of the bowl as he put his attention fully on her this time, instead of sharing it with the pancake batter between them. “Gianne’s been seeing a guy for the last year anyway, so she can’t talk about it.”
“It’s not just that! Lee, Gods, it was just one time, we don’t have a commitment between us.”
He turned his back to her, standing over the stove and the pre-heated pan on the burner, sighing as he allowed small pools of the batter to form and start cooking on the teflon. “What if I wanted it to be more than just one time?” Lee said, still facing away.
Kara said nothing, recalling every moment of the night before and how much she hadn’t wanted it to end, and now couldn’t imagine ever not having it again. Now she knew it wasn’t just one sided, his voice doing a little pleading in his words as he asked her. “I work in Delphi, Lee…” She scrambled for an excuse.
“It’s not that far,” he insisted as he used the spatula to flip each pancake, perfectly golden brown on the cooked side. “You can stay on base during the week, come out here on the weekends…” He was getting ahead of himself with what he was propositioning her with.
“You hardly know me, Lee.”
“I know you enough.” His shoulders slumped and his head shook as he reached for a plate from the nearby cabinet, holding it out as he dropped each pancake down onto it. He repeated the process with the next ones, batter spaced out on the pan to begin cooking. Lee headed to the fridge next, pulling out the containers of syrup and butter, jug of orange juice in his free hand as he nudged the door shut with his shoulder. He didn’t have the heart, nor the energy, to look at her as he cut across the kitchen and placed the items on the table.
“Kara, I’m thirty-two years old now, I know what I want.” He turned around to her, his gaze unwilling to let her go free. “I knew what I wanted eight years ago when you were with my brother, I knew what I wanted five years ago when I saw you on Galactica. I don’t give a frak-” He stopped, looking to the doorway to make sure his son wasn’t nearby to hear him using the language he and Gianne had agreed to curb around the boy. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’ve wasted a quarter of my life worrying about everyone else and I just don’t care about it anymore.” When he was finished speaking he returned to the stove, just in time to flip the pancakes over, these ones slightly browner than the others.
She was running scared, something she did all too often when it came to her personal life, despite how fearless she was in the cockpit. It was one of her many contradictions. Kara slid off the stool and went for the cabinet she’d seen him get their plates from the night before, pulling out a trio, then reaching into the drawer for three forks and two knives, figuring the four year old wasn’t yet skilled enough to be trusted to cut his own pancakes. Silently, she set the table and when she finished, she headed to retrieve them three glasses.
“He likes the blue one,” Lee said from the stove, his pile of pancakes slowly growing.
Kara nodded and she grasped the smaller, blue plastic cup with cartoon characters coloring the sides along with their two regular ones. She placed it at the seat she set for his son, in front of the chair with the small cushioned booster seat she presumed Joseph was still using.
“Watch these while I get him?” Lee said, motioning towards the last of the pancakes cooking on the stove.
“No-let me,” she insisted, trying to show him that despite the silent treatment they had both quickly enacted on one another, that she could behave like the person he thought she was.
When she made it to the living room, she found his son there, on the floor and immersed in the mess of toys he’d created, talking to himself. “Joseph?” His head turned to look up to her. “Your Dad says pancakes are ready.” He wasted no time in hurrying from his spot, the jacket he’d been wearing earlier tossed aside in the middle of the floor as he rushed past her and down the hallway of the house he knew well. By time she made it back, only a few steps behind him, he was struggling to get up onto his seat and Kara reacted instantly, lifting the boy up and sitting him down. “You okay?”
Joseph nodded to her and looked back towards where Lee was as he approached with the plate of steaming pancakes in his hands.
“You better be hungry,” Lee said and served out a few of them onto Joseph’s plate, reaching for his son’s fork and his own knife as he began to butter each one, then cut them into small, easily chewable sections.
Kara took her seat as Lee loaded Joseph’s plate up with the amount of syrup he knew his son would need, then sat down at the end of the table, with Kara and Joseph on either side of him.
“These are good,” she said, trying to make small talk with Lee, despite knowing he wouldn’t be much in the mood for it since she’d basically blown off his attempt at pouring out his feelings to her.
“Thanks,” he forced a smile at Kara then looked to Joseph, his expression turning genuine.
“Are you going to eat pancakes with us every Saturday?” Joseph asked with his mouth full as he chewed.
Kara looked to Lee for help in answering and he lightly patted his son’s arm. “Not every Saturday, no,” he answered and left it at that, hoping it would appease him.
“Would it be okay if I was here sometimes?” Kara suddenly asked, looking across to the little boy.
Joseph’s familiar blue eyes, just as bright as his father’s and the Old Man’s, gazed up and over at her, head nodding. “It’s more fun this way.”
With a reserved smile, Kara glanced to Lee out of the corner of her eye. “It is.”
A few pancakes and a tall glass of orange juice later, Kara started to fill the dishwasher with their syrup covered plates, while Lee held his son at the sink, helping him to rinse off any of the remaining stickiness from his small hands. When he placed Joseph back on the ground, the child obediently waited, and Kara couldn’t help but observe the act that was obviously routine to them. Lee bent down with a wash cloth, cleaning his face as the last piece to the puzzle before his son darted off again, filling the home with an echo of his excited yell as he returned to whatever he had been doing before.
“Seeing you with him,” she began as she placed the frying pan inside and closed the door, sealing away the dirty dishes within. “It’s the strangest thing. Nothing’s really happened in my life since I last saw you and you…” Her head shook but she smiled to him. “You’re a dad, Lee. Not just a father, but a dad. One of the good ones, too.”
He blushed a little at her words, clearing the table of the orange juice container as he spoke. “It’s been insane. I feel bad about how I reacted when she first told me, I was so scared, after losing Zak and the relationship I had with my father, especially at the time… I didn’t think I could do it. Now, though? I don’t really remember what it was like before him.”
“Is he why you quit flying?” She asked gently, not sure of how touchy of a subject it was for him. His father hadn’t been too happy, or that was what she got out of Adama at the time, but he had understood his son’s choice nonetheless.
Lee looked to her and then nodded. “I wasn’t going to, but then he was born and Gods, flying didn’t matter anymore, it was never to me what it is to you. It’s safe, especially when there isn’t much going on out there, but accidents happen, and I couldn’t continue to get into that cockpit everyday knowing that something could happen and he wouldn’t grow up with a father. What if the cylons returned? I’d be going to war and leaving him behind. I used to love watching my Dad fly, but I remember how nervous I was for him as I got older and understood that sometimes people died doing what he did. I don’t want him to ever feel that.”
He was the same and different at the same time and she felt inadequate over how little her life had changed since then. She’d gotten a promotion to Captain while on board Pegasus under Commander Cain, she’d moved around and acted as a CAG for a brief moment in time, she’d dated and had a few casual boyfriends over the years, but no commitments. Nothing big. Nothing as changing as what Lee had lived through.
“I still fly, Lee. I could go out there tomorrow and frak up or something could go wrong with my Viper and I might not come back. Why would you want to have to worry like that again?”
He approached her, hands clasping her upper arms as he gently rubbed the somewhat exposed skin there. “I can handle it. If it’s having you and worrying, then I’ll take it over not having you at all. Just…” He sighed. “Give this a chance, all right?”
“Lee…”
“Kara,” he kissed the corner of her mouth, happy to find that she didn’t pull away. “Whatever excuse you’re going to give me, we’ll work it out. Just don’t say no.”
Her eyes shut and it was the previous night all over again, breathing in the scent of him on his sheets. Kara swore she could feel her heart clench at the thought of saying goodbye to him in something of a permanent fashion, the ache spreading out from her chest to her extremities, forcing her mind to comply with what her body knew it wanted. “No,” she answered. “I won’t say no.”
Continue to Part 3.
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Mini-Series, and the episode "Black Market"
pairings: kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 13,500
notes: This is a continuation to the short piece I wrote for the December 4, 2011 challenge in
the_applecart, originally posted here. Thanks to
sci_fi_shipper for the prompt! I have included the initial piece in the first part for anyone who hasn't read it yet.
summary: In an AU where the cylons never attacked, Kara and Lee reunite on the Battlestar Galactica Museum five years after its decommissioning.
Part One available here.
Fourty minutes later, Lee and Kara both sat at his kitchen table, their pair of beer bottles having multiplied into a few more empty ones littering the tabletop, their plates nearly clean of the neon orange noodles and breaded chicken. Kara went for the last one, still barely warm from the oven they’d been pulled out of just before they’d begun to burn, dragging the side of it in the ketchup that remained on Lee’s plate, her own reserve having gone dry two nuggets prior.
“Gods, you can really put it away,” he laughed his words out as he finished his third beer and set it with the rest of the other empty bottles in what was now the beer bottle graveyard.
Her shoulder shrugged as she devoured the last one in three bites, rinsing it down with her own drink. With a childish smirk, she spoke. “Best meal I’ve had in ages.”
“Very funny.”
“I mean it!” Both of her hands gestured to her barren plate, only crumbs and sauce remaining. “Don’t I get dessert for finishing?”
“What do you want?”
She licked her lips, tasting the yeasty remains of her last sip of beer. “What do you have to give me?”
Lee wasn’t sure if it was his head playing tricks on him, a wish fulfillment of sorts, or if she really was asking for more than a scoop of ice cream to finish the night off. Lee knew what he wanted, what he’d wanted for what was now getting close to a decade, but when it came to her, he never quite knew where he stood. He took the chance though, prepping his cheek for the feel of her palm, as he leaned in and touched his mouth to hers, forceful and urgent.
It was like all those years ago again suddenly, since the last and first time they’d done this. There had always been tension between them in those months after their meeting but before Zak’s death, but they’d never acted on it, despite how much either of them may have wanted to. What had happened that first night had been a mistake, a poor drunken decision, and the betrayal of the worst kind to Zak. As much as Kara had thought about how his lips felt against hers in the days, weeks, and months afterward, she hadn’t let herself give in. Kara had never been one with good self control, but when it came to Lee Adama, she had become something of a saint, letting herself live in denial of what she wanted.
Without hesitation, she returned the warmth of his mouth, lips parted to welcome him in fully and hungrily, like she was starving despite her stomach being freshly full. Kara fisted her hand into the shoulder of his shirt, using it to pull them both closer together, and before she knew it, Lee’s arm was blindly sweeping at the table, shoving dishes and utensils back and away to clear a space for her. She followed his lead, pushing off from the floor and her chair until she was seated just on the edge of the table. Lee likewise abandoned his seat, standing between her parted legs to keep his mouth locked to hers. This kiss was unlike the first though, in that they were so much sure of it now, all this time later.
Kara’s hand reached back to the table to support her, coming in contact with one of the empty beer bottles as it tipped over and rolled towards the side. Gravity took over, just as it had done to a similar bottle in her apartment, sending it hurtling towards the wood floor. It didn’t break, but made a clatter nonetheless, that sent them both pausing in an eerie sense of deja vu. She pulled away from Lee as he did to her, both of their faces coming in to focus as they took in the other.
“Lee-we…”
“We don’t have a reason not to do this anymore,” he said with determination, afraid to let her slip through his fingers again.
“There’s a million reasons-you’ve got a son, Gianne-”
“Joseph’s not here,” he shook his head as he fought with her. “It’s just me and you, there’s no one else.” Without saying the name of the elephant in the room, he was trying to remind her of the timeframe they actually existed in. “I’m not married, Kara, and you-” He stopped, brows furrowing as he pulled back just a little more. “You’re not, are you?” His words nearly froze in his lungs as he asked. He hadn’t heard anything from his father about it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be true. Back on Galactica, he hadn’t ever asked, and now he was regretting nestling himself between her legs without knowing the answer to such a question.
“No-no, I’m not,” she answered and the look of relief she saw on his features broke her resolve. “Just… we can’t do this, not-here-you understand?”
It was a different kitchen in a different home, a different year and a different lifetime away from what had happened before, but it still felt like a betrayal to her. Lee understood her words and he took her by the hands, tugging at her until she was on her feet again. His skin tingled all over at the prospects of what her words brought, though he knew there was a lot of ground to cover between the kitchen and his bedroom upstairs. A lot of time and space for Kara to run and shy away from whatever this was between them. As if to solidify it all, Lee kissed her again, hand on her cheek, relieved when he felt her respond.
“Which way?” She asked in a whisper as she went for his hand.
Without so much as a word, Lee interlocked his fingers into hers and followed the path back into the hall and up the lone staircase in the home. They passed by a series of doors on the way to their destination, those belonging to a closet, an extra bath, and even his son’s room, before they met with the door ajar to the room where he spent his nights.
It was the first time she’d seen a real space of Lee’s before. When they’d been friends previously, he had been making his home within the Colonial Fleet, his belongings shared between his mother’s home and whatever bunk was his elsewhere. Now though, he had a space for all the things that made him… him. There would be a million details she would have to take in later, and in a clearer head she would have started to memorize them already, relishing the fact that she could take such an intimate peek into the man that he was behind closed doors.
There was something else more important, though, and that was the man attached to the hand she held, looking at her with heavy lidded blue eyes. He was so unlike his brother in almost all regards, from the lighter hue of his hair to the color of his eyes, from his bone structure to his stiffer attitude. Sometimes, there was a look Lee would give her and all she saw was his younger brother. With his son in his arms on Galactica, Kara had seen Zak in him. Staring at him now, though, she didn’t see Zak or any number of her past lovers. No, he was just Lee Adama, and she was thankful for it. She hadn’t ever wanted to see anyone else when she looked at him, didn’t want to be haunted by the memories of the past. For them now, whatever this in fact was, it was just a clean slate.
She curled herself in close to him, gripping again into his clothing just as he did to hers, content to feel his mouth. It wasn’t enough though and Kara nearly ripped at his shirt, tugging it up and over his head with the kind of force she hadn’t brought to her frakking in the last few years.
“There’s no rush,” he said to her jaw, though he equally felt the temptation to put everything into motion as fast as possible.
“Like frak there isn’t,” she said with her laughter loud in the dim lighting.
He returned her smile, giving in to remove her shirt almost as quickly as she had his. The truth was they were both making up for lost time, a lost nearly eight years between them. Though the feeling in his gut and his groin often told him he should have stopped at nothing to make Kara his, his head and his heart knew he had done right by Zak years ago. Even if he and Kara could have been happy, the happiest people in the twelve worlds, what they had would have always been tainted by the faint memory of how they got there. Who they broke to have what they wanted. What he compromised in himself to get her for himself.
The number of times over the years he had wished to see her again, that he had begged for the strength to locate her and see her just once more, was innumerable. Lee had thought about her every day and all the possibilities that could have been. Sometimes, he would try to talk himself out of his feelings for her that still lingered, by saying that their explosive personalities would never have worked together. They would make each other miserable. By not being together, they were doing the best thing for one another, but then he would remember the sound of her laugh or the taste of his mouth against hers, and that would remind him of all the things he wanted from her and loved about her. That electric personality that got her into trouble so often was what he adored about her, maybe they could have made it work.
His body functioned on auto-pilot as his brain worked a million miles a second and he would regret not being able to recall every detail as to how he got her pants unzipped and unbuttoned later. As it was, she was toeing off her shoes and socks before stepping out of them, her hands slightly shaking as she went to start the process of his own. The quake to her appendages wasn’t lost to him and for a second, fear flared inside of him that maybe this wasn’t what she wanted and he had been too forward with her. That wouldn’t be like Kara at all, since she was usually the one calling the shots and pushing others back into line, and when she lifted her eyes to meet his, all of that fear was pushed away. No, she was nervous, just as much as he was.
Lee’s hands covered her own, hoping to act as a beacon of steady and calm to her, despite how little of it he had for himself. Perhaps together, he thought, they could share what they each had. “Are you okay?” He whispered.
Kara looked away and nodded. This hadn’t ever been an aspect of her life she’d approached with such a coil of nerves in her stomach, except maybe that first time when she was a teenager. She didn’t know where it came from or why, but it was overwhelming her on top of everything else, sending her world tilting off its axis as she tried to cope. “Your zipper-it’s stuck,” she said in frustration, but also a distraction from herself.
His fingers helped her out and when the metal teeth of the zipper were fully separated, they both worked to remove his slacks, his shoes and socks having been removed minutes ago and laid scattered across the floor of his bedroom. Kara took his hand and this time she had the lead, pulling him towards the bed as she climbed upon the solid colored bedspread he slept beneath every night. “Ow-frak!” She called out and the spell of the mood was slightly broken as her barely dressed form twisted and shifted on the bed, her hand pushed beneath her until it captured the small toy dump truck in her hand and held it between them.
“Sorry,” he apologized and took the child’s toy from her, tossing it towards the laundry hamper in the corner of the room. He would have to remember to fish it out later on.
Kara laughed. “This is not how I ever imagined this going.”
“No,” his head shook but he smiled anyway, praying that the constant reminders of his fatherhood and the fact that in some way he would always belong partially to another woman weren’t enough to drive her away at the last minute. “This isn’t how I imagined it would go either.” He kneeled on the bed and took charge, one hand sliding around until he felt the notches of her spine, fingers pushing together the fabric of her bra until the clasp released. Lee was careful as he slid the straps down her shoulders, almost reverent in fact, until the cups of the bra fell down and away, leaving her exposed. He had never seen her like this before, despite their trips to the beach and the lake, and even that time they’d talked about at the cemetery, when each of them had to strip down and soap up in the lake to get any kind of clean. No, back then he’d been the gentleman, envying his brother for what he got to see every night.
Nudity had never been a thing that she shied away from after all her time in the military, but the look of him as he drank her in was something she had never felt before, not even with any other kind of lover in the past. It was like she had given him all his wildest dreams in that moment, just by being there, and it set a kind of excitement that she didn’t even know existed in her stomach and even lower. She leaned back on her elbows as Lee came nearer, watching his head dip down to kiss from the center between her breasts until he chose a side, favoring one over the other. He was hardly touching her and yet she felt the build of a moan in her throat and she let it out as his mouth came to capture one hard nipple. He was gentle at first, kissing and his tongue lapping over it, then she felt the sharper tug of his teeth against it, pulling and plucking. One palm of his came to cup the rest of the fullness of her breast as he suckled against her, then departed entirely to treat the opposite breast with the same kind of devotion.
His lips trailed southward over the flat plane of her stomach to her navel, kissing at the waistband of her panties. They weren’t the ones given to her by the military, that much he knew, but still reflected the job she held, with the grey coloring she chose of them and more sensible cut. He wondered if her entire drawer was filled with underwear like this, or if Kara Thrace would have worn something else if she knew that this was what she would be doing that night when she dressed for the day. Either way, it didn’t matter, and Lee would admit that all his fantasies of her usually involved undressing her from the uniform she seemed to always wear.
“Move back,” he ordered from her waist, and Kara, dizzy because of his touch, complied, her body shifting up and back until she was as far as she could go. Her head rested against his pillows, neck craned to the side to breathe in the smell of shampoo and cologne on the fabric. Gods, she was lost in him, so surrounded in every meaning of the word that she couldn’t even think straight. It was consuming, just as she always dreamt it would be with him.
Lee hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties and tugged them down, leaving the last portion of her that was a mystery to him, finally and fully bared. He helped coax her into parting her thighs, one hand at her outer thigh as he held it steady, kissing up the unimaginably soft skin of the inside of that same thigh. Her legs shook again, just as barely as her hands had minutes before, and Lee made soft soothing sounds against her skin. “I’ve got you, Kara,” he said and looked up the length of her body to find her watching him, teeth biting at her lip in anticipation of what she knew he was about to do.
His own body laying across the bed on his stomach, Lee dove in, finding her already sopping wet between her thighs. The taste was like nothing he’d ever had before, unique and completely her, and all Lee knew was that he wanted more of it. His tongue ran the length of her, from her entrance to the swollen and red bundle of nerves higher up, reading her body for physical and audible responses as he began to learn what she loved for the very first time. He hiked one of her legs up over his shoulder, immediately feeling her heel digging into his back as his tongue ran slow circles around her clit. From where he was, he could see the fabric of his comforter bunched up in her tight fist while she simultaneously let out a call of his name.
She was close and he’d hardly even begun, something which brought a stirring of pride inside of him to know that long before he’d even touched her, Kara’s body had been anticipating all of this. He wasn’t ready to let her go though, so he backed off his focus, slowing himself down. Lee wanted to enjoy her, a part of him inwardly fearing that this would be not only the first, but the last time she would allow them to join together after guilt and worry washed over them both when their raging hormones had faded and cleared from their systems. He was going to enjoy her as long as he could. Lee slipped a finger inside of her, then another, feeling her tightly clench around him instantaneously, leaving him begging to actually, fully be inside of her and experience that in another way. The pads of his fingers rubbed her internally as his mouth once more took action and not more than a few seconds later, Kara’s keening moan was let out as she came, hips bucking on pure instinct. His other hand curled around her and palmed the skin below her navel, holding her as still as he could as he continued to work, carrying her through every last wave of pleasure she could feel.
Kara ran a hand over her face, ears ringing with the sound of her own voice and the steady thump of her pulse jumping loudly inside of her. Her body pleasantly hummed with the comforting echo of orgasm, her senses sharpening and coming back to her slowly. She opened her eyes and looked down to him, down to the man that had given her that overwhelming roll of ecstasy and had finally ceased his ministrations against her to more delicately kiss to her inner thigh yet again. “Come here,” she demanded of him, hands reaching to encourage him closer, though Lee didn’t exactly come as quickly as called, instead taking his time to leave a trail of her own wetness over her abdomen and breasts until their mouths met. She could not only taste herself on him, but feel some of the warmth the core of her body had passed on to him, his mouth still slightly slippery from what he’d done for her.
“You don’t know how long I’ve thought of doing that,” Lee said into her neck, his body laid against her own.
“Lords of Kobol, Adama, you can do that the rest of your frakking life and I wouldn’t complain.”
He laughed, his body vibrating against hers which elicited her own matching giggle in the room. Kara’s hand pushed through his hair, slightly longer than she’d ever seen on him, but matched the years that had been put on him. He was no longer that boy anymore and the change suited him. “Please,” Kara begged against his ear as her teeth tugged on the lobe. “I want you-” she paused and corrected herself. “I need you inside of me, Lee.”
She wasn’t just speaking as Kara Thrace, thirty year old woman bedding the slightly older father of one on top of her. It was every version of herself since they’d first met. That girl that had so desperately wanted him to frak her on her kitchen table despite knowing how wrong it was. The Kara that saw him every time afterwards and thought about what it would be like to see his face when she came instead of Zak’s. A grieving no longer wife-to-be that had wanted to drown her sorrow in her lover’s older brother. The lonely soldier tucked away on battlestars or bases throughout the Twelve Colonies, using dreams of him to help her come to completion by her hand when she was alone in her bunk late at night. Every person she’d ever been since she’d seen his face, they were all begging aloud for him.
Her words were his undoing, as if he had any resolve left at all while he was throbbing against her thighs. It had been Gods knew how long since he’d been inside of a woman. There had been Gianne and after things had finally and fully fallen apart, there’d been another woman that he sought comfort in casually, but never seriously. If he was honest with himself, he was always waiting for her again, fearing the worst but always hoping for the best. Lee pulled back and looked down to her to memorize her in this instant, the pink of her cheeks, the way her golden green eyes looked when heavy with desire, how her hair fell against his pillow. He wanted to keep her there forever, never let her go again, but he knew that would be her choice to make.
“I need to get…” He trailed off and began to climb off to begin a frustrating search for what he hoped wouldn’t be now expired condoms. Kara’s hands stilled him, though, pulling him back before his weight had even shifted off of her.
“I’m up to date on my shot, don’t worry about it.” With others, one night stands especially, she would have insisted on the extra layer of added protection between them to guard against disease and pregnancy, but the thought of losing the warmth of him against her was absolutely unimaginable. That, and she wanted to feel him, really feel him, for the first time, and she knew he craved the same.
Lee nodded, kissing her lips as both of her hands came to his cheeks to steady him. He couldn’t get over how absolutely right it felt with her and they truly hadn’t even begun. All the women he’d been with in his past, the sex had been good, great even, but it was nothing like this. Even knowing he had loved Gianne and coming to terms with the fact that she was the mother of his child so much so that he was unbelievably happy and thankful for it - not once had he ever felt so lost inside of her like he did with Kara.
Her hands slipped from his cheeks and down to his lower half, her hands pushing inside the elastic of his boxer-briefs to force them down. He helped her the rest of the way until he was truly free, feeling her warm palm grasp around his cock, already stiff and waiting for her. He groaned into her neck, face buried there temporarily as her body shifted slightly, legs parting wide around him in a sign of welcoming. Lee lifted his head and kissed her once more, hips and legs angling himself at her heated entrance. One hand joined hers, rubbing the head of his cock against her teasingly and he reveled in the look she gave him that admonished him for such an action, but also gave away how much she enjoyed it. He gave in not long after, though, pressing against her until he slid in just barely, Kara’s eyes shutting tight as she bit roughly at her lip to hold back the moan in her throat. A second later Lee pushed in the rest of the way, careful not to force himself inside too hard and fast out of fear of hurting her. That moan Kara had been trying to rein in escaped finally as she felt the fullness of him inside of her, her finger nails digging into his back as she called out to all the Gods she fervently believed in.
She was hot and tight, wet and soft around him, and it was a kind of perfection Lee had come close to finding but hadn’t ever experienced before. One leg curled around him and she pulled him in closer, forcing him inside just a fraction of an inch deeper, Lee letting out his own matching moan to join her. The pressure of her leg relinquished a moment later, however, and Lee took the hint, pulling out of her slowly and then pushing back into her tight fit. He built a rhythm with her, his mouth abandoning her own to find her breast again, this time a little rougher than the first. His hand squeezed and his mouth tugged as she sharply moaned with each thrust inside of her. Lee could feel her clenching around him even tighter than before, pleading with himself to hold on just a little longer for her. The focus paid off as Kara came, back arching and toes curling, this orgasm more intense than the first he’d given her. The tightness of her orgasm forced his own as well, and he felt himself tighten and release, spilling deep inside of her for what he hoped would be the first time, rather than the only time.
Spent and exhausted, Lee nearly collapsed against her breast, one of Kara’s arms weakly curling around him as she stroked over his sweat-sticky skin. Her chest rose and fell as she worked to gain balance, though she never honestly wanted it to fade away. Lying in his bed with him on top of her, she wanted to stay there forever, without complication of what this was or what it meant. She didn’t know her own answers to those questions and she feared Lee’s, it was far easier to exist in a place where neither of them had to think of such a thing.
With reluctance, Lee eventually pulled out and rolled off, lying on his back beside her. He groped around for her hand, drawing it to his lips when he found it. “Kara?” He asked.
She swallowed hard, her head full of all the possibilities of what he was going to ask next. Were this anyone else, she would have already been planning how to slip out of their bunk or apartment with as little sound as possible. For one of the few times in her life though, Kara didn’t want to wait for the man beside her to fall asleep so she could visit the bathroom to clean herself off between her thighs and redress in darkness, making a clean and quick getaway. “Yeah?”
“You’re going to stay the night, right?”
Every worry she had faded away, though a million new ones began to slowly grow. She would ignore them for now. “Yeah, Lee, I’ll stay.”
He sat up slightly, leaning over to kiss her again, though it wasn’t his only intention. Lee pulled at the blankets beneath them, their bodies both shifting until the fabric was free. He covered them both, but her first, like he was shielding her from prying eyes or perhaps just the chill of the room. When they were both beneath them, he curled himself to her and she reciprocated, turning on her side until he was spooned up against her, holding her tight.
-
Lee woke in the morning to the sound of a ringing doorbell. He could tell immediately that it wasn’t the first push or the second, perhaps not even the third, by the way it was urgently pressed a few times in rapid succession, as if it could actually indicate the changing mood of the person standing on the stoop. Kara stirred but didn’t wake beside him, and though they’d separated during the night, he leaned back over the gap of space between them to kiss her shoulder.
The doorbell sounded again, this time even angrier than the last, and Lee climbed from his bed and immediately went for his dresser to pull out a pair of clean boxers and a t-shirt for his torso. He could hear the front door downstairs opening roughly and the clack of shoes on the hardwood entrance way as he dressed speedily, closing the bedroom door shut behind him to keep Kara safe. He ran his hands through his hair as he stepped into the bathroom, trying to work out any signs of sleep before quickly brushing his teeth with the kind of quickness he hadn’t had since alert drills on Atlantia. Some semblance of cleanliness restored to him, he moved down the stairs, catching sight of Gianne and Joseph shutting the front door behind them.
“I used my keys,” she said, words somewhat terse as she set down the small spare bag that carried a few of their son’s items he tended to shuttle from one home to the other.
“Sorry-I was asleep,” Lee offered as an excuse before he finally made it down to the main floor, leaning in to politely kiss Gianne’s cheek in greeting as Joseph took off towards the living room, wide awake and ready to make himself at home.
“I bet,” she said, her lips upturned slightly as her eyes rose to the staircase he’d previously descended. “Saw a car in the driveway…” Her words trailed off and she looked back to him, this time a little more stern than she was before. “If you need me to take him because you’ve got something better to do, Lee,” Gianne didn’t finish.
He had no real intentions of keeping it all from her, but he hadn’t intended on it coming out that way either. “No, it’ll be fine,” Lee insisted and looked to where his son bounced on the couch, TV already on and cartoons streaming in.
“So who is she?” Gianne asked as she and Lee both proceeded towards the kitchen which featured a mess he had planned to clean up before mother and son had arrived. “Don’t tell me it’s that girl you were seeing again-”
“No,” he laughed with a shake of his head as he began to collect the bottles of beer quickly, like the movement would keep her from realizing how much the two of them had imbibed the night before. “She’s…”
Meanwhile, Kara had found full consciousness returning to her when she woke alone. The space beside her was still warm though, and she vaguely recalled his touch only moments before. She forced herself out of bed, pulling on her underwear and shirt, the rest of her clothing in hand as she peeked her head outside of the bedroom door. Finding the hallway vacant, she hurried across to the bathroom she’d seen on their way to his room the prior night. Dressed and cleaned, at least as best as she could get without fully taking a shower, Kara reopened the door, only to be stared down by the pint-sized version of the man she’d made love to the night before. She could remember now, how Lee had said Joseph would be there starting today, but had assumed it would be later on, long after she’d had time to leave. “Hi,” Kara said, echoing the greeting they’d first shared. “Do you remember me?”
Joseph stared at her and shook his head, face crinkling in something akin to fear at the stranger in his house. “Daddy!”
“She’s…” And Lee’s words were cut off as he heard the call of his son, sharing a look with Gianne as he quit the kitchen and headed up the stairs to find his lover and his son in something of a stand off.
“Lee, Gods I swear, I didn’t do anything!” She was frantic, comically so, hands held up in a mock sign of surrender to the child.
“Joseph,” he started, and scooped the boy up in his arms. “You know Kara, we saw her at the museum. She flies Vipers, remember?”
This time, in the comforting arms of his father and given some facts to remember, the four and a half year old did recall her, his little head nodding as he looked across to her without all the apprehension.
Kara was visibly relieved though somewhat shaken by the encounter with the child, this time for entirely different reasons than the first. She followed father and son down the stairs, the elusive Gianne already waiting. Kara had never seen her before in anything more than the photo Adama had shown her of the day his grandson was born, but she would know her just the same, some of her features reflected in her child’s face.
“So, Kara, Zak’s fiancee?” Gianne asked as she looked from Kara then to Lee pointedly. Clearly she’d heard of the her at some point, whether that be in tales from Lee’s father or the showing of photographs of the Old Man’s late son and the woman that had once been promised to be his wife.
It made Kara feel guilty all of a sudden, but she held herself together, nodding as she offered a hand. “Nice to meet you, Gianne.”
Lee watched the exchange between both of the blonde women as they forced themselves to shake hands with one another in the common expression of greeting.
“It’s good to finally meet you.” Gianne looked back to Lee and their son curled up in his arms. “You sure you don’t want me to take him?”
Part of him wanted to take her up on the offer, but he didn’t. His time with his son was precious, every last minute of it, and he knew the next time he saw Gianne, he wouldn’t hear the end of it. Deep inside of him, as well, there was some ounce that wanted Kara to get to know his son better than she had briefly gotten to on Galactica, having already subconsciously decided that she was going to be a permanent fixture in their lives, though he didn’t know how she would feel about it. “No, we’ll be okay. I’ll have him back to you tomorrow after dinner,” Lee said with a nod to her.
Kara felt out of place in the exchange, avoiding looking at any member of the family. Her thoughts were irrational, going back to her own father and his abandonment. She was proud of Lee for sticking with it, despite the fact that he could have easily run away and just been a father by way of sending his support payments. Though she knew Lee and Gianne hadn’t been together in quite some time, if they ever were even happy together at all, she couldn’t help but feel like she was some wedge in their lives and their routine. She didn’t want to be the thing that pushed them further apart, or the woman that inserted herself into the life of his son and tried to act as a replacement mother. Aside from all of that, she wasn’t even sure if she should be trusted around children at all, having never had any real experience with them in her life.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Joseph,” his mother said as she leaned in to kiss the boy and he returned it wet and sloppy to her own cheek. “Don’t be late, Lee, he’s got school Monday,” she reminded him, as if he could forget. Gianne headed the few steps to the door, turning to Kara before she left. “Again, nice to finally meet you,” she spoke and departed.
Lee mouthed his words of apology to Kara, leaning in to kiss her cheek. She hesitated, though, pulling away at the last second as her eyes motioned directly over to the boy still in his arms. He understood, though he wished he didn’t, and finally set Joseph down as he followed him into the living room. “Did you have breakfast?”
“No,” the boy said with a shake of his head, going for the small bin of his toys kept in the corner of the room. “You said,” he stopped, sputtering over his words and starting again. “You said you’d make pancakes.”
“That’s right,” Lee leaned down to kiss his son’s head, ruffling his blonde hair out of place. “I did. Kara’s going to help me, all right? We’ll be in the kitchen.”
He met Kara in the kitchen, arms going to pull her into a hug as he kissed her cheek, finally making contact this time. “Gods I’m sorry,” he said, feeling how stiff she was in his arms. “What’s wrong?”
Kara pulled away and shook her head, looking back to the open entranceway towards the hall that connected to the living room. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Listen, sometimes they come early depending on what Gianne’s got to do today. I didn’t think…”
“Last night was great,” she started, trying to disconnect herself. “But you’ve got a family and I don’t fit in, I know how this goes.”
His brow rose as he moved around the kitchen, gathering their plates from the night before and piling them in the empty dishwasher, then pulling out the box of pancake mix from the cupboard. “Well I don’t, so how does it go?”
She let out something between a sigh and a groan, working hard to not let her frustration come out in the volume of her voice. “Your son, he’s got a mom and a dad, he doesn’t need this,” her hands turned, gesturing to herself “on top of it all.”
“So I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life alone?” He questioned.
“No,” she replied quickly. “Just, me?”
“Yeah, you.” Lee smiled at her over the mixing bowl of pancake mix as he added the proper measured liquid into it and began to stir.
She took a seat at the counter off the island he worked at in the middle of the kitchen, elbows resting into the cool granite as her fingers pushed through her sex-mussed hair. “I’m not the person for you, Lee. Did you see the way Gianne looked at me? Oh,” she stopped, this time doing her best to imitate the tone of voice the other woman had used, “Zak’s fiancee?”
“She’s harmless,” he insisted, his spoon coming to rest on the edge of the bowl as he put his attention fully on her this time, instead of sharing it with the pancake batter between them. “Gianne’s been seeing a guy for the last year anyway, so she can’t talk about it.”
“It’s not just that! Lee, Gods, it was just one time, we don’t have a commitment between us.”
He turned his back to her, standing over the stove and the pre-heated pan on the burner, sighing as he allowed small pools of the batter to form and start cooking on the teflon. “What if I wanted it to be more than just one time?” Lee said, still facing away.
Kara said nothing, recalling every moment of the night before and how much she hadn’t wanted it to end, and now couldn’t imagine ever not having it again. Now she knew it wasn’t just one sided, his voice doing a little pleading in his words as he asked her. “I work in Delphi, Lee…” She scrambled for an excuse.
“It’s not that far,” he insisted as he used the spatula to flip each pancake, perfectly golden brown on the cooked side. “You can stay on base during the week, come out here on the weekends…” He was getting ahead of himself with what he was propositioning her with.
“You hardly know me, Lee.”
“I know you enough.” His shoulders slumped and his head shook as he reached for a plate from the nearby cabinet, holding it out as he dropped each pancake down onto it. He repeated the process with the next ones, batter spaced out on the pan to begin cooking. Lee headed to the fridge next, pulling out the containers of syrup and butter, jug of orange juice in his free hand as he nudged the door shut with his shoulder. He didn’t have the heart, nor the energy, to look at her as he cut across the kitchen and placed the items on the table.
“Kara, I’m thirty-two years old now, I know what I want.” He turned around to her, his gaze unwilling to let her go free. “I knew what I wanted eight years ago when you were with my brother, I knew what I wanted five years ago when I saw you on Galactica. I don’t give a frak-” He stopped, looking to the doorway to make sure his son wasn’t nearby to hear him using the language he and Gianne had agreed to curb around the boy. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’ve wasted a quarter of my life worrying about everyone else and I just don’t care about it anymore.” When he was finished speaking he returned to the stove, just in time to flip the pancakes over, these ones slightly browner than the others.
She was running scared, something she did all too often when it came to her personal life, despite how fearless she was in the cockpit. It was one of her many contradictions. Kara slid off the stool and went for the cabinet she’d seen him get their plates from the night before, pulling out a trio, then reaching into the drawer for three forks and two knives, figuring the four year old wasn’t yet skilled enough to be trusted to cut his own pancakes. Silently, she set the table and when she finished, she headed to retrieve them three glasses.
“He likes the blue one,” Lee said from the stove, his pile of pancakes slowly growing.
Kara nodded and she grasped the smaller, blue plastic cup with cartoon characters coloring the sides along with their two regular ones. She placed it at the seat she set for his son, in front of the chair with the small cushioned booster seat she presumed Joseph was still using.
“Watch these while I get him?” Lee said, motioning towards the last of the pancakes cooking on the stove.
“No-let me,” she insisted, trying to show him that despite the silent treatment they had both quickly enacted on one another, that she could behave like the person he thought she was.
When she made it to the living room, she found his son there, on the floor and immersed in the mess of toys he’d created, talking to himself. “Joseph?” His head turned to look up to her. “Your Dad says pancakes are ready.” He wasted no time in hurrying from his spot, the jacket he’d been wearing earlier tossed aside in the middle of the floor as he rushed past her and down the hallway of the house he knew well. By time she made it back, only a few steps behind him, he was struggling to get up onto his seat and Kara reacted instantly, lifting the boy up and sitting him down. “You okay?”
Joseph nodded to her and looked back towards where Lee was as he approached with the plate of steaming pancakes in his hands.
“You better be hungry,” Lee said and served out a few of them onto Joseph’s plate, reaching for his son’s fork and his own knife as he began to butter each one, then cut them into small, easily chewable sections.
Kara took her seat as Lee loaded Joseph’s plate up with the amount of syrup he knew his son would need, then sat down at the end of the table, with Kara and Joseph on either side of him.
“These are good,” she said, trying to make small talk with Lee, despite knowing he wouldn’t be much in the mood for it since she’d basically blown off his attempt at pouring out his feelings to her.
“Thanks,” he forced a smile at Kara then looked to Joseph, his expression turning genuine.
“Are you going to eat pancakes with us every Saturday?” Joseph asked with his mouth full as he chewed.
Kara looked to Lee for help in answering and he lightly patted his son’s arm. “Not every Saturday, no,” he answered and left it at that, hoping it would appease him.
“Would it be okay if I was here sometimes?” Kara suddenly asked, looking across to the little boy.
Joseph’s familiar blue eyes, just as bright as his father’s and the Old Man’s, gazed up and over at her, head nodding. “It’s more fun this way.”
With a reserved smile, Kara glanced to Lee out of the corner of her eye. “It is.”
A few pancakes and a tall glass of orange juice later, Kara started to fill the dishwasher with their syrup covered plates, while Lee held his son at the sink, helping him to rinse off any of the remaining stickiness from his small hands. When he placed Joseph back on the ground, the child obediently waited, and Kara couldn’t help but observe the act that was obviously routine to them. Lee bent down with a wash cloth, cleaning his face as the last piece to the puzzle before his son darted off again, filling the home with an echo of his excited yell as he returned to whatever he had been doing before.
“Seeing you with him,” she began as she placed the frying pan inside and closed the door, sealing away the dirty dishes within. “It’s the strangest thing. Nothing’s really happened in my life since I last saw you and you…” Her head shook but she smiled to him. “You’re a dad, Lee. Not just a father, but a dad. One of the good ones, too.”
He blushed a little at her words, clearing the table of the orange juice container as he spoke. “It’s been insane. I feel bad about how I reacted when she first told me, I was so scared, after losing Zak and the relationship I had with my father, especially at the time… I didn’t think I could do it. Now, though? I don’t really remember what it was like before him.”
“Is he why you quit flying?” She asked gently, not sure of how touchy of a subject it was for him. His father hadn’t been too happy, or that was what she got out of Adama at the time, but he had understood his son’s choice nonetheless.
Lee looked to her and then nodded. “I wasn’t going to, but then he was born and Gods, flying didn’t matter anymore, it was never to me what it is to you. It’s safe, especially when there isn’t much going on out there, but accidents happen, and I couldn’t continue to get into that cockpit everyday knowing that something could happen and he wouldn’t grow up with a father. What if the cylons returned? I’d be going to war and leaving him behind. I used to love watching my Dad fly, but I remember how nervous I was for him as I got older and understood that sometimes people died doing what he did. I don’t want him to ever feel that.”
He was the same and different at the same time and she felt inadequate over how little her life had changed since then. She’d gotten a promotion to Captain while on board Pegasus under Commander Cain, she’d moved around and acted as a CAG for a brief moment in time, she’d dated and had a few casual boyfriends over the years, but no commitments. Nothing big. Nothing as changing as what Lee had lived through.
“I still fly, Lee. I could go out there tomorrow and frak up or something could go wrong with my Viper and I might not come back. Why would you want to have to worry like that again?”
He approached her, hands clasping her upper arms as he gently rubbed the somewhat exposed skin there. “I can handle it. If it’s having you and worrying, then I’ll take it over not having you at all. Just…” He sighed. “Give this a chance, all right?”
“Lee…”
“Kara,” he kissed the corner of her mouth, happy to find that she didn’t pull away. “Whatever excuse you’re going to give me, we’ll work it out. Just don’t say no.”
Her eyes shut and it was the previous night all over again, breathing in the scent of him on his sheets. Kara swore she could feel her heart clench at the thought of saying goodbye to him in something of a permanent fashion, the ache spreading out from her chest to her extremities, forcing her mind to comply with what her body knew it wanted. “No,” she answered. “I won’t say no.”
Continue to Part 3.