Battlestar Galactica: Five Senses in Six Parts
Taste ( lick)
Every time Lee Adama steps out of the shower with that damn towel wrapped dangerously low on his hips, Kara has the overwhelming urge to lean over, or run over, and start to lick up all the water droplets that so stubbornly cling to him. She has a similar urge when she sees him standing on the flight deck, nice and sweaty from a tour in his Viper or from a heavy duty maintenance shift when the temperature on the deck has been cranked a little too high.
Every so often she actually will lean over his shoulder, ostensibly to look at whatever he's doing, to critique his work or just to generally annoy him, and she's she'll get close enough she can dart her tongue out in a quick movement, and grab a drop on the tip of her tongue. He always looks up, way too fast, but he never quite catches her even though he knows she's just gotten away with something and it drives him crazy that he can't quite figure out what it is.
Thanks to a drunken night when they were at the academy that she's very, very sure he doesn't remember, Kara knows not only what he tastes like (which is in no small way responsible for her continued fascination) but also what it feels like to have his lips and tongue on her body, too. He takes it slow, and deliberately, long licks that pay attention to all her body, all her secret places. It's her memory and hers alone, and she keeps it like secret knowledge that she lets add a light to her eyes when she taunts him and he looks up and can tell she knows something he doesn't know.
Smell (scent and oil)
Scent is a very powerful mental trigger. It's a powerful motivator. Our most deeply held memories are scent memories. The untold and overlooked losses at the end of the worlds were the smells. Flowers, trees, perfumes, places, and people that were never going to be duplicated or found again.
The people already accustomed to life onboard ships were lucky in a way. Their familiar scents were still around them. Metallic tang from the ship's walls, various oils and fluids from the flight deck - the musky scent of sweat and leather that mixed together to say "pilots". Smoke, and alcohol, and overly processed mess hall food. Not all the smells were pleasant, but they were familiar. And at the end of the worlds, familiar was more important than ever.
One thing Lee noticed was how people smelled. It was a semi-conscious marker he hadn't even realized he processed until the day that he stood looking down at a messy, injured, but thankfully whole and alive Kara Thrace who'd just done the impossible and survived on a barren hell of a moon and realized that he could smell her even underneath all the Cylon muck and bile. He realized that there was a scent that was uniquely her, which was normally mixed in with cigar smoke and the Chief's home brew and oil and leather, and was now under much more nauseating things. But under all of that was musk, a smell that said "woman" ,"mate" and most importantly "Kara".
*****
She managed to avoid seeing Lee for the first three weeks she was back on Galactica. She didn't want anything to do with him, and since he hadn't made an effort to seek her out, she figured he didn't want anything to do with her, either. It suited her just fine. At least, that's what she kept telling herself.
The last time they'd talked had been disconcerting. He hadn't been the same man she'd known. Command had changed him, not necessarily for better or worse, but different. He'd changed on her before, that was true, but it had been different. Part of it, she'd realized belatedly, had been his smell. A primal signal, a subliminal, subconscious sign, but one that had her instincts screaming at her. She'd always been one to rely more on her hindbrain than her intellect in dangerous situations, and it had kicked into overdrive.
Lee had always, for as long as she'd known him, smelled like flying. Oil and leather and fuel and sweat. From the very first day at the academy, to the day he'd stepped in front of her cell on the Galactica, whether he was coming off of duty or fresh out of the shower, that smell had always lingered on him, had always attracted and soothed her and told her he was there.
It hadn't been there the last time she'd seen him. Replaced by soap and starch and something she couldn't quite place but smelled vaguely female and she wondered if it was because he was living with Dee. Well worn, overworked leather had been replaced by a crisp artificial smell that reminded her rather unpleasantly of the Pegasus and Cain.
So she's been avoiding him since she's been back because it's too unsettling for her. Everything has changed around her and she just wants to pretend that little part of things isn't any different.
She's working on the engine of a Viper when a hand reaches over into her space for a tool out of her box. The scent hits her first, like a fist in the gut and she nearly drops the wrench she's holding. Oil, and leather, and fuel, and sweat. The combination that no one else has exactly right or exactly the same. The scent she never thought she'd smell again, and she closes her eyes and just breathes it in.
When she opens them, she sees Lee looking over at her, for the first time since they've been back on the ship. For the first time in a year and 6 months. He's giving her an odd look, but she really doesn't care. It's too soon to talk, they'll only get into a fight about the last time they were together. But somehow, that doesn't bother her anymore. He's Lee again, and that's more than enough for her.
Sight (breast)
He can't stop staring at the curve of her breast. It's showing through the open collar of her uniform jacket, the one she should probably still have buttoned up, but commencement is over and technically so is the school term. She's laughing raucously with one of the newly graduated seniors while they're passing out cigars, and she's such an incredible tomboy that it seems incongruous and wrong somehow that she's got such full and round curves.
But she does, and Lee can't seem to stop staring at them. She's his best friend, his wingman, his study partner and sometimes roommate (because her landlord keeps locking her out of the her apartment) and the last thing he should be doing is fantasizing about what she'll look like when she's sprawled across a bed naked. Something he happens to know she does on a regular basis, because he always ends up hearing all about it in the commissary the following day. They're actually going to get a place together over the summer, because he really doesn't want to go home, and she can't quite make the rising rent on her own and he's going to have to stop thinking about her breasts or he's never going to survive the experience.
She glances over her shoulder and smiles at him, and the movement spreads the fabric just a little bit further apart, giving him that much better a view. He shifts his hips uncomfortably in his chair as his pants become too tight through the crotch.
It's going to be a long summer.
Sound (phone encounter)
Their relationship after the relocation to New Caprica is relegated to a series of phone encounters. Kara blames herself, like she always does, although if you asked her, she'd blame Lee. High up in his tower floating above them all. But when she hears his voice, it's harder to demonize him. Harder to resent him for making a life for himself even while she's trying to do the same thing. Harder for her, the frak-up, to see that he's as frakked up as she is, and therefore easier for her to pull herself away from him.
It's a paradox, and a puzzle, and a contradiction. Kara's good at all those things.
Because while she's not talking to him, not hearing his voice, she can tell herself that he's a bastard. She can think about all the things he's ever done wrong, build up this caricature of him in her head, so that she can hate him. Then he won't be a threat to her relationship with Sam, won't be a threat to her idea of herself.
But then she talks to him on the phone, and she can remember the times that weren't so bad. The way he stayed with her after Zak died, the relief she felt when she heard his voice after the worlds' end and had thought he'd died too, the way he'd laughed when they'd been trying to finger paint the helmet for Flattop's one thousandth landing - the expression on his face on Colonial day when he saw her in the dress she'd borrowed from Cally. The way he'd reacted to her when she'd stepped aboard the Astral Queen with the Arrow of Apollo and a Cylon in tow, and he'd ignored and forgotten about all of the things they'd said and done before that, and just hugged her. And kissed her.
It's too easy to think about those things when she hears his voice. So she doesn't call very often. It gets to the point where she doesn't call at all. The Chief quits asking when she's last talked to Apollo after a few months.
Sam just doesn't know her well enough to realize that anything is wrong.
Touch (satin)
The blue dress she wears to the Colonial day dance is the first satin he's been able to touch in months. Since the end of the world, actually. One of the things Lee realizes he's never appropriately appreciated is the feel of satin stretched over a woman's body. Add to that that this is Kara's body he's talking about, and Lee is a very happy boy. In some ways, he's catapulted back to his first prom his junior year in high school, all awkwardness and shy anticipation. Except that they're adults, and part of the anticipation isn't the hope of stealing kisses, but rather a whole lot more.
The satin makes it easier for her to slide right out of his hands, he realizes later when the newly elected Vice President cuts in. He can't quite keep a grip on her, she's moving away and then he's watching her go - watching the play of light off of fabric and riotous blonde hair. He tries a few minutes later to catch another glimpse of her, so he can maybe wind his way back over to her, but she's nowhere to be seen.
Every time Lee Adama steps out of the shower with that damn towel wrapped dangerously low on his hips, Kara has the overwhelming urge to lean over, or run over, and start to lick up all the water droplets that so stubbornly cling to him. She has a similar urge when she sees him standing on the flight deck, nice and sweaty from a tour in his Viper or from a heavy duty maintenance shift when the temperature on the deck has been cranked a little too high.
Every so often she actually will lean over his shoulder, ostensibly to look at whatever he's doing, to critique his work or just to generally annoy him, and she's she'll get close enough she can dart her tongue out in a quick movement, and grab a drop on the tip of her tongue. He always looks up, way too fast, but he never quite catches her even though he knows she's just gotten away with something and it drives him crazy that he can't quite figure out what it is.
Thanks to a drunken night when they were at the academy that she's very, very sure he doesn't remember, Kara knows not only what he tastes like (which is in no small way responsible for her continued fascination) but also what it feels like to have his lips and tongue on her body, too. He takes it slow, and deliberately, long licks that pay attention to all her body, all her secret places. It's her memory and hers alone, and she keeps it like secret knowledge that she lets add a light to her eyes when she taunts him and he looks up and can tell she knows something he doesn't know.
Smell (scent and oil)
Scent is a very powerful mental trigger. It's a powerful motivator. Our most deeply held memories are scent memories. The untold and overlooked losses at the end of the worlds were the smells. Flowers, trees, perfumes, places, and people that were never going to be duplicated or found again.
The people already accustomed to life onboard ships were lucky in a way. Their familiar scents were still around them. Metallic tang from the ship's walls, various oils and fluids from the flight deck - the musky scent of sweat and leather that mixed together to say "pilots". Smoke, and alcohol, and overly processed mess hall food. Not all the smells were pleasant, but they were familiar. And at the end of the worlds, familiar was more important than ever.
One thing Lee noticed was how people smelled. It was a semi-conscious marker he hadn't even realized he processed until the day that he stood looking down at a messy, injured, but thankfully whole and alive Kara Thrace who'd just done the impossible and survived on a barren hell of a moon and realized that he could smell her even underneath all the Cylon muck and bile. He realized that there was a scent that was uniquely her, which was normally mixed in with cigar smoke and the Chief's home brew and oil and leather, and was now under much more nauseating things. But under all of that was musk, a smell that said "woman" ,"mate" and most importantly "Kara".
*****
She managed to avoid seeing Lee for the first three weeks she was back on Galactica. She didn't want anything to do with him, and since he hadn't made an effort to seek her out, she figured he didn't want anything to do with her, either. It suited her just fine. At least, that's what she kept telling herself.
The last time they'd talked had been disconcerting. He hadn't been the same man she'd known. Command had changed him, not necessarily for better or worse, but different. He'd changed on her before, that was true, but it had been different. Part of it, she'd realized belatedly, had been his smell. A primal signal, a subliminal, subconscious sign, but one that had her instincts screaming at her. She'd always been one to rely more on her hindbrain than her intellect in dangerous situations, and it had kicked into overdrive.
Lee had always, for as long as she'd known him, smelled like flying. Oil and leather and fuel and sweat. From the very first day at the academy, to the day he'd stepped in front of her cell on the Galactica, whether he was coming off of duty or fresh out of the shower, that smell had always lingered on him, had always attracted and soothed her and told her he was there.
It hadn't been there the last time she'd seen him. Replaced by soap and starch and something she couldn't quite place but smelled vaguely female and she wondered if it was because he was living with Dee. Well worn, overworked leather had been replaced by a crisp artificial smell that reminded her rather unpleasantly of the Pegasus and Cain.
So she's been avoiding him since she's been back because it's too unsettling for her. Everything has changed around her and she just wants to pretend that little part of things isn't any different.
She's working on the engine of a Viper when a hand reaches over into her space for a tool out of her box. The scent hits her first, like a fist in the gut and she nearly drops the wrench she's holding. Oil, and leather, and fuel, and sweat. The combination that no one else has exactly right or exactly the same. The scent she never thought she'd smell again, and she closes her eyes and just breathes it in.
When she opens them, she sees Lee looking over at her, for the first time since they've been back on the ship. For the first time in a year and 6 months. He's giving her an odd look, but she really doesn't care. It's too soon to talk, they'll only get into a fight about the last time they were together. But somehow, that doesn't bother her anymore. He's Lee again, and that's more than enough for her.
Sight (breast)
He can't stop staring at the curve of her breast. It's showing through the open collar of her uniform jacket, the one she should probably still have buttoned up, but commencement is over and technically so is the school term. She's laughing raucously with one of the newly graduated seniors while they're passing out cigars, and she's such an incredible tomboy that it seems incongruous and wrong somehow that she's got such full and round curves.
But she does, and Lee can't seem to stop staring at them. She's his best friend, his wingman, his study partner and sometimes roommate (because her landlord keeps locking her out of the her apartment) and the last thing he should be doing is fantasizing about what she'll look like when she's sprawled across a bed naked. Something he happens to know she does on a regular basis, because he always ends up hearing all about it in the commissary the following day. They're actually going to get a place together over the summer, because he really doesn't want to go home, and she can't quite make the rising rent on her own and he's going to have to stop thinking about her breasts or he's never going to survive the experience.
She glances over her shoulder and smiles at him, and the movement spreads the fabric just a little bit further apart, giving him that much better a view. He shifts his hips uncomfortably in his chair as his pants become too tight through the crotch.
It's going to be a long summer.
Sound (phone encounter)
Their relationship after the relocation to New Caprica is relegated to a series of phone encounters. Kara blames herself, like she always does, although if you asked her, she'd blame Lee. High up in his tower floating above them all. But when she hears his voice, it's harder to demonize him. Harder to resent him for making a life for himself even while she's trying to do the same thing. Harder for her, the frak-up, to see that he's as frakked up as she is, and therefore easier for her to pull herself away from him.
It's a paradox, and a puzzle, and a contradiction. Kara's good at all those things.
Because while she's not talking to him, not hearing his voice, she can tell herself that he's a bastard. She can think about all the things he's ever done wrong, build up this caricature of him in her head, so that she can hate him. Then he won't be a threat to her relationship with Sam, won't be a threat to her idea of herself.
But then she talks to him on the phone, and she can remember the times that weren't so bad. The way he stayed with her after Zak died, the relief she felt when she heard his voice after the worlds' end and had thought he'd died too, the way he'd laughed when they'd been trying to finger paint the helmet for Flattop's one thousandth landing - the expression on his face on Colonial day when he saw her in the dress she'd borrowed from Cally. The way he'd reacted to her when she'd stepped aboard the Astral Queen with the Arrow of Apollo and a Cylon in tow, and he'd ignored and forgotten about all of the things they'd said and done before that, and just hugged her. And kissed her.
It's too easy to think about those things when she hears his voice. So she doesn't call very often. It gets to the point where she doesn't call at all. The Chief quits asking when she's last talked to Apollo after a few months.
Sam just doesn't know her well enough to realize that anything is wrong.
Touch (satin)
The blue dress she wears to the Colonial day dance is the first satin he's been able to touch in months. Since the end of the world, actually. One of the things Lee realizes he's never appropriately appreciated is the feel of satin stretched over a woman's body. Add to that that this is Kara's body he's talking about, and Lee is a very happy boy. In some ways, he's catapulted back to his first prom his junior year in high school, all awkwardness and shy anticipation. Except that they're adults, and part of the anticipation isn't the hope of stealing kisses, but rather a whole lot more.
The satin makes it easier for her to slide right out of his hands, he realizes later when the newly elected Vice President cuts in. He can't quite keep a grip on her, she's moving away and then he's watching her go - watching the play of light off of fabric and riotous blonde hair. He tries a few minutes later to catch another glimpse of her, so he can maybe wind his way back over to her, but she's nowhere to be seen.