One Eight (1/1)
Title: One Eight
Part: 1 of 1.
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: 1288.
Rating: Hard R.
Spoilers: Through 2x20 "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II."
Characters: Helo/Athena, mentions of crew.
Excerpt: Walking out of that cell - for the first time, not at gunpoint - and trading in her prison sweats for a Colonial military uniform was supposed to be the end of her loneliness.
Author's Note: I wrote this for smut-tuesdays (yay!); and just as my internet service returned, LiveJournal left me. Look, it is still Tuesday in Hawaii. I am operating on U.S. Presidential time!
Their bodies aren't all the same, of course. They share muscle shapes, outposts of melanin, hair follicles; but blemishes appear at random. Sharon has unique marks from knocking against the side of the cockpit, biting her nails, frakking her husband. But nobody in the fleet knows to look for that. All they see is the exact corporation of a known Cylon agent.
For the first two weeks of her service she caught Hot Dog staring at her, every morning as she left the showers. His expression, lingering on her exposed thigh, was transparent. Maybe she is the skinjob who shot the old man, it said, but gods, I'd still frak her. The Chief goggled at her as if she were a specter whenever she passed through the hangar deck, and she didn't have the nerve to correct her fellow officers when they called her Boomer. She didn't have a correction, at that.
She tried to forget the suspicion in their faces. She worked not to think about the vision, in her mind's eye, of Hera's tiny helpless face. She told herself to shut her lips, and remembered that being Karl's creepy girlfriend - wife - was at least one step up from being a murderer.
She started showering at night. She'd return to find Helo asleep, and she'd slip in next to him like a shadow.
Three days of this has made her lonely. Walking out of that cell - for the first time, not at gunpoint - and trading in her prison sweats for a Colonial military uniform was supposed to be the end of her loneliness. She slides the rough, beaten towel over her shoulders, between her legs, and considers.
She hangs the towel next to Helo's jacket and burrows into his side on the bed. She takes the covers, gently lifts his arm to tuck it around her. He stirs and pulls her closer.
"You give me ideas," he murmurs, "coming home smelling like lye and lemon."
She smiles into his neck. "And getting into bed naked?"
"And that," he agrees. With her hand on his chest, she can feel the warmth of his laugh as it flutters, distantly, through his ribcage. His palm covers hers, but otherwise he's still, breathing through his nose. He's figuring out how to say something. She waits.
When he speaks, his voice is quiet. "I thought you were avoiding me."
"No." She tongues the hollow of his throat. "I was avoiding ... other people."
His hand is already at her cheek, tilting her head up. "What's going on?"
"Don't worry about it," she says. She shakes her head, gazing at the groove of his philtrum.
"You think you made a mistake?"
"No," she tells him, meeting him square in the eyes. "No, Helo."
He nods.
"It'll get easier with time," she insists, and Helo doesn't point out that her tone wears thin.
"That it will," is all he answers, and his fingers curl underneath her chin.
She grins. "I'm just happy you're awake."
"Me too," and then she is on top of him, kissing his mouth. He never refuses a kiss from her. With warm hands he steadies her hips, and she grinds into his body, making him groan. He's taut, tensing, underneath her; she's memorized the feel of the muscles behind his scarred, freckled skin and she refines the recollection every time they're here. She knows the brush of his hair, the texture of his hardness, the salt of his taste. She thinks she would recognize him anywhere even with all her senses turned off - an illogical thought, she thinks: human.
She hopes he thinks the same for her.
He tugs her fingers wordlessly to the waist of his shorts, and she divests him of his last stitch. She strokes him, cups his balls, strokes him again. It is a fond, lazy gesture. There are so many things she has taught herself to accept because she loves him: She can't return to her brothers and sisters. She can't try to have children again, not without knowing she'll be creating another life for the government to end. She can't leave the fleet, can't betray her uniform. Cylons are as imperfect as their inventors, both cursed with the worst of good intentions.
Everything was easier before she knew him, and yet she's certain that not knowing him would be unbearable.
He is trembling under her spread legs, and she shivers too at the way he holds her breast and runs his palm down her side. She lowers herself next to him, turns, scissors their legs together. His arm comes hard around her back, and her knee goes up and he is inside her.
They move together, and she murmurs senselessly against his skin as he digs his tongue fiercely into her left shoulder. When he pulls his mouth away he blows, lightly, so the place he's just kissed is cold and she can feel every nerve of it.
"I gave you - that," he says softly, his voice breaking with his thrusts. It takes two more before she realizes that he must mean her scar, the one from his bullet.
Just do it.
He'd taken it out of her later with forceps and a steady hand, not meeting her eyes, and that seemed as close as she was ever going to get to him from then on.
"I healed," she answers, hushed and sweating against him. "And now you - can tell me from any other Eight."
"I can tell you," he growls. "Didn't - want to - shoot you."
He can find her place by touch now, can press his fingers to the nub between the tops of her thighs and rub and pull away and press again. And he does.
"Forgive you," she breathes, and her hold on her limbs is loosening as her senses splinter away, shocked. Her mind snaps back and forth through disjointed impulses, impressions. The rain on Caprica. I, Sharon Agathon. Karl's narrow rack on their wedding night. Blood melting into the crevice between shards of her shattered glass wall. Full colors in a card game, her first time winning as not-Boomer. And always, always Helo, the broad shape of him like a story someone has told her all her life.
Her husband puts two fingers to her mouth, the way she asked him, to remind her not to scream so they can hear. Her noises now, her movements, are hers. She kisses the pad of his thumb, draws it between her lips and into the hollow of her tongue.
"Gods -" he mutters, and she pulls up her knees so he can roll her on her back. Their motion is climatic, she thinks; the coupling of Karl and Sharon - this Sharon - is plate tectonics. He reaches for her throbbing skin and when he touches her again it is the final bolt of lightning. Some enigmatic mixture of love and electrons is beating in her blood and it won't be stopped. Thunder crashes before her eyes. She is pulled tight, surrendering to his power and his sweetness and his ever-presence.
She has to remind him to be quiet, too, stopping his voice with a hand on his cheek. He just kisses her, stifling his moans in the heat of her mouth. She tilts her hips, and as he pushes in more deeply they gasp against each other's lips.
"I love you," she whispers, and closes her eyelids over the brightness of her tears.
He cradles her in his arms. The rhythm is trancelike as he answers - I love you, I love you - and takes her again and again. His shout disappears into the mattress over her shoulder, and she holds him close.
Part: 1 of 1.
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: 1288.
Rating: Hard R.
Spoilers: Through 2x20 "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II."
Characters: Helo/Athena, mentions of crew.
Excerpt: Walking out of that cell - for the first time, not at gunpoint - and trading in her prison sweats for a Colonial military uniform was supposed to be the end of her loneliness.
Author's Note: I wrote this for smut-tuesdays (yay!); and just as my internet service returned, LiveJournal left me. Look, it is still Tuesday in Hawaii. I am operating on U.S. Presidential time!
Their bodies aren't all the same, of course. They share muscle shapes, outposts of melanin, hair follicles; but blemishes appear at random. Sharon has unique marks from knocking against the side of the cockpit, biting her nails, frakking her husband. But nobody in the fleet knows to look for that. All they see is the exact corporation of a known Cylon agent.
For the first two weeks of her service she caught Hot Dog staring at her, every morning as she left the showers. His expression, lingering on her exposed thigh, was transparent. Maybe she is the skinjob who shot the old man, it said, but gods, I'd still frak her. The Chief goggled at her as if she were a specter whenever she passed through the hangar deck, and she didn't have the nerve to correct her fellow officers when they called her Boomer. She didn't have a correction, at that.
She tried to forget the suspicion in their faces. She worked not to think about the vision, in her mind's eye, of Hera's tiny helpless face. She told herself to shut her lips, and remembered that being Karl's creepy girlfriend - wife - was at least one step up from being a murderer.
She started showering at night. She'd return to find Helo asleep, and she'd slip in next to him like a shadow.
Three days of this has made her lonely. Walking out of that cell - for the first time, not at gunpoint - and trading in her prison sweats for a Colonial military uniform was supposed to be the end of her loneliness. She slides the rough, beaten towel over her shoulders, between her legs, and considers.
She hangs the towel next to Helo's jacket and burrows into his side on the bed. She takes the covers, gently lifts his arm to tuck it around her. He stirs and pulls her closer.
"You give me ideas," he murmurs, "coming home smelling like lye and lemon."
She smiles into his neck. "And getting into bed naked?"
"And that," he agrees. With her hand on his chest, she can feel the warmth of his laugh as it flutters, distantly, through his ribcage. His palm covers hers, but otherwise he's still, breathing through his nose. He's figuring out how to say something. She waits.
When he speaks, his voice is quiet. "I thought you were avoiding me."
"No." She tongues the hollow of his throat. "I was avoiding ... other people."
His hand is already at her cheek, tilting her head up. "What's going on?"
"Don't worry about it," she says. She shakes her head, gazing at the groove of his philtrum.
"You think you made a mistake?"
"No," she tells him, meeting him square in the eyes. "No, Helo."
He nods.
"It'll get easier with time," she insists, and Helo doesn't point out that her tone wears thin.
"That it will," is all he answers, and his fingers curl underneath her chin.
She grins. "I'm just happy you're awake."
"Me too," and then she is on top of him, kissing his mouth. He never refuses a kiss from her. With warm hands he steadies her hips, and she grinds into his body, making him groan. He's taut, tensing, underneath her; she's memorized the feel of the muscles behind his scarred, freckled skin and she refines the recollection every time they're here. She knows the brush of his hair, the texture of his hardness, the salt of his taste. She thinks she would recognize him anywhere even with all her senses turned off - an illogical thought, she thinks: human.
She hopes he thinks the same for her.
He tugs her fingers wordlessly to the waist of his shorts, and she divests him of his last stitch. She strokes him, cups his balls, strokes him again. It is a fond, lazy gesture. There are so many things she has taught herself to accept because she loves him: She can't return to her brothers and sisters. She can't try to have children again, not without knowing she'll be creating another life for the government to end. She can't leave the fleet, can't betray her uniform. Cylons are as imperfect as their inventors, both cursed with the worst of good intentions.
Everything was easier before she knew him, and yet she's certain that not knowing him would be unbearable.
He is trembling under her spread legs, and she shivers too at the way he holds her breast and runs his palm down her side. She lowers herself next to him, turns, scissors their legs together. His arm comes hard around her back, and her knee goes up and he is inside her.
They move together, and she murmurs senselessly against his skin as he digs his tongue fiercely into her left shoulder. When he pulls his mouth away he blows, lightly, so the place he's just kissed is cold and she can feel every nerve of it.
"I gave you - that," he says softly, his voice breaking with his thrusts. It takes two more before she realizes that he must mean her scar, the one from his bullet.
Just do it.
He'd taken it out of her later with forceps and a steady hand, not meeting her eyes, and that seemed as close as she was ever going to get to him from then on.
"I healed," she answers, hushed and sweating against him. "And now you - can tell me from any other Eight."
"I can tell you," he growls. "Didn't - want to - shoot you."
He can find her place by touch now, can press his fingers to the nub between the tops of her thighs and rub and pull away and press again. And he does.
"Forgive you," she breathes, and her hold on her limbs is loosening as her senses splinter away, shocked. Her mind snaps back and forth through disjointed impulses, impressions. The rain on Caprica. I, Sharon Agathon. Karl's narrow rack on their wedding night. Blood melting into the crevice between shards of her shattered glass wall. Full colors in a card game, her first time winning as not-Boomer. And always, always Helo, the broad shape of him like a story someone has told her all her life.
Her husband puts two fingers to her mouth, the way she asked him, to remind her not to scream so they can hear. Her noises now, her movements, are hers. She kisses the pad of his thumb, draws it between her lips and into the hollow of her tongue.
"Gods -" he mutters, and she pulls up her knees so he can roll her on her back. Their motion is climatic, she thinks; the coupling of Karl and Sharon - this Sharon - is plate tectonics. He reaches for her throbbing skin and when he touches her again it is the final bolt of lightning. Some enigmatic mixture of love and electrons is beating in her blood and it won't be stopped. Thunder crashes before her eyes. She is pulled tight, surrendering to his power and his sweetness and his ever-presence.
She has to remind him to be quiet, too, stopping his voice with a hand on his cheek. He just kisses her, stifling his moans in the heat of her mouth. She tilts her hips, and as he pushes in more deeply they gasp against each other's lips.
"I love you," she whispers, and closes her eyelids over the brightness of her tears.
He cradles her in his arms. The rhythm is trancelike as he answers - I love you, I love you - and takes her again and again. His shout disappears into the mattress over her shoulder, and she holds him close.