bsg fic: your heart, the lonely hunter 1/2
Title: your heart, the lonely hunter
Character/s: Lee pov, Kara/Lee
Word Count: 3200?
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Spoilers: Season 3 only. Set somewhere between 'Unfinished Business' and 'The Eye of Jupiter'. Filling in the gaps.
A/N: Inspired by the end of 'The Passage'. Also, a really good bottle of wine? I may or may not have been drunk whilst writing this. IDK. This is part one of two.
Lee Adama never dreams of Earth.
Mostly, its Caprica: his old apartment, his neighbour's dog. A room full of books. Zak's first car. Places and people and objects drift and bob upon an exhausted tide of regret. The aftermath leaves little to remember. Dee tells him he talks in his sleep and while he laughs along with her he's too afraid to ask what. Gibberish, she says later. He tries not to think about it.
He tries not to drink around her for the same reason. For fear of a confession - or a slip. The proximity of war has kept them all at arms length from the past but there is still so much that Lee would like to forget. The world left behind is not yet beyond his measure. It is still maddeningly clear. When Kara comes back, he draws the shutters on what could have been. No light is let in. He falls into the brutal line of denial and for a while it works remarkably. He has the respect of his superiors and the unwavering loyalty of his pilots. A wife who loves him. A clean slate. Outwardly, he shows no disturbance.
Inside, all the sure, slow signs of decay. Cluttered rot - at first, all churned up. After a year, its a niggling feeling like he's left a window open in a room. The doubts, the miscalculated chances and bitter disappointments billow in and gather on the floor while he's out doing other things and cleaning other people's messes. All his unfulfilled promises left unswept.
Day by day, a dangerous aggression starts to darken the edges of everything he does. Dee takes great pains not to notice. He loses the weight and trains furiously. She pretends like she isn't aware of his newfound anger and he pretends to be calm.
Naturally, the only person to call him on his bullshit is the one person who provoked it in the first place.
+
Their fight's out of control before its started and when its over, its like dying. Or being reborn. The primitive tranquillity of cause and effect. The beginning of the end.
Just you and me.
Finally.
+
Kara talks feverishly afterwards, burning, breathless, restless and keen, drinking water and half-listening to what the nurse is telling her. Lee sits facing her, smiling at the chaos, joy swelling like the bruises on his ribs.
"Gods, I could kill for a smoke right now," she groans, easing gingerly down on the bed once they're alone.
"Somehow I doubt that."
"Yeah well." The scoff puffs lazily into the air above her. She won't bother arguing with her knee taped up and her eyes closed. "Give me a minute."
"I know where Cottle keeps his stash."
She opens one eye to him. He shrugs one shoulder back.
"Nah."
"No?"
"I quit."
Lee raises his eyebrow. An impressive feat considering the cut above it. He considers her speculatively. "How long?"
"Huh? Oh." She shifts uncomfortably. A wince. It takes a certain type of dedicated study to catch it. Her fists clutch for a split-second. Her chin juts out. There are other things as well, newer reflexes that speak of newer fears, fears more dreadful than his imagination can spare her and he worries. He's heard the stories of her incarceration. The skin job with his wild prophecies.
The child.
Enough damage has been done but with Kara, sympathy is pointless so he levers himself up from the chair and scoots her forward with a cursory jerk of his head. Another pillow is in his hand. As always, and in her odd way, she obeys his gruff instruction. It carries more meaning than it should - on both sides - considering what's passed as contact between them beforehand. She takes her time in sitting back while he hovers. Its unbearably intimate, painfully quiet.
Skin is exposed partly from where her gown gapes. The sight strikes Lee, the white, unmarked flesh so close to his memory it causes a dark strain upon his conscience. A sad craving fills him up to the brim. Absurdly and yet not, he thinks he might cry and his palm reaches up. He hesitates again. The lies, the loves, the weight of all of her history were embedded there in a strangely vulnerable display. So much pain clung to her body. So much hurt. He didn't wish to inflict any more.
But her voice wanders in.
"A year," it answers him softly, easing gently - rightly - into the waiting warmth of his hand.
"Its been a year."
+
No point to nightmares when half the time he lives through them. Though some hours after Kat passes, Lee thinks he has his first.
In his dream he is up to his ankles in soft, soft grass. He has some altitude, he can tell, though he can’t remember having climbed anything to achieve it. His eyes make their usual, calculated distinctions: trees, hills. Horizon. The distance in between. A stream hooks to his right below him and glimmers in blinding reflection of the sun. Overhead, the wind lifts his hair. Like touch, it dawdles fondly, before travelling on its way to gods know where. He turns anyway, following its formless path across the plains. There is nothing but stillness, nothing but unrelenting strangeness: a world he’s imagined so many times, emptied of all its beloved contents. Emptied of meaning. There is no word for this place. He begins to fear. Low, in his stomach, it flinches. He feels it as acutely as the exhaustion, that unassaillable dread -
When everyone is gone.
+
Lee knows about the sleeping pills. Old habits pick up where they left off, apparently. He watches Kara when his eyes should be elsewhere. They’re both washed out from the last harrowing mission and the lack of food has made them transparent. Forgetful. His voice drops noticeably when he directs a query her way and her attention is quick. He feels like they’re dogging each other’s steps but tripping around an endless circle of near misses and almost encounters. There’s never a right time, never enough time because the fleet always needs it more than they do.
When he finds her, silent and sorry at the memorial wall, he doesn’t broach the subject.
Kat is family. For that, a line must be crossed. Another heavy burden for Kara to bear.
He’d have beared it for her, if only she asked.
+
Tonight his bed is empty.
Without the light heat of Dee beside him his otherwise penitent mind lapses. He can’t sleep. Thoughts turn and wrap themselves so tight around the idea of Kara they lock like a cramp. It hurts like Hades. Seconds, minutes, maybe hours pass in agonising separation. No point denying it now. Half the ship saw him fall apart in the ring last month. He didn’t care much then, he doesn't care much now. They're all starving but this hunger has nothing to do with the food he hasn't eaten and more to do with her face looming above every time he shuts his eyes. The fact that all he can see is New Caprica and the way she’d shivered onto him. He can hear the ghost of those beautifully hitched breaths every time she speaks. When a door closes softly in the distance. When a boot scuffs the floor.
There is no safe gesture. He’d reached for her arm earlier in the hall - the first time he'd touched her since the fight. The crook of her elbow had met his palm. She'd stopped. The bluish lights and candles were like moonlight on her skin and the same, unsure longing that held her that night had found its way back to her for a moment. A long chill swept up his spine. Almost remorsefully, Lee looked back. He hadn’t wanted to confuse her. He didn’t want her to run away. But for a moment Kara’s hand had found his and settled atop. Touching, warming, breaking away.
Unhurried enough to be a caress.
Lee replays it several times before making his decision. When he does, he flips back the covers and dresses. He doesn't need to look to find her. Despite her wildness, Kara is a species of routine: the crick of her neck at the sinks before she splashes her face. The prayers. The push-ups. Lee knows for a fact that after losing a pilot, she tosses and turns in her rack for at least a week. If it’s a nugget she’s taught, she holes up in the darkened briefing room running old training footage. She’ll have a cap pulled low on her face and her boots unlaced, knees drawn up and a bottle of the chief’s brew dangling between them. He’s sat with her on more than a few occasions.
"This isn’t what it looks like," she mutters once he’s spun open the hatch.
"Oh really?" He sinks down beside her on the floor and plucks the bottle. "And just what does it look like?"
Belligerently, she pulls the bottle in, throws some down then backhands her mouth. "Wallowing."
"…Kara."
Her answer to that is to freeze-frame the footage and discard the remote. It's a rough gesture. A defeated one. Lee tries again.
"Its not your fault, Kara."
"I know that, Lee," she bristles.
"O-kay," he draws out in his best and most placating CAG voice, the one she listens to no matter how much she hates it. "If that's true, then how come I found you here-" he shifts closer. "...Wallowing?"
"I’m not-" she snaps, but she’s a tad too quick. He has a kind grimace waiting for her, nothing too pointed, just to remind her who she's talking to. Kara tugs grumblingly on her cap. "Fine. You called it: I’m wallowing. Whatever."
She punctuates her disdain by unfolding her legs. Booted feet flop out. They sit for a while, unconsciously mirroring the other as the mood levels out sorrowfully. Its familiar. Its been a while. Lee fights hard with himself not to shortchange it by looking at her but Kara eventually comes around, knocking him tipsily with her arm before relaxing against his shoulder. A long-suffering sigh and she proffers the drink in his direction.
"Thanks," Lee murmurs, with a quick glance down.
There’s the hint of a churlish scowl peeking out from the beak of her cap but no spirit in the expression. She seems to be contemplating him. His legs at least. He’s not sure what to make of it.
"Don't worry," he chides her softly, leaning in. "Your secret’s safe with me."
A huff. Half-hearted at best.
"It better be."
"Or what?" he teases.
"Or I’ll kick your ass, is what."
"Kara, I think you’ve done enough of that to last a lifetime."
She hushes out another thoughtful noise, agreeing. The memory is mutual - Lee knows it as well as she does. He takes a long pull from the bottle, she stares unblinkingly at the screen. He can taste her distinctly around the edges, like the way his blood tasted in his mouth that day. Hurts. Recriminations.
Relief.
He nudges the brew back to her. When she doesn't reach up, he swipes her hat and ruffles her hair back from her forehead. The intention is to be friendly - jocular - but his fingers get caught unwittingly in the act, soothing over her skull instead, fastidiously gentle. Lee can't help it. If they're not fighting, its his default position. So many years deprived of true affection. Its a truth that applies to both of them, however loathe they were to admit it. All he ever wants to do these days is cup her face in his hands and kiss her.
Lee gathers the thought aside. He concentrates on the quiet coolness of the room, wondering at how many drinks it will take to bring the necessary degree of relaxation to leave whatever this is well alone.
He's prepared to find out but Kara raises her head and watches him swallow and his tension must be obvious because she squeezes out a small smile afterwards. He doesn't smile back. Can't possibly. The sparkle of mischief that would normally accompany such a smirk never quite arrives. The expression doesn't have the permission of her eyes. She wraps her hand around the bottle-neck and they slide over him like full-body contact. The license she takes with these moments mostly astounds him. Makes him resent her - something she'd undoubtedly be thrilled with.
She swigs, draws a long, steadying breath, the percussion of which travels partly through him: a sweet, sleep-starved sound. Like the beginnings of a sigh. Like something Lee has heard before. Its too much to bear.
And then her hand drops to his.
Kara doesn't say a word about it, just studies the placement of her fingers while Lee studies her. She is completely still save for the meandering of her right thumb; moving back and forth, circling sleepily over the calluses of his knuckles as if testing the texture. Testing him. As if they have all the time in the universe to figure this out.
Against better judgement, Lee lifts up her face. Its weight is heavy, drooping. She wrestles a little with him, twisting away: half in remonstration, half in haste. The outline of her jaw presses mournfully against his wrist. So too, her lips. Their fingers lace in the meantime. Desire writes itself into her every, uneven touch. It is untranslatable torture.
"Kara."
Lee says it again, hoarser:
"Kara, look at me."
Angling down, he sees her eyes lower with a faltering kind of tremble. When they open, their fiercely lit emotion pulls the rug from under his proverbial feet. She has one tear painting down her face. The rest of her is determined.
Reflexively, he curves into her and brushes her cheek. The drop catches and dissolves wetly on his fingertips. Lee struggles to find his voice. "Are we ever gonna talk about what happened?" She bites her lip. He wants to prise it open so badly he has to swallow to keep the impulse in check. "About this?"
Kara shakes her head in his hand.
"No."
The word is a rush of air only. A winded syllable that swoops on him as eagerly as Kara does, pawing her hands up his tanks to raise herself up, her hair tickling between his fingers, the pressing warmth of her chest. He seeks blindly for her mouth but once he has it, once her breath is perfectly quickened and her knees astride his, he frames her jaw, slowing her down (down, down) until they're syncopated and the brutality of it subsides.
Kara brushes her nose against his, scratching her loose, asking, fingers up his neck. Humid breath fills his ear and though he can hardly believe how amazing it feels, how close they are, the year without her - spent waiting, hating, loving her impossibly - stays his hurry. Now that the kiss is as inevitable as his next breath, he'd prefer not to waste it on a gulp of oxygen. What he requires is gentler and more remote than unthinking instinct. What he wants is a little longer than that. He always does. If its all they have then Lee wants to be sure. Without a doubt he needs her to know. To hear it, taste it, feel it -
There's something here.
Before impatience gets the better of her, he pins a dimple with his thumb. Drags it to her lower lip. The past two weeks of meagre rations have taught them both to be frugal. Kara understands. She plants a small kiss on his finger and dips slowly toward the invitation of his mouth.
They come together with a soft inhalation. His hands on her face, her palm running up his chest. Just like before. Its suction only, to start: moistening the edges of her palate until Lee feels her open instinctively to receive him. When she does, a warm, tangling blur of heat joins them. Lee is careful to skirt back before his body capitulates entirely. Its not easy, considering everything is turned against it. And Kara's hands are clutching harder at the branches of his shoulders. More desperate. He changes course by nibbling downwards, placating, calming her. The breaths start to rasp out of both of them. He nips and sucks delicately at the tang of her skin at the hollow of her neck, the underside of her jaw. Kara's moan skips up in her throat. Lee pauses achingly as she exhales it: head tipped back and skin flushed. When her eyes start to open, he begins again.
A series of tender kisses all alternating in intensity. Soft, brisk, deep, then agonisingly slow. Kara bites down murmuringly on the last one, forcing him to take a much more direct route with his tongue. He keeps it light, but she's restless, as always. His arm wraps under her clothes the deeper she urges him and the feel of her skin messes with his concentration. Again, he breaks formation. She makes a move to catch his head but he pulls back. He does nothing except focus on her lips, tickling the bare skin under her neck with his breath as he approaches, drifting fingertips up her arms until he has her in his.
"Lee," she admits.
He sighs too, warmly touching her ear with almost words, combing the jagged ends of her hair back from her face. Languid, open-mouthed kisses here and there. No rhythm, no pace. Kara slumps willingly into each. Time stretches. He lingers sweetly in place.
"I'm here," he whispers. "I'm here."
Hearing this, Kara's whole body twists. Lee can feel her hands raking up to clutch his head, the slight ruthlessness in her touch as if even his skin is in the way. For one oblivious, reckless moment, he slides into the delicious voluptuousness of her mouth and drags a hand down lower, smoothing around her waist to where the heat is lambent between them. The sounds she makes in return - low and uncaring, from deep within - clasp strongly at his already weakened heart. She wriggles closer wherever they're not connected, sagging into him and then rocking tight. Its hot, earnest; intimate. As close to sex as Lee will allow himself to go which is why he has to stop.
I love you. I love you, he thinks madly.
I love you - but I can't.
Character/s: Lee pov, Kara/Lee
Word Count: 3200?
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Spoilers: Season 3 only. Set somewhere between 'Unfinished Business' and 'The Eye of Jupiter'. Filling in the gaps.
A/N: Inspired by the end of 'The Passage'. Also, a really good bottle of wine? I may or may not have been drunk whilst writing this. IDK. This is part one of two.
Lee Adama never dreams of Earth.
Mostly, its Caprica: his old apartment, his neighbour's dog. A room full of books. Zak's first car. Places and people and objects drift and bob upon an exhausted tide of regret. The aftermath leaves little to remember. Dee tells him he talks in his sleep and while he laughs along with her he's too afraid to ask what. Gibberish, she says later. He tries not to think about it.
He tries not to drink around her for the same reason. For fear of a confession - or a slip. The proximity of war has kept them all at arms length from the past but there is still so much that Lee would like to forget. The world left behind is not yet beyond his measure. It is still maddeningly clear. When Kara comes back, he draws the shutters on what could have been. No light is let in. He falls into the brutal line of denial and for a while it works remarkably. He has the respect of his superiors and the unwavering loyalty of his pilots. A wife who loves him. A clean slate. Outwardly, he shows no disturbance.
Inside, all the sure, slow signs of decay. Cluttered rot - at first, all churned up. After a year, its a niggling feeling like he's left a window open in a room. The doubts, the miscalculated chances and bitter disappointments billow in and gather on the floor while he's out doing other things and cleaning other people's messes. All his unfulfilled promises left unswept.
Day by day, a dangerous aggression starts to darken the edges of everything he does. Dee takes great pains not to notice. He loses the weight and trains furiously. She pretends like she isn't aware of his newfound anger and he pretends to be calm.
Naturally, the only person to call him on his bullshit is the one person who provoked it in the first place.
+
Their fight's out of control before its started and when its over, its like dying. Or being reborn. The primitive tranquillity of cause and effect. The beginning of the end.
Just you and me.
Finally.
+
Kara talks feverishly afterwards, burning, breathless, restless and keen, drinking water and half-listening to what the nurse is telling her. Lee sits facing her, smiling at the chaos, joy swelling like the bruises on his ribs.
"Gods, I could kill for a smoke right now," she groans, easing gingerly down on the bed once they're alone.
"Somehow I doubt that."
"Yeah well." The scoff puffs lazily into the air above her. She won't bother arguing with her knee taped up and her eyes closed. "Give me a minute."
"I know where Cottle keeps his stash."
She opens one eye to him. He shrugs one shoulder back.
"Nah."
"No?"
"I quit."
Lee raises his eyebrow. An impressive feat considering the cut above it. He considers her speculatively. "How long?"
"Huh? Oh." She shifts uncomfortably. A wince. It takes a certain type of dedicated study to catch it. Her fists clutch for a split-second. Her chin juts out. There are other things as well, newer reflexes that speak of newer fears, fears more dreadful than his imagination can spare her and he worries. He's heard the stories of her incarceration. The skin job with his wild prophecies.
The child.
Enough damage has been done but with Kara, sympathy is pointless so he levers himself up from the chair and scoots her forward with a cursory jerk of his head. Another pillow is in his hand. As always, and in her odd way, she obeys his gruff instruction. It carries more meaning than it should - on both sides - considering what's passed as contact between them beforehand. She takes her time in sitting back while he hovers. Its unbearably intimate, painfully quiet.
Skin is exposed partly from where her gown gapes. The sight strikes Lee, the white, unmarked flesh so close to his memory it causes a dark strain upon his conscience. A sad craving fills him up to the brim. Absurdly and yet not, he thinks he might cry and his palm reaches up. He hesitates again. The lies, the loves, the weight of all of her history were embedded there in a strangely vulnerable display. So much pain clung to her body. So much hurt. He didn't wish to inflict any more.
But her voice wanders in.
"A year," it answers him softly, easing gently - rightly - into the waiting warmth of his hand.
"Its been a year."
+
No point to nightmares when half the time he lives through them. Though some hours after Kat passes, Lee thinks he has his first.
In his dream he is up to his ankles in soft, soft grass. He has some altitude, he can tell, though he can’t remember having climbed anything to achieve it. His eyes make their usual, calculated distinctions: trees, hills. Horizon. The distance in between. A stream hooks to his right below him and glimmers in blinding reflection of the sun. Overhead, the wind lifts his hair. Like touch, it dawdles fondly, before travelling on its way to gods know where. He turns anyway, following its formless path across the plains. There is nothing but stillness, nothing but unrelenting strangeness: a world he’s imagined so many times, emptied of all its beloved contents. Emptied of meaning. There is no word for this place. He begins to fear. Low, in his stomach, it flinches. He feels it as acutely as the exhaustion, that unassaillable dread -
When everyone is gone.
+
Lee knows about the sleeping pills. Old habits pick up where they left off, apparently. He watches Kara when his eyes should be elsewhere. They’re both washed out from the last harrowing mission and the lack of food has made them transparent. Forgetful. His voice drops noticeably when he directs a query her way and her attention is quick. He feels like they’re dogging each other’s steps but tripping around an endless circle of near misses and almost encounters. There’s never a right time, never enough time because the fleet always needs it more than they do.
When he finds her, silent and sorry at the memorial wall, he doesn’t broach the subject.
Kat is family. For that, a line must be crossed. Another heavy burden for Kara to bear.
He’d have beared it for her, if only she asked.
+
Tonight his bed is empty.
Without the light heat of Dee beside him his otherwise penitent mind lapses. He can’t sleep. Thoughts turn and wrap themselves so tight around the idea of Kara they lock like a cramp. It hurts like Hades. Seconds, minutes, maybe hours pass in agonising separation. No point denying it now. Half the ship saw him fall apart in the ring last month. He didn’t care much then, he doesn't care much now. They're all starving but this hunger has nothing to do with the food he hasn't eaten and more to do with her face looming above every time he shuts his eyes. The fact that all he can see is New Caprica and the way she’d shivered onto him. He can hear the ghost of those beautifully hitched breaths every time she speaks. When a door closes softly in the distance. When a boot scuffs the floor.
There is no safe gesture. He’d reached for her arm earlier in the hall - the first time he'd touched her since the fight. The crook of her elbow had met his palm. She'd stopped. The bluish lights and candles were like moonlight on her skin and the same, unsure longing that held her that night had found its way back to her for a moment. A long chill swept up his spine. Almost remorsefully, Lee looked back. He hadn’t wanted to confuse her. He didn’t want her to run away. But for a moment Kara’s hand had found his and settled atop. Touching, warming, breaking away.
Unhurried enough to be a caress.
Lee replays it several times before making his decision. When he does, he flips back the covers and dresses. He doesn't need to look to find her. Despite her wildness, Kara is a species of routine: the crick of her neck at the sinks before she splashes her face. The prayers. The push-ups. Lee knows for a fact that after losing a pilot, she tosses and turns in her rack for at least a week. If it’s a nugget she’s taught, she holes up in the darkened briefing room running old training footage. She’ll have a cap pulled low on her face and her boots unlaced, knees drawn up and a bottle of the chief’s brew dangling between them. He’s sat with her on more than a few occasions.
"This isn’t what it looks like," she mutters once he’s spun open the hatch.
"Oh really?" He sinks down beside her on the floor and plucks the bottle. "And just what does it look like?"
Belligerently, she pulls the bottle in, throws some down then backhands her mouth. "Wallowing."
"…Kara."
Her answer to that is to freeze-frame the footage and discard the remote. It's a rough gesture. A defeated one. Lee tries again.
"Its not your fault, Kara."
"I know that, Lee," she bristles.
"O-kay," he draws out in his best and most placating CAG voice, the one she listens to no matter how much she hates it. "If that's true, then how come I found you here-" he shifts closer. "...Wallowing?"
"I’m not-" she snaps, but she’s a tad too quick. He has a kind grimace waiting for her, nothing too pointed, just to remind her who she's talking to. Kara tugs grumblingly on her cap. "Fine. You called it: I’m wallowing. Whatever."
She punctuates her disdain by unfolding her legs. Booted feet flop out. They sit for a while, unconsciously mirroring the other as the mood levels out sorrowfully. Its familiar. Its been a while. Lee fights hard with himself not to shortchange it by looking at her but Kara eventually comes around, knocking him tipsily with her arm before relaxing against his shoulder. A long-suffering sigh and she proffers the drink in his direction.
"Thanks," Lee murmurs, with a quick glance down.
There’s the hint of a churlish scowl peeking out from the beak of her cap but no spirit in the expression. She seems to be contemplating him. His legs at least. He’s not sure what to make of it.
"Don't worry," he chides her softly, leaning in. "Your secret’s safe with me."
A huff. Half-hearted at best.
"It better be."
"Or what?" he teases.
"Or I’ll kick your ass, is what."
"Kara, I think you’ve done enough of that to last a lifetime."
She hushes out another thoughtful noise, agreeing. The memory is mutual - Lee knows it as well as she does. He takes a long pull from the bottle, she stares unblinkingly at the screen. He can taste her distinctly around the edges, like the way his blood tasted in his mouth that day. Hurts. Recriminations.
Relief.
He nudges the brew back to her. When she doesn't reach up, he swipes her hat and ruffles her hair back from her forehead. The intention is to be friendly - jocular - but his fingers get caught unwittingly in the act, soothing over her skull instead, fastidiously gentle. Lee can't help it. If they're not fighting, its his default position. So many years deprived of true affection. Its a truth that applies to both of them, however loathe they were to admit it. All he ever wants to do these days is cup her face in his hands and kiss her.
Lee gathers the thought aside. He concentrates on the quiet coolness of the room, wondering at how many drinks it will take to bring the necessary degree of relaxation to leave whatever this is well alone.
He's prepared to find out but Kara raises her head and watches him swallow and his tension must be obvious because she squeezes out a small smile afterwards. He doesn't smile back. Can't possibly. The sparkle of mischief that would normally accompany such a smirk never quite arrives. The expression doesn't have the permission of her eyes. She wraps her hand around the bottle-neck and they slide over him like full-body contact. The license she takes with these moments mostly astounds him. Makes him resent her - something she'd undoubtedly be thrilled with.
She swigs, draws a long, steadying breath, the percussion of which travels partly through him: a sweet, sleep-starved sound. Like the beginnings of a sigh. Like something Lee has heard before. Its too much to bear.
And then her hand drops to his.
Kara doesn't say a word about it, just studies the placement of her fingers while Lee studies her. She is completely still save for the meandering of her right thumb; moving back and forth, circling sleepily over the calluses of his knuckles as if testing the texture. Testing him. As if they have all the time in the universe to figure this out.
Against better judgement, Lee lifts up her face. Its weight is heavy, drooping. She wrestles a little with him, twisting away: half in remonstration, half in haste. The outline of her jaw presses mournfully against his wrist. So too, her lips. Their fingers lace in the meantime. Desire writes itself into her every, uneven touch. It is untranslatable torture.
"Kara."
Lee says it again, hoarser:
"Kara, look at me."
Angling down, he sees her eyes lower with a faltering kind of tremble. When they open, their fiercely lit emotion pulls the rug from under his proverbial feet. She has one tear painting down her face. The rest of her is determined.
Reflexively, he curves into her and brushes her cheek. The drop catches and dissolves wetly on his fingertips. Lee struggles to find his voice. "Are we ever gonna talk about what happened?" She bites her lip. He wants to prise it open so badly he has to swallow to keep the impulse in check. "About this?"
Kara shakes her head in his hand.
"No."
The word is a rush of air only. A winded syllable that swoops on him as eagerly as Kara does, pawing her hands up his tanks to raise herself up, her hair tickling between his fingers, the pressing warmth of her chest. He seeks blindly for her mouth but once he has it, once her breath is perfectly quickened and her knees astride his, he frames her jaw, slowing her down (down, down) until they're syncopated and the brutality of it subsides.
Kara brushes her nose against his, scratching her loose, asking, fingers up his neck. Humid breath fills his ear and though he can hardly believe how amazing it feels, how close they are, the year without her - spent waiting, hating, loving her impossibly - stays his hurry. Now that the kiss is as inevitable as his next breath, he'd prefer not to waste it on a gulp of oxygen. What he requires is gentler and more remote than unthinking instinct. What he wants is a little longer than that. He always does. If its all they have then Lee wants to be sure. Without a doubt he needs her to know. To hear it, taste it, feel it -
There's something here.
Before impatience gets the better of her, he pins a dimple with his thumb. Drags it to her lower lip. The past two weeks of meagre rations have taught them both to be frugal. Kara understands. She plants a small kiss on his finger and dips slowly toward the invitation of his mouth.
They come together with a soft inhalation. His hands on her face, her palm running up his chest. Just like before. Its suction only, to start: moistening the edges of her palate until Lee feels her open instinctively to receive him. When she does, a warm, tangling blur of heat joins them. Lee is careful to skirt back before his body capitulates entirely. Its not easy, considering everything is turned against it. And Kara's hands are clutching harder at the branches of his shoulders. More desperate. He changes course by nibbling downwards, placating, calming her. The breaths start to rasp out of both of them. He nips and sucks delicately at the tang of her skin at the hollow of her neck, the underside of her jaw. Kara's moan skips up in her throat. Lee pauses achingly as she exhales it: head tipped back and skin flushed. When her eyes start to open, he begins again.
A series of tender kisses all alternating in intensity. Soft, brisk, deep, then agonisingly slow. Kara bites down murmuringly on the last one, forcing him to take a much more direct route with his tongue. He keeps it light, but she's restless, as always. His arm wraps under her clothes the deeper she urges him and the feel of her skin messes with his concentration. Again, he breaks formation. She makes a move to catch his head but he pulls back. He does nothing except focus on her lips, tickling the bare skin under her neck with his breath as he approaches, drifting fingertips up her arms until he has her in his.
"Lee," she admits.
He sighs too, warmly touching her ear with almost words, combing the jagged ends of her hair back from her face. Languid, open-mouthed kisses here and there. No rhythm, no pace. Kara slumps willingly into each. Time stretches. He lingers sweetly in place.
"I'm here," he whispers. "I'm here."
Hearing this, Kara's whole body twists. Lee can feel her hands raking up to clutch his head, the slight ruthlessness in her touch as if even his skin is in the way. For one oblivious, reckless moment, he slides into the delicious voluptuousness of her mouth and drags a hand down lower, smoothing around her waist to where the heat is lambent between them. The sounds she makes in return - low and uncaring, from deep within - clasp strongly at his already weakened heart. She wriggles closer wherever they're not connected, sagging into him and then rocking tight. Its hot, earnest; intimate. As close to sex as Lee will allow himself to go which is why he has to stop.
I love you. I love you, he thinks madly.
I love you - but I can't.