BSG fic: Down and Down (Lee/Anders)
Title: Down and Down
Pairing: Lee/Anders (mostly focused, though, on Kara/Lee and Kara/Anders; also with a necessary bit of Lee/Dualla)
Rating: R, mostly for language
Summary: Sam comes to see Lee in the middle of the night. Takes place immediately after "Crossroads, part one" but before "Crossroads, part two," so it's entirely free of finale spoilers. Approximately 3500 words.
Down and Down
Lee wasn't sleeping. He lay in bed, twisted into the sheets, too exhausted to move but too soul sick to let go and drift off to oblivion. That might've been nice, but he just kept opening his eyes and glancing around the dimly lit room, looking at everything but the ring on the table-so much that he might as well have been clasping it in his hands like he did for a solid hour after she left. And only that because she wasn't the only one that had left him.
He thought grief ought to have vacations, especially on a day like today. A person ought to be allowed, every so often for at least an hour, to wipe loss completely out of his mind, just live and breathe and not feel like his stomach is full of concrete and his bones are made of cold steel. He had tried drinking, but that didn't seem to do it, because as often as it took him so far out of himself that he couldn't feel her fingers on his face or see her cocky grin as she flipped her viper over his, just as often it took him deeper into it until he thought he couldn't come back.
Not that he'd ever returned, really, from that moment when her viper became a sudden ball of fire-dark, violent. Final.
He always thought it would be bright when she went out, some foolish but heroic thing rather than this surrender, just like he thought Dee would leave in a fury, not with cold disappointment and resignation. He chuckled sardonically to himself: for once, they were on the same page, if only in defying his expectations.
Everything seemed to defy him lately, and even if he knew it was mostly his own fault, that didn't make it any easier to deal with. This world felt strange to him now, like as badly as he wanted Kara to be back in it, he couldn't imagine her sitting down to talk to this person he had become. What would she think about a man who attacked the president to defend Gaius Baltar? She'd probably hate it as much as Dee did. He wondered if maybe that wasn't half of why he resigned his commission and took up with Lampkin, like he was making some sort of ridiculous clean break, shrugging off everything he thought he was, everyone who loved that man. But he knew better. He was trying to come back to himself, struggling painfully through. He wondered if she would have found a way to live with this thing he was doing, forgiven him for being who he is. He knew, though, that he hadn't earned that sort of forgiveness, not from her.
He used to lay awake all those nights on Pegasus just to be angry with her, trying not to disturb Dee in her sleep. Now, there was no one to disturb, and he wished to the gods Kara was still there for him to be angry with.
A sudden banging on his door made him realize just how far into not-sleep he'd sunk. Adrenaline coursed through his body, making him come awake with the hammer of his heart, almost audible against the dull machine hum of the place. But then there was the sound of a fist on the door again and a mumbled ramble of curses to drown it out.
He threw on a pair of pants, too weary to deal with whoever this was but apparently without a choice in the matter. When he finally got the door open, he leaned against the frame and rubbed his hand over his face. Sam Anders. Drunk. So drunk you could smell it over the usual acrid odor of the corridor. So drunk he was already leaning toward the room, about to pitch forward into it, except he was trying to talk, apparently with his hands, the bottle impeding the one so that he just gesticulated vaguely with the other and frowned at Lee.
"I need to know," he started.
"Sam…what are you doing here?"
"I need to know," he said, and Lee felt a sudden well of panic rise in him. Who knew what the frak Sam needed to know. The only sure thing was that whatever he asked, Lee would probably tell him. Once and for all.
Lee waited, but he didn't elaborate, so Lee took a deep breath, taking in the smell of liquor and the musky, strangely earthy odor of Sam's body long overdue for a shower, and still, he decided to grab him by the arm and pull him inside, seizing the bottle from him as he did.
He looked over his disheveled training uniform. It was strange to see him in tanks. Everything about him trying to be a pilot was almost funny, and not because he wouldn't probably be pretty great at it, under normal circumstances. He was coordinated and inventive and brave and all those other things Starbuck must've recognized like looking into a mirror. He had a powerful sense of self-preservation, but he wasn't always strong. Too emotional. Too blindly determined.
Too much like himself, maybe.
That thought almost made him laugh aloud, but it wast how Lee knew that Sam trying to be a pilot to keep Starbuck alive might very well kill him.
Sam was wobbling beside him, still trying to talk with the bottle.
"Hey, Lee Adama," he said, almost sing-song, weaving a little as Lee pulled him. "Hey, Starbuck's Captain Apollo Lee Frakkin' Adama." Then he leered at him, his voice going deeper, darker, but still somehow rhythmical: "No, no. Wait. Gaius Baltar's Frakkin' Asshole Lawyer Mister No-CAG Lee Adama."
There was no overwhelming venom in it, and if there was, he probably deserved it. So Lee sighed and nudged Sam toward the desk chair. He fell into it, giggling, until he looked up at Lee's face and got serious again, just as serious as he'd been when he opened the door.
Sam said, "You have to answer me something, something about you and my wife, because it's been bugging me."
"I don't think you want to know."
"Lee," he said so matter-of-factly it was almost comical. In fact, maybe Sam meant it be comical, because he made this face, then his voice turned sardonic. "Do you think…I give…a flying frak if you frakked her?" His voice rose. "Do you? Do you think I hate to know somebody wanted her, somebody good…and decent…and so frakkin' honorable loved her?" His voice fell. "I think maybe you didn't anyway. You didn't know how."
"To love her?"
"To love her. Does anybody know how to love Kara Thrace? Anybody!" he hollered, throwing his arms wide as though there were an audience in the room. But then he looked back at Lee, quiet again. "But you did. We did. Somehow. Like…" He started gesticulating with his hands as he spoke, and it seemed to just make him grow more frantic again. "I don't know, like someone broke her and put a bunch of pieces of her into a box and we just keep shaking it as hard as we frakkin' can and hoping that when we open it, the pieces will be back together again, even though it doesn't make sense, like somehow she would be a person we could make sense of, like one whole person. I think that's why it's so hard."
"What's hard?"
"There are too many pieces of her, man. Everywhere I frakkin' look. And then…" His face contorted with anger, but Lee could see it was just a way to ward off tears. He hadn't seen him shed any yet. When he was drunk, he normally did well enough distracting himself, reportedly by frakking whoever would let him, male or female, and by laughing at everything, even what wasn't funny.
When he wasn't drunk, he was as stoic as a person could be, just as stoic as he'd always been when she smiled at Lee or sent Sam away from Galactica after bringing him over just to frak her, because that's all the depth of human contact she could stand, and even then, probably with the lights off, in the dark of her bunk. She was great in the dark-open. Or in the black of space, in a viper-confident. It was the light that hurt like hell.
Sam was still talking: "There are pieces that are just gone. Do you know she went down wearing the ring. On her tags. Had to've. I've looked everywhere. That crazy girl…" He wiped his hand over his face. "Do you think she knew how to love anybody?"
"You know the answer to that."
He shook his head. "I don't."
"I think… I think she knew how to love just fine. But it was hard. She just didn't want to sometimes."
"Bullshit. She wanted to love you."
Evenly, he said, "She did."
"I know." He slumped down in the chair, his head smacking against the back.
"She loved you, too."
"I know."
After a silent moment that went on a little too long, Sam sat up and then pushed himself out of the chair. "I gotta go. Shit, I don't know what made me think coming here was…"
"It's okay," Lee said, even if he wasn't really sure about that. "Try to get some sleep."
"Were you sleeping?" He took in a sharp breath, but didn't respond. Sam continued, "You weren't. I saw you walking through Dogsville last night. I don't want to sleep."
"I don't care if you want to or not. You need to. You frakkin' trying to get yourself killed? Is that what this viper jock bullshit is-"
Sam shot out of the chair, grabbed him by the shoulders, and stumbled both of them back against the wall with a thud. "Don't you say that. It's what I need to do." There was something absolutely wild and panicked in his eyes, so Lee bit back every angry retort he had and tried to make himself calm down, because somebody had to be sane, and it wasn't going to be Sam tonight.
Then Sam added, "You trying to get yourself frakkin' killed? Is that what this defending murderous cowards bullshit is about?"
It was like a gut punch hearing it out loud, even if deep in his bones he knew he was doing the right thing. Being confronted with how it seemed to everyone around him-hell, even to him-startled him. He was staring up at Starbuck's husband, in his tanks, who was beginning to take a place he'd never have again because he'd chosen to walk away-just as surely as Starbuck had chosen to give up and go down. He felt that hollow feeling settle into him again, a small blunt ache only because he knew the sort of devastation that always followed the numbness: tension too heavy to endure and then finally disintegration.
So Lee let his hands press him even harder into the wall and just waited. Sam's body radiated heat, and his hands were stronger than Lee remembered them being. He might be able to take him in a fight, especially as drunk as he was, but he didn't want to have to find out. And, really, part of him simply wanted someone else to hold him up for a while.
Sam had calmed a bit, so Lee said firmly, "Sam, you need to sleep. As it is, you'll be so hungover tomorrow it'll only be because it's Helo's that you don't get washed right out of viper training."
When Sam didn't argue but didn't move either, Lee finally raised his hand, flat against his chest, to slowly push him off, maybe force him to go back to his rack and sleep. He'd walk him there and draft somebody to watch him if he had to, even if the thought of going down there was unaccountably foreign, as if he wouldn’t even know how to open the door. Or as if he'd know exactly how and it would hurt too much not to.
As he pushed his shoulders off the wall, brought his hips off it too, Sam suddenly grabbed him by the neck and pressed his mouth to Lee's, his body shoving him awkwardly back against the wall.
Without knowing why, he opened up to him, to a kiss that was as hungry as it was desperate. Sam's mouth was too hot, the kiss wet and rough and already too deep from the start, like for no good reason they should just bypass tentative exploration and propriety. He reasoned that maybe they did understand each other too well, for all that they didn't know each other; they already had a bond whether they liked it or not. Of course, it was just as likely that this was the way Sam always kissed, angry and mourning or not. He was probably the sort of man for whom the technique passed as charming.
Lee felt like he couldn't breathe, even as he pulled Sam closer, finally, gave himself over to it. About the time he did, Sam let go of his neck and broke the kiss as he staggered back, away from him, almost tripping over the chair but instead landing it and sitting there quietly, like the last minute or so hadn't happened and Lee was still standing over him, talking to him about Kara.
But as Lee tried to get his breath back and reorient himself, once again, in a world that has shifted around him, just from that one kiss, he wasn't so sure he could just forget it had happened. But he'd sure as hell try. If there was anything that could make things more complicated and weird between them than they already were, it was letting his mind linger over the feel of Sam's fingers holding his jaw and the barely restrained passion he'd felt in the man's body; on how Sam no longer had a wayward wife to feel guilty about cheating on and he himself no longer had a marriage; and on how miserable and lonely he was, now that he thought about it, now that it was brought so startlingly to his attention in the resurgence of adrenaline and the flush in his cheeks.
But Sam just said, "Sorry," and threw his arms out over the table, resting his forehead between them. "Frak, Lee. I'm… Yeah."
Lee's gaze kept falling to Sam's tight shoulders. Despite the alcohol, he looked like every muscle in his body was poised, ready, just a hair's breadth away from strike or collapse.
"Why did you do that?" Lee asked.
"I guess…" He chuckled cynically. "I guess I wanted to see what all the fuss was about." He gave Lee a lazy grin that might've been seductive if the sorrow didn't take the shine out of it.
"Sam."
"Don't worry," he said with a wave of his hand. "I won't do it again. I know you're not… And it wouldn't be…"
Lee struggled to respond, but Sam's eyes were drifting away from him and around the room. He was clearly already on some other train of thought entirely, maybe always had been.
"I never should have married her," he said. "I knew better. I did. But you can't say no to a woman who would come back to a hellhole like Caprica after the Cylons just to…" He stared up into Lee's eyes. "Why?"
"Because she said she would."
"Yeah, but why did she say she would?"
Lee could still feel the shakiness in his hands. Steadily, he said, "My guess? She liked you, she trusted you, and she wanted to bring you back to Galactica with her. As simple as that."
Sam laughed incredulously: "As simple as that?"
"Not simple. She doesn't trust people that easily."
"Didn't," he corrected him.
"Didn't."
Lee sat down on the bed, suddenly feeling every bit as exhausted as he should.
"She called me," Lee said with his eyes on the floor, on Sam's polished boots, laces undone. "When you were so sick, on New Caprica. She and I… We weren't talking. I was so angry. And she called me, knowing it would make me even angrier, knowing I would do it anyway. She was terrified of losing you. Like how she was so terrified she didn't let herself hope for a long time that you were still alive back on Caprica."
"I kind of don't blame her. Caprica was a nightmare. Knowing she was coming…" He sighed. "You know, I thought that New Caprica couldn't possibly be as bad, with her there. Then I lost her. I never got her back."
"Nobody did."
"I can't stand it."
Sam stood up, holding his hand out for the bottle. Lee just shook his head, so Sam let the arm fall against his side as he walked to the door. He was about to open it when Lee remembered he'd come for a reason. Whatever the question was, maybe Lee would regret hearing the answer pass through his lips, but he just couldn't let Sam go, even if having him in the room was like he'd drained a bottle, too, and was spiraling down and down, into that hole where Kara was never at the bottom.
"What was it you said you needed to know?" Lee said softly to his back.
Sam turned with a jerk, eyes wide for a second. "Oh," he said. "Yeah. Nevermind."
"Sam…"
Sam stared at him for a long time, as though he was letting the question settle back into his mind, deciding whether to ask it. He crossed his arms up over his chest, drew up into himself as his hands settled at his shoulders. Then he said: "Do you remember when we were on the algae planet, and I said I'd kill you if she died?"
"Yeah," Lee replied. He already knew where this was going but he was unable to stop it just like he was unable to stop the strangled feeling at his throat.
"You said if she died, you'd let me."
Lee had to choke out the words. "I meant it."
"No. 'Cause, see, you're still here. You didn't…" Shaking his head, he muttered, "Gods, I would've followed her down."
"No, you wouldn't have."
"I would. Why didn't you?"
It wasn't an accusation but a genuine question, one he'd yet to ask himself, at least not consciously enough to consider an answer. Why hadn't he given up? What made him set a course back to Galactica when he shouldn't have been able to fly? He honestly didn't know, so he said simply, because it should have been the truth:
"I have a wife."
Sam's lips made a tight line, then that line drooped as all the tension in his body seemed to give at once. He dropped his head. "I don't."
Lee didn't know why that made his own tears start, or how Sam still wasn't crying, just sort of collapsing into himself. Lee strode over to him and pulled him into an embrace, mainly so he could drag him away from the door. He had no business being anywhere but here tonight.
In the end, the two of them fell heavy onto Lee's bed, and Lee managed to get him laid out there, over that tangle of blankets. Sam didn't protest when he pulled off those untied regulation boots. He just looked up at the ceiling, his usually warm eyes like pits of muted tar. Lee sat down at his feet and leaned against the wall, not really watching him, just trying to breathe and not cry.
In the darkness, Sam said, "What are you doing?"
"Just sitting here. Thinking."
"No, with your life. I don't mean this frakked-up trial. I mean, what reason do you have to still be here?"
"I don't know," Lee replied. He knew, though, as he squinted at Sam's face in the darkness, looked down at those unaccustomed tanks, that he needed to find out. Because he hadn't followed her down.
When Lee's back hurt too much for him to stand it anymore, he lay down in the bed beside Sam, the length of their legs flush together. Then he felt Sam turn, throw an arm around him, not sleeping or even talking but planting himself just inside Lee's personal space-just close enough, just too close. He was so warm it was almost suffocating, but Lee turned, too, pressed himself back against Sam and buried his head in the pillow. Everything in the room smelled like liquor and bodies. Everything felt like that moment before something inside of him began to crumble.
Sam's fingers curled around his hipbone. It was going to be a long night.
Pairing: Lee/Anders (mostly focused, though, on Kara/Lee and Kara/Anders; also with a necessary bit of Lee/Dualla)
Rating: R, mostly for language
Summary: Sam comes to see Lee in the middle of the night. Takes place immediately after "Crossroads, part one" but before "Crossroads, part two," so it's entirely free of finale spoilers. Approximately 3500 words.
Down and Down
Lee wasn't sleeping. He lay in bed, twisted into the sheets, too exhausted to move but too soul sick to let go and drift off to oblivion. That might've been nice, but he just kept opening his eyes and glancing around the dimly lit room, looking at everything but the ring on the table-so much that he might as well have been clasping it in his hands like he did for a solid hour after she left. And only that because she wasn't the only one that had left him.
He thought grief ought to have vacations, especially on a day like today. A person ought to be allowed, every so often for at least an hour, to wipe loss completely out of his mind, just live and breathe and not feel like his stomach is full of concrete and his bones are made of cold steel. He had tried drinking, but that didn't seem to do it, because as often as it took him so far out of himself that he couldn't feel her fingers on his face or see her cocky grin as she flipped her viper over his, just as often it took him deeper into it until he thought he couldn't come back.
Not that he'd ever returned, really, from that moment when her viper became a sudden ball of fire-dark, violent. Final.
He always thought it would be bright when she went out, some foolish but heroic thing rather than this surrender, just like he thought Dee would leave in a fury, not with cold disappointment and resignation. He chuckled sardonically to himself: for once, they were on the same page, if only in defying his expectations.
Everything seemed to defy him lately, and even if he knew it was mostly his own fault, that didn't make it any easier to deal with. This world felt strange to him now, like as badly as he wanted Kara to be back in it, he couldn't imagine her sitting down to talk to this person he had become. What would she think about a man who attacked the president to defend Gaius Baltar? She'd probably hate it as much as Dee did. He wondered if maybe that wasn't half of why he resigned his commission and took up with Lampkin, like he was making some sort of ridiculous clean break, shrugging off everything he thought he was, everyone who loved that man. But he knew better. He was trying to come back to himself, struggling painfully through. He wondered if she would have found a way to live with this thing he was doing, forgiven him for being who he is. He knew, though, that he hadn't earned that sort of forgiveness, not from her.
He used to lay awake all those nights on Pegasus just to be angry with her, trying not to disturb Dee in her sleep. Now, there was no one to disturb, and he wished to the gods Kara was still there for him to be angry with.
A sudden banging on his door made him realize just how far into not-sleep he'd sunk. Adrenaline coursed through his body, making him come awake with the hammer of his heart, almost audible against the dull machine hum of the place. But then there was the sound of a fist on the door again and a mumbled ramble of curses to drown it out.
He threw on a pair of pants, too weary to deal with whoever this was but apparently without a choice in the matter. When he finally got the door open, he leaned against the frame and rubbed his hand over his face. Sam Anders. Drunk. So drunk you could smell it over the usual acrid odor of the corridor. So drunk he was already leaning toward the room, about to pitch forward into it, except he was trying to talk, apparently with his hands, the bottle impeding the one so that he just gesticulated vaguely with the other and frowned at Lee.
"I need to know," he started.
"Sam…what are you doing here?"
"I need to know," he said, and Lee felt a sudden well of panic rise in him. Who knew what the frak Sam needed to know. The only sure thing was that whatever he asked, Lee would probably tell him. Once and for all.
Lee waited, but he didn't elaborate, so Lee took a deep breath, taking in the smell of liquor and the musky, strangely earthy odor of Sam's body long overdue for a shower, and still, he decided to grab him by the arm and pull him inside, seizing the bottle from him as he did.
He looked over his disheveled training uniform. It was strange to see him in tanks. Everything about him trying to be a pilot was almost funny, and not because he wouldn't probably be pretty great at it, under normal circumstances. He was coordinated and inventive and brave and all those other things Starbuck must've recognized like looking into a mirror. He had a powerful sense of self-preservation, but he wasn't always strong. Too emotional. Too blindly determined.
Too much like himself, maybe.
That thought almost made him laugh aloud, but it wast how Lee knew that Sam trying to be a pilot to keep Starbuck alive might very well kill him.
Sam was wobbling beside him, still trying to talk with the bottle.
"Hey, Lee Adama," he said, almost sing-song, weaving a little as Lee pulled him. "Hey, Starbuck's Captain Apollo Lee Frakkin' Adama." Then he leered at him, his voice going deeper, darker, but still somehow rhythmical: "No, no. Wait. Gaius Baltar's Frakkin' Asshole Lawyer Mister No-CAG Lee Adama."
There was no overwhelming venom in it, and if there was, he probably deserved it. So Lee sighed and nudged Sam toward the desk chair. He fell into it, giggling, until he looked up at Lee's face and got serious again, just as serious as he'd been when he opened the door.
Sam said, "You have to answer me something, something about you and my wife, because it's been bugging me."
"I don't think you want to know."
"Lee," he said so matter-of-factly it was almost comical. In fact, maybe Sam meant it be comical, because he made this face, then his voice turned sardonic. "Do you think…I give…a flying frak if you frakked her?" His voice rose. "Do you? Do you think I hate to know somebody wanted her, somebody good…and decent…and so frakkin' honorable loved her?" His voice fell. "I think maybe you didn't anyway. You didn't know how."
"To love her?"
"To love her. Does anybody know how to love Kara Thrace? Anybody!" he hollered, throwing his arms wide as though there were an audience in the room. But then he looked back at Lee, quiet again. "But you did. We did. Somehow. Like…" He started gesticulating with his hands as he spoke, and it seemed to just make him grow more frantic again. "I don't know, like someone broke her and put a bunch of pieces of her into a box and we just keep shaking it as hard as we frakkin' can and hoping that when we open it, the pieces will be back together again, even though it doesn't make sense, like somehow she would be a person we could make sense of, like one whole person. I think that's why it's so hard."
"What's hard?"
"There are too many pieces of her, man. Everywhere I frakkin' look. And then…" His face contorted with anger, but Lee could see it was just a way to ward off tears. He hadn't seen him shed any yet. When he was drunk, he normally did well enough distracting himself, reportedly by frakking whoever would let him, male or female, and by laughing at everything, even what wasn't funny.
When he wasn't drunk, he was as stoic as a person could be, just as stoic as he'd always been when she smiled at Lee or sent Sam away from Galactica after bringing him over just to frak her, because that's all the depth of human contact she could stand, and even then, probably with the lights off, in the dark of her bunk. She was great in the dark-open. Or in the black of space, in a viper-confident. It was the light that hurt like hell.
Sam was still talking: "There are pieces that are just gone. Do you know she went down wearing the ring. On her tags. Had to've. I've looked everywhere. That crazy girl…" He wiped his hand over his face. "Do you think she knew how to love anybody?"
"You know the answer to that."
He shook his head. "I don't."
"I think… I think she knew how to love just fine. But it was hard. She just didn't want to sometimes."
"Bullshit. She wanted to love you."
Evenly, he said, "She did."
"I know." He slumped down in the chair, his head smacking against the back.
"She loved you, too."
"I know."
After a silent moment that went on a little too long, Sam sat up and then pushed himself out of the chair. "I gotta go. Shit, I don't know what made me think coming here was…"
"It's okay," Lee said, even if he wasn't really sure about that. "Try to get some sleep."
"Were you sleeping?" He took in a sharp breath, but didn't respond. Sam continued, "You weren't. I saw you walking through Dogsville last night. I don't want to sleep."
"I don't care if you want to or not. You need to. You frakkin' trying to get yourself killed? Is that what this viper jock bullshit is-"
Sam shot out of the chair, grabbed him by the shoulders, and stumbled both of them back against the wall with a thud. "Don't you say that. It's what I need to do." There was something absolutely wild and panicked in his eyes, so Lee bit back every angry retort he had and tried to make himself calm down, because somebody had to be sane, and it wasn't going to be Sam tonight.
Then Sam added, "You trying to get yourself frakkin' killed? Is that what this defending murderous cowards bullshit is about?"
It was like a gut punch hearing it out loud, even if deep in his bones he knew he was doing the right thing. Being confronted with how it seemed to everyone around him-hell, even to him-startled him. He was staring up at Starbuck's husband, in his tanks, who was beginning to take a place he'd never have again because he'd chosen to walk away-just as surely as Starbuck had chosen to give up and go down. He felt that hollow feeling settle into him again, a small blunt ache only because he knew the sort of devastation that always followed the numbness: tension too heavy to endure and then finally disintegration.
So Lee let his hands press him even harder into the wall and just waited. Sam's body radiated heat, and his hands were stronger than Lee remembered them being. He might be able to take him in a fight, especially as drunk as he was, but he didn't want to have to find out. And, really, part of him simply wanted someone else to hold him up for a while.
Sam had calmed a bit, so Lee said firmly, "Sam, you need to sleep. As it is, you'll be so hungover tomorrow it'll only be because it's Helo's that you don't get washed right out of viper training."
When Sam didn't argue but didn't move either, Lee finally raised his hand, flat against his chest, to slowly push him off, maybe force him to go back to his rack and sleep. He'd walk him there and draft somebody to watch him if he had to, even if the thought of going down there was unaccountably foreign, as if he wouldn’t even know how to open the door. Or as if he'd know exactly how and it would hurt too much not to.
As he pushed his shoulders off the wall, brought his hips off it too, Sam suddenly grabbed him by the neck and pressed his mouth to Lee's, his body shoving him awkwardly back against the wall.
Without knowing why, he opened up to him, to a kiss that was as hungry as it was desperate. Sam's mouth was too hot, the kiss wet and rough and already too deep from the start, like for no good reason they should just bypass tentative exploration and propriety. He reasoned that maybe they did understand each other too well, for all that they didn't know each other; they already had a bond whether they liked it or not. Of course, it was just as likely that this was the way Sam always kissed, angry and mourning or not. He was probably the sort of man for whom the technique passed as charming.
Lee felt like he couldn't breathe, even as he pulled Sam closer, finally, gave himself over to it. About the time he did, Sam let go of his neck and broke the kiss as he staggered back, away from him, almost tripping over the chair but instead landing it and sitting there quietly, like the last minute or so hadn't happened and Lee was still standing over him, talking to him about Kara.
But as Lee tried to get his breath back and reorient himself, once again, in a world that has shifted around him, just from that one kiss, he wasn't so sure he could just forget it had happened. But he'd sure as hell try. If there was anything that could make things more complicated and weird between them than they already were, it was letting his mind linger over the feel of Sam's fingers holding his jaw and the barely restrained passion he'd felt in the man's body; on how Sam no longer had a wayward wife to feel guilty about cheating on and he himself no longer had a marriage; and on how miserable and lonely he was, now that he thought about it, now that it was brought so startlingly to his attention in the resurgence of adrenaline and the flush in his cheeks.
But Sam just said, "Sorry," and threw his arms out over the table, resting his forehead between them. "Frak, Lee. I'm… Yeah."
Lee's gaze kept falling to Sam's tight shoulders. Despite the alcohol, he looked like every muscle in his body was poised, ready, just a hair's breadth away from strike or collapse.
"Why did you do that?" Lee asked.
"I guess…" He chuckled cynically. "I guess I wanted to see what all the fuss was about." He gave Lee a lazy grin that might've been seductive if the sorrow didn't take the shine out of it.
"Sam."
"Don't worry," he said with a wave of his hand. "I won't do it again. I know you're not… And it wouldn't be…"
Lee struggled to respond, but Sam's eyes were drifting away from him and around the room. He was clearly already on some other train of thought entirely, maybe always had been.
"I never should have married her," he said. "I knew better. I did. But you can't say no to a woman who would come back to a hellhole like Caprica after the Cylons just to…" He stared up into Lee's eyes. "Why?"
"Because she said she would."
"Yeah, but why did she say she would?"
Lee could still feel the shakiness in his hands. Steadily, he said, "My guess? She liked you, she trusted you, and she wanted to bring you back to Galactica with her. As simple as that."
Sam laughed incredulously: "As simple as that?"
"Not simple. She doesn't trust people that easily."
"Didn't," he corrected him.
"Didn't."
Lee sat down on the bed, suddenly feeling every bit as exhausted as he should.
"She called me," Lee said with his eyes on the floor, on Sam's polished boots, laces undone. "When you were so sick, on New Caprica. She and I… We weren't talking. I was so angry. And she called me, knowing it would make me even angrier, knowing I would do it anyway. She was terrified of losing you. Like how she was so terrified she didn't let herself hope for a long time that you were still alive back on Caprica."
"I kind of don't blame her. Caprica was a nightmare. Knowing she was coming…" He sighed. "You know, I thought that New Caprica couldn't possibly be as bad, with her there. Then I lost her. I never got her back."
"Nobody did."
"I can't stand it."
Sam stood up, holding his hand out for the bottle. Lee just shook his head, so Sam let the arm fall against his side as he walked to the door. He was about to open it when Lee remembered he'd come for a reason. Whatever the question was, maybe Lee would regret hearing the answer pass through his lips, but he just couldn't let Sam go, even if having him in the room was like he'd drained a bottle, too, and was spiraling down and down, into that hole where Kara was never at the bottom.
"What was it you said you needed to know?" Lee said softly to his back.
Sam turned with a jerk, eyes wide for a second. "Oh," he said. "Yeah. Nevermind."
"Sam…"
Sam stared at him for a long time, as though he was letting the question settle back into his mind, deciding whether to ask it. He crossed his arms up over his chest, drew up into himself as his hands settled at his shoulders. Then he said: "Do you remember when we were on the algae planet, and I said I'd kill you if she died?"
"Yeah," Lee replied. He already knew where this was going but he was unable to stop it just like he was unable to stop the strangled feeling at his throat.
"You said if she died, you'd let me."
Lee had to choke out the words. "I meant it."
"No. 'Cause, see, you're still here. You didn't…" Shaking his head, he muttered, "Gods, I would've followed her down."
"No, you wouldn't have."
"I would. Why didn't you?"
It wasn't an accusation but a genuine question, one he'd yet to ask himself, at least not consciously enough to consider an answer. Why hadn't he given up? What made him set a course back to Galactica when he shouldn't have been able to fly? He honestly didn't know, so he said simply, because it should have been the truth:
"I have a wife."
Sam's lips made a tight line, then that line drooped as all the tension in his body seemed to give at once. He dropped his head. "I don't."
Lee didn't know why that made his own tears start, or how Sam still wasn't crying, just sort of collapsing into himself. Lee strode over to him and pulled him into an embrace, mainly so he could drag him away from the door. He had no business being anywhere but here tonight.
In the end, the two of them fell heavy onto Lee's bed, and Lee managed to get him laid out there, over that tangle of blankets. Sam didn't protest when he pulled off those untied regulation boots. He just looked up at the ceiling, his usually warm eyes like pits of muted tar. Lee sat down at his feet and leaned against the wall, not really watching him, just trying to breathe and not cry.
In the darkness, Sam said, "What are you doing?"
"Just sitting here. Thinking."
"No, with your life. I don't mean this frakked-up trial. I mean, what reason do you have to still be here?"
"I don't know," Lee replied. He knew, though, as he squinted at Sam's face in the darkness, looked down at those unaccustomed tanks, that he needed to find out. Because he hadn't followed her down.
When Lee's back hurt too much for him to stand it anymore, he lay down in the bed beside Sam, the length of their legs flush together. Then he felt Sam turn, throw an arm around him, not sleeping or even talking but planting himself just inside Lee's personal space-just close enough, just too close. He was so warm it was almost suffocating, but Lee turned, too, pressed himself back against Sam and buried his head in the pillow. Everything in the room smelled like liquor and bodies. Everything felt like that moment before something inside of him began to crumble.
Sam's fingers curled around his hipbone. It was going to be a long night.