Proving Grounds (1/?, AU pre-mini)

[walbergr]

Title: Proving Grounds
Word Count: ~12k
Pairing: Kara/Zak, Kara/Lee
Rating: R
Summary: Proving ground: A place where something is developed or tried out.

Zak has a secret that shatters the shape of Kara's life as she knew it. Lee tries to help her put the pieces back together.
A/N: This is a bit of a thought experiment for me. I was curious to see what might happen if some of the assumptions we made about characters turned out to be inaccurate. So so so many thanks to lanalucy for her amazing and very patient beta on this.  Also, yes, there will be at least one more part, maybe two, depending on where the wind moves me.



The weight of his duffel had been fine when he'd picked it up this morning, but after three hours of holding it, his arm feels nearly ready to fall off. Adjusting the straps, shifting hands, no joy. And to boot, Zak isn't picking up his phone, and certainly isn't picking him up at the spaceport like they'd arranged. His inclination to impose on his mother has grown slighter over the years. He dials Kara.

"Lieutenant Thrace."

"Lieutenant Adama."

"Lee! Hey, where are you guys? I'm almost done for the day, I'll come meet you."

"Actually still at the 'port. I think Zak must have forgotten."

"Or got caught up in a sim run, more like. I have maybe ten more minutes and I can come get you."

His arm continues to ache, and the idea of waiting another twenty minutes doesn't hold any appeal. "Listen, I'll take a cab and meet you at your place, then we can find the delinquent pilot and grab dinner."

She laughs. "Sounds good. Key's on the top right door frame if you get there before me."

Lee sighs, straightens his back in his dress blues, and takes the sixteen steps to the cab line. He's sitting within three minutes, and directing the driver to Kara's place in four. The driver, a pudgy man with an Aerilon accent efficiently maneuvers the traffic while asking what brought Lee to town. He responds cursorily, letting his legs splay and eyes close for a moment. The hum of the car on the road feels minutely different in his body than the vibrations of a battlestar in space, more immediate, jarring, grounding. He sinks into the seat, occasionally directing the driver into a turn. They stop in front of the grey cinder-block building, and he unfolds himself from the car, stretching his legs, hoisting his bag up onto his shoulder again. Within fifteen minutes, Lee's inside the building, taking the final steps toward the door and the temptation to sit down.

Two steps from the door, he hears the sound of a man's groaning. Suddenly his energy kicks from low into high gear, and he's reaching for the doorframe, the key, thinking only of his brother and maybe blood, and maybe broken bones or brain damage, and the door opens and he's inside and surveying the room and feels immediately kicked in the gut.

Pieces of the scene click into place like toy construction blocks, the smell of sex, the groaning clearly coming from a sensation far removed from pain. A man, a tall, blond man leaning against the window opposite the sofa, hand fisted in brown hair. His brother on his knees, Zak with his mouth near...on...around...Zak with his hand moving on himself in a steady motion.

And motion from the taller man, a twisting jerk away, turning his back to Lee, Zak's confused stutter, standing and turning a shoulder toward the taller man, reaching a hand out to him, seeing Lee, his "Oh Gods, shit, frak!" The red rising to his cheeks, hand slipping off his cock and then more quickly back as a shield.

Lee choking out "What the hell, Zak?" at the same moment he hears "Leland Adama, if you left my door open…" in a affectionate murmur twenty feet behind him.

Instincts taking over, Lee drops his bag, slides out the door and closes it behind him. "Kara." He says, turning the lock just before she reaches the door.

"Lee! Ready to go already?" She stops in front of him and her arms come around him in a quick, friendly squeeze.

"Need to stretch my legs. You'd think civilian ships would give you a bit more legroom." He reaches his hand toward the door frame to replace the key, hoping she doesn't notice his fingers shaking. She steps back, and when he turns, joins him to walk down the hallway again, arms clasped loosely behind her back. "Guess I've been spoiled by vipers."

She laughs "Vipers certainly spoil a person." She bumps her shoulder into his, smiling.

"True enough." As they exit the building, she veers left, beginning the walk to the Flight Education Complex. Lee's phone rings in his pocket, and he fishes it out "Zak," he says, and they stop. He needs a moment, needs to take a breath, but can't gamble on whether or not she'll notice his reticence. "Hey bro," he says, what he hopes is a ribbing tone in his voice. "Forgot something?"

"Lee?" Zak's voice on the other end of the line is broken, pitchy, stuttering, "Oh gods, I...frak, I…"

"Hey, don't worry about it," He makes his tone even, soothing, and the moment he does, the embarrassment, anger, and disgust that had flash-boiled in him in that moment at the top of the stairs stills again. Zak's voice, the pain in it, the shock in his eyes at seeing Lee in the doorway. This is his brother, and whatever the frak that moment had been, it is obviously hurting Zak more than a little. He hopes his tone will calm his brother enough to comprehend the situation, the out Lee is inexplicably willing to give him. "I took a cab to Kara's place, we're just heading out to find you. Where are you?"

"The...you're...Lee?"

"Let's just meet somewhere for dinner." He turns to Kara. "Suggestions?"

"Dustin's," she says.

"Dustin's," he repeats into the phone, as his brother's ragged breathing slows. "We'll head over now, you think you'll be what, twenty minutes?"

"I'll...yeah." Then, emphatically "Thank you."

"No problem, what's a brother for?"

~ ~ ~

Zak walks in as they finish their first round, Kara laughing as Lee recounts a prank a senior NCO pulled during their time on Triton. He's on edge, and Kara has been trying to draw him out by discussing the inanity that is their ship-in-the-night mutual posting on Triton during her first year as a Lieutenant. He only intends to drink the one beer he's already downed, and he's pretty sure she'll forget his edge and his sobriety by tomorrow.

His brother circles the table, slings an arm over Kara's shoulder, and dips in for a short, chaste kiss. Kara's hand goes around the back of his neck and pulls him into a longer one. Lee looks away, seeing a flash of the blush on his brother's cheeks, the saliva dripping from his brother's chin half an hour ago. Lee pinches his own thigh and forces a grin he hopes is indulgent onto his face. "No floor shows tonight, children," he says, and Kara emerges from the kiss completely without shame. Zak is mortified, and his efforts to hide it fail spectacularly.

She grins at him. "Come on Zak, all in good fun."

"Right." Zak clears his throat, pulls the chair next to Kara slightly closer, and slumps into it. With that action, Lee suddenly realizes how rote this show of affection is. In any other moment, he'd see it as sweet, as his brother minimizing the inches between himself and the woman he loves. Tonight, he sees it as a show for an audience of two. Or, honestly, one.

"What, you're not going to say hello to your brother?" Kara taunts, sensing the void where the Adama brothers' reunion routine should be playing out.

"Oh, what are you, my mother?" Lee shoots back, and stands to approach his brother. He clasps him around the shoulder, and he can feel in that embrace that his brother is trembling in something like fear. "It's good to see you, Zak," he says as he pulls back, then "Let's go get the next round." He turns toward the bar, and his brother follows. Lee slows so they're walking side-by-side. He isn't sure what exactly the right words for the situation are, but he knows his brother, and he knows this is a big frakking deal to Zak. He looks at his brother, who is staring straight ahead. "I love you, Zak, and I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt with whatever it was I saw. So if you need to talk, I'm here. But you need to get your head on straight and soon. Kara does not deserve you frakking around on her." They're at the bar. Lee orders three beers and waits for Zak to respond. He looks over at his brother and sees the tears in his eyes.

"Oh Gods, Lee," he says, his shoulders shuddering and his fingers gripping the bar, his knuckles nearly white. "I was so afraid."

"Afraid of what?" Lee asks.

"That you'd…" Zak can't choke it out, whatever he was thinking, and the a man's not a man speech their father has always been so fond of slips into Lee's consciousness. He realizes what he's been missing is that the blond man in Kara's apartment was not a weird impulse or a one-time-mistake, but that Zak has been fighting with that instinct for years. He feels somehow insulted that his brother questioned his...politics? His openmindedness? His love. It's his love for his brother he can't have questioned, and frak the rest.

"I love you," he says. "You are my brother, and I love you, and nothing is going to change that, not ever." The bartender sets the beers in front of them, and Lee hands his cubits across the counter. Zak reaches for the beers, and Lee grabs Zak's shoulder, and turns his brother to face him. Zak hasn't looked him in the eyes a single time this evening. Lee looks his brother in the eye. "Whatever that is or was, whoever you want to be, I love you, and you never need to doubt that." The moment hangs in the air between them, taking on a life of its own, and Lee reaches for two of the beers, turns back to their table, to Kara, and a lie he'll have to hold up for the rest of the evening. The indignation he had been feeling on Kara's behalf fades precipitately. He questions Zak's judgement-because why in Zeus' name was whatever this is necessary-but there are layers to plumb here, and if he knows anything about Kara, it's that she is resilient.

He sets the beer in front of Kara and smiles the first smile he's genuinely felt since he opened the apartment door this afternoon, because he's peeled away one layer of the puzzle, and he knows his brother will let him help work this out. Some small, ridiculous corner of his brain is also tentatively warming up for cartwheels, because however the next few days go, Lee may be able to stop violently tamping down the trails of his thoughts that wander toward Kara. And that is a feeling that seeps warmly through his veins as though it's always been there, waiting for a loosening valve, and the freedom to ignite.

~ ~ ~

They arrive home late, and Lee's bag has been moved from the top of the stairs to the gap next to the sofa. Lee sits down to take off his shoes, and Kara ducks into the bathroom. When she returns, she lobs a set of sheets and a heavy blanket toward his head. "You need any help with that, ask your brother." She retreats toward her bedroom.

Zak is sober, sitting on the one slightly comfortable chair in the room. He stands when Lee does to help him spread the bedding on the makeshift bed. "I don't stay on weekdays," he says, voice low. "Can we meet up sometime around lunch, just you and me?"

"Sure." Lee tucks the blanket and sheet in, stands to face his brother. "Where, when?"

"Around 1100, I can pick you up."

"Sounds good." Lee says, and though he's been trying to say it all night in one way or another he wants to say it again before his brother goes to sleep. "Love you, bro." He reaches out and pulls his brother into a hug.

"You too," Zak says, then pulls away and navigates toward his girlfriend's bedroom.

Lee can hear them muttering to each other for a few minutes, then a short, suspicious silence before his brother emerges and heads up the stairs. Zak snaps off a sloppy salute before closing the door, and Lee maneuvers past Kara's bed and prone form into the bathroom with his kit.

"Do you seriously have to shame me by being hygienic this late at night?" Kara's sleep-addled voice comes from the next room.

Lee, mouth full of toothbrush, pops his head around the doorjamb and nods enthusiastically in her direction. He spits, and gets out "Brush up, Thrace, it's good for you." before resuming his ablutions.

"I finished with mandatory routines roundabout boot camp. Not even you can guilt me back into it."

He's done with his teeth, and splashes some water onto his face. "No one's trying to guilt you into anything." He dries his face with a towel that smells a bit like grease and a bit like aftershave - Zak - then flips off the light, and rounds the doorframe and shuts off the lamp on her bedside as well. "Sweet dreams."

She groans very softly, and flips away from him and toward the wall "'Night."

He sits down on the sofa, peels off his shirt and pants, turns off the light, and pulls the covers over himself. His head is toward the stairs, and if he sat up, he could see her. He's facing her, and that's comforting, in a way.

His mind isn't still, but he falls asleep more easily than he anticipated.

~ ~ ~

Zak arrives at Kara's building only a few minutes after 1100, waving to Lee through the passenger window of his sedan with a still slightly hesitant smile on his face. Lee stands from where he's sitting on the steps to the building, and joins his brother in the car.

"I was thinking Marco's, over by the old movie theater," Zak says, naming a nearly out of business eatery they'd frequented when they were young. If nothing else, it will be quiet, and no one is likely to see them there.

"Sounds good to me," Lee replies, and leans into his brother's driving. Zak has always loved to drive, and does it efficiently and concisely, keen attention on the road, music thrumming in the cabin of the car. Lee leans back, closes his eyes momentarily, and wonders what the appropriate thing to say is. He's been wondering the same thing since he woke up, through coffee with Kara, through his jog, through an hour staring at a book he's been trying to read since shipping to Columbia. In the end, he wants to give Zak an opportunity to begin the conversation.

So he sits silently through the car ride, noting every so often to himself how much his surroundings have changed. It's been years since he's spent more than a few weeks on Caprica, and humanity's impatience for the next thing has shifted his childhood home in a multitude of small ways.

They arrive at Marco's and choose a booth far from the scattered patrons of the restaurant. Away from the steering wheel, Zak's fingers fidget against his legs, his hip bones, his shirt buttons, and Lee is almost ready to take sympathy when Zak finally says, "Aren't you going to say something?"

After a moment Lee replies, "Aren't you?" and Zak breathes out a long, shaky breath.

"I don't know what to...or I guess, where to begin."

"Who is he?" Lee asks, wondering if finite facts will nudge his brother toward the more sweeping things that will have to, at some point, be said.

"Ethan," Zak replies, fast and easy. "He's, um, well, he's in my corps, it started out that we'd study together. And then, maybe, I don't know, a while ago, he told me that, um, well, that he was interested in me, and so, things went on from there."

"So, he knew you might…"

"No. Actually, it was more like a joke, when he told me." Zak's eyes glaze, briefly, and Lee wonders what the moment he's looking back on felt like for his brother. Lee remembers the first time a girl turned into his body when his arm found its way around her shoulder. Zak's eyes hold a similar wonder. His brother at twenty, feeling the same initial jolt of attraction and intimacy Lee felt at fourteen.

They're quiet for a beat, then the waitress arrives with water and a hip stuck out to hold her elbow as she writes their orders for beer and food. She leaves them, and Zak looks at his brother, expectantly.

"I don't...you don't need to tell me any of that, really, Zak. I guess what I really want to know, what I think we should talk about, is what this means to you, for you. And, maybe what you should do about Kara. And I guess you don't need to tell me, but I am curious why this is the first time I'm learning about any of this."

Zak looks at him, then smiles. "Always practical, aren't you, Leland?"

Lee laughs, smiles at his brother. "Well, what are my other options, Mr. head-in-the-clouds?" Things begin to seem more manageable, and he wonders if the same is true for Zak. Two tasks: recon and planning. He's well versed in both. He squares his shoulders, looks at his brother, and says ,"So, do you want to just talk, or do you want me to ask you some questions?"

Zak looks at his hands. "I guess...I can talk." He touches his fingertips together one at a time. "You asked why you're learning about this all just now. I think it's maybe because I am too." Zak's voice falls into a rhythm, and he tells him about the first time he kissed a girl. Lee remembers it well, remembers Zak coming into his room underwhelmed, and thinking he did it wrong, or she did it wrong. Remembers reassuring his brother that feeling weird was normal, because he sure had felt weird. Good weird, but weird. Zak says now that no, it was just weird, not a good weird. And over the girls he kissed through school, it got gradually more and more bad weird until he began to feel immune, to feel neutral toward all of it.

Lee doesn't want to, but can't keep himself from asking, "Even Kara?"

Zak's eyes squinch at the edges, pain in the way his voice bubbles out of his throat and a questioning tone to his "Yes" that makes Lee want to punch his brother not because he's his brother, but because he's seen the look in Kara's eyes when she pulls away from kissing Zak, and it feels like a betrayal that the corresponding half of her feeling is discomfort buried behind numbness.

And in that moment, Lee realizes how carefully he's going to have to tread on this particular subject to feel he's being fair to them both. Because as Zak continues on, he realizes it's not that his brother went out looking for someone whose feelings he could flay to the bone, but that he was looking for the woman who could find in him feelings he thought were mythical. And it could only have been someone like her who proved that it wasn't about the woman. From the moment Lee had first laid eyes on Starbuck, he'd known she was a woman built from the sky downward, the roots of whose hair tickled the Gods' noses. She'd unknowingly dangled herself out of a man's reach, just close enough to tempt him into leaping. And maybe the only reason Zak had been able to reach her was that what he wanted was even further out.

But being reached, being found and held as precious had done something to Kara, Lee was sure of it even without having known her before. It had completed the structure that underlaid her, connected her roots in the sky to the solid earth the rest of humanity stumbled on. It was a shifting foundation, but a foundation nonetheless. She might very well crumble if she lost that foundation.

He realized he wasn't listening to Zak. He didn't know what had been said, and tuned back in only to hear his brother fumbling with words about how different he felt when he first kissed Ethan. "Woah, hey, I don't really need a lot of details, all right bro?"

Zak's face, which had been soft and animated, freezes. Lee sees him pedaling backward in his mind, trying to come to an even footing, and he realizes the joke was a mistake. "Wait," he says "No, listen, I don't mean…" He breathes, not sure what he did mean. "I already saw you having sex. I don't need to think about it a whole lot more."

Zak blanches, then his face fills with color-he looks down at his hands on the table, picks at the napkin between them. It's so like when his brother would get in trouble during their childhood that Lee laughs, and he knows when Zak's eyes meet his own that they're feeling just the same thing, feeling like brothers, like two boys again, and the air between them turns crisp like lightning struck the ground.

When they've finished laughing, Zak says, "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry."

"No, I'm sorry I thought I couldn't tell you."

"Me too."

They both reach for their water, take a sip, breathe out, take a longer gulp, and set the glass down. They laugh again. Lee feels like maybe he can - should - tell Zak his secret too. But perhaps it needs a bit more time to germinate before it can brave the exposure.

He looks down at his hands, braves the topic in some small way: "What are you going to do about Kara?"

"I don't know what I can do."

"You have to tell her."

"I know." His word trails off, and Lee leaves him the space to say more for almost too long.

"Zak, I know I don't know her as well as you, and I don't think we said three words to each other on Triton, but I think it could really frak her up if you're not careful with how you handle it." Lee may not be doing well at holding his hand close to his chest, but he doesn't mind revealing his tells if Kara can be the one to win in the end.

"I know." A beat. "I do love her." Zak's eyes are on his brother, earnest. "I don't think I could have found a better friend. If this hurts her, I'll...I'll feel like shit for a long time."

Lee nods.

After a few minutes, their food arrives and they dig in. After all that, after the way he felt the day before looking down the stairs at his brother, it feels surprisingly like a non-issue. It feels like there's not much to say, other than, yes, Zak probably knows what he wants, knows what he needs to do, and he needs someone to help him do it, and Lee will be that person for him. Lee knows how to isolate and solve problems. The first question that comes to mind is a bad one, but he asks it anyway. "How much about your relationship with Kara do you think is about sex? For her?"

The pause is awkward, long, then, "I don't know, like, some? I don't have a big frame of reference, here."

Lee tries to gather what he's thinking, he fails. "I wonder if you can just tell her. I mean, not about Ethan, because I'm pretty sure she'll end you if you do that. But tell her that you love her and you think of her as your best friend, but it's not working for you sexually. That you think you might be into guys."

"So, lie to her?"

"Tell her what you would have told her if you'd figured this out a few months ago. Tell her you're an idiot, but don't tell her you're an idiot who's been frakking around on her."

~ ~ ~

Somehow, that evening, Lee gets himself invited to stay on Kara's sofa instead of at his Mother's. It's a choice Lee suspects came from the two nights he'd collapsed there slightly too drunk to make it home safely - and the memory of the night he'd met Kara, when the sofa would have been a better choice if the only safety he'd had to consider was the physical kind.

As a result, he and Zak have a limited amount of time to talk alone, and because it was unplanned, he doesn't know when Zak intends to talk to Kara. There are definite times when the air in the apartment tends toward pushing him out the door, and he doesn't submit to that feeling if only for the knowledge that there are two things Zak and Kara might do with him out the door, and Kara only knows about one of them. He occasionally glimpses Zak's eyes imploring him to stay over one of Kara's slightly-too-frequent-for-company kisses. So, over the next five days, he makes the choice to stay, despite the fact that every time Zak pulls away from kissing her slightly before he should, Lee feels a quick jab of pain just under his ribs.

They plan to meet for lunch on Friday, and Lee feels like a traitor when he steers the restaurant selection toward a cafe just far enough off campus that cadet and instructor presence is likely to be nearly zero. He tells them he'll meet them there, and calls Zak ten minutes before he's supposed to show up. "Lee, what's up?" Zak opens, and his voice is so open and trusting and Zak that Lee almost doesn't want to say what he's going to say next.

"I'm not coming to lunch," he starts. "Listen, I feel like I've been getting in the way of you talking to Kara. I'm not trying to force you to do it, but I don't want to be the reason you're not. So, if you want to tell her soon, you should probably do it now."

"I...okay."

"Good luck."

"Thanks." A long pause. "Lee, thank you."

"What are brothers for?"

They say their goodbyes, and Lee hangs up to dial Kara. She picks up on the first ring "What's up?"

"I'm not going to make it to lunch." He says "I ran into Lieutenant Colonel Marshall and we're meeting at SoZo for drinks in fifteen minutes."

"Midday drinking, Lee? I didn't think you had it in you."

"I'm on leave, Lieutenant, nothing's stopping me from drinking any time of day."

"Nothing but the stick up your ass."

"I like to remove it every once in a while." She laughs, a heavy, real laugh. "Just to remember what it's like to go without."

"Well don't get too wasted. I fully intend to take advantage of this less uptight version of Lee Adama after I'm done this afternoon."

He suspects her intentions will fail her - that is, if Zak has the guts to tell her. "I'll be happy to oblige."

"Good." She says, a smirk in her voice, and hangs up before he can say another word.

~ ~ ~

He hadn't lied about Marshall, only that it had been spur of the moment. He sits down in SoZo to wait for the former Triton CAG, and stands at parade rest when the man approaches. He's not in uniform, so a salute isn't necessary, but the face of his first CO in the field makes his hand and arm twitch with the impulse.

"Adama," Marshall says.

"Lieutenant Colonel," Lee replies, and echoes the smile on the man's face. They sit, and Lee reaches for his beer. "I ordered you a Sixth Dark." Lee says, and Marshall nods, sitting down.

"Thanks." He takes a drink. "Good enough. How are you doing these days? Columbia, right?"

"Yeah, Columbia, it's a great ship, Erphesus is a good commander, different style than Commander Ruth. I'm enjoying it." The first time he'd expressed that sentiment to Kara, she'd laughed out loud and asked him how many times he'd practiced his groomed non-statement about Ruth in the mirror. The number didn't bear repeating, but Lee was loath to risk his former Commander's wrath after what Kara had gone through.

Marshall holds in his laugh, and he's likely thinking of the same incident because he says "Did you know Thrace when you were on Triton?"

"Actually, no," Lee replies and is about to go on when Marshall interrupts.

"Hell of a pilot, firebrand though, I pulled her down with me when I got this posting. I'll introduce you sometime, I think you'd like her."

"We've met. I do like her. Actually I've been staying with her." Lee's been so busy planning his brother's words that he can't even keep track of his own. He knows what he's implying, he has no story to cover it up, and hopes Marshall won't ask.

"You two should come down to the sim suite sometime while you're in town. I'd love to see you go head to head. She as feisty in the sack as she is in the sky?"

"I…" Lee's not sure quite what he should say.

Marshall takes one look at his face and laughs, "So you're friends then." Lee nods and an opening forms in his chest, his tension draining out of him so quickly he slumps in his chair. "You would think there'd be a bit more overlap between men she fraks and men she likes. I don't think she knows she can frak the ones she likes."

Lee chuckles. Marshall was a good CAG, an observer of human nature, and he has Kara pinned to a board like a butterfly.

Except for Zak.

Except for Zak who is just now, perhaps, clumsily snapping her heart into two clean pieces.

~ ~ ~

Lee doesn't expect to see either of them for at least a couple of hours when he returns to Kara's apartment. He plans to go for a run, take a shower, bask in the fact that the upcoming challenge will involve significantly less lying than the one before.

Kara is sitting at her dining table, staring at a spot two feet in front of her.

"Hey," he says, trying to keep his voice light. "You're home early."

"I cancelled my afternoon sessions." She still hasn't looked up from the spot on the table.

"Where's Zak?"

"Don't know."

"What's wrong?"

"Who said anything's wrong?"

"I mean, generally you do go around staring at nothing and skipping work for no reason, but this time seems particularly odd." He steps closer, spins a chair around and swings a leg over it.

"Zak broke up with me," she says, and he realizes their situations have flipped. She's keeping his brother's secret from him now, and it's his turn to play along.

He reaches out for her hand. "I'm sorry."

She pulls her hand away. "Just leave."

"What?"

There's fury in her eyes. "You're here because of your brother, Lee. We're not together anymore so there's no reason for you to stay. Just go."

It's a sucker punch. "I'm not…wow." He stands, turns to survey his stuff where it's arrayed on her sofa and coffee table. "Marshall said you had a problem hanging out with guys you'd frakked, but I didn't think that'd apply to their brothers too."

Her eyes are on him, "What the frak are you talking about?"

"I thought we were friends," he says. "Regardless of Zak, I thought you and I were friends. Guess I missed the mark."

She stands, like lightning she's in his face, her eyes blazing, hands wrapped around his arms like vises. "We are." She's looking right in his eyes, and behind the fire, he sees something more vulnerable.

He reaches a hand to one of her hands on his arm, loosens it, then the other, and pulls her to his chest, holding her tightly to him. She is silent, not crying, not shaking, as still as space. "He's an idiot, and I'll talk some sense into him."

"No," she says. "No, he's right. He was right."

"Well he's still an idiot," he says, and his eyes are on the top of her head as she pulls away slightly and looks up at him.

"You're a good guy, Lee," she says, head cocked, studying his face. Then she pushes up to her toes and locks her lips over his.

It's weird for only a moment, and then it's like she's not Kara, and he's not Lee, they're just two people flush against each other, the warmth of their bodies pulsing through the air in the room. She's pushing so hard against him he has no choice but to push back. Their tongues entangle, they're trying to occupy the same space, each holding the ground the other surrenders. It's so like the first time that the time between then and now collapses on them, and when he pulls away flushed and panting, he's not sure how much time has passed. She looks cataclysmic. Her eyes are raging and her mouth is open just slightly, jaw edging to the side as she takes a hold of her lower lip between her teeth.

She looks like a teenage girl giddy at breaking the rules, and his heart breaks for her because he suspects what she's doing is trying to prove the problem between her and Zak really was Zak. He doesn't know how to help without releasing the frisson of desire that's burning up his wiring, so he says, "Gods, Kara, this is a bad, bad idea," and pulls her to him again. His lips go to her throat. His hands meet at the middle of her back and spread over her spine until one is hovering at the edge of her waistband and the other is cupping her neck where it meets the base of her skull. The skin under his lips is warm and gives under his tongue as he glides his mouth up to her jawline, he finds and sucks the pulse below and waits for her to do something, anything.

Her moan turns into a sigh, turns into a catch in her throat and suddenly her hands are pushing at his chest, and he releases. "No." Her voice is a breath. "No, you're right. This is a bad idea." She backs against the table, leans, pounds her fists on the wood. "Frak!"

"It's okay."

"Oh come on, Lee, it's messed up is what it is. Who rebounds with their boyfriend's brother?"

"To be fair, you didn't."

"I was about to."

"If I let you."

"That's what you call letting me?" Her lips purse together in a frown of mock concentration. "You seemed a little bit interested."

She winks. And now they're themselves again rather than animals bucking against one another. He knows where he's standing. "Interested?" Short pause. "Yes. Stupid?" Long pause. Longer pause, he looks at her, a tilt to his head, one brow raised.

She grins. "Absolutely."

Then, finally she laughs, full bodied. The life floods back into her like color, like she just cracked the seal on her helmet and her hair and the air she's been breathing for hours are spilling into the room, creeping into him like a drug.

And he's sucker punched, because the Kara he kissed seconds ago wasn't the same woman he kissed the night they met. It's been easy for him to forget that night because he hadn't seen the shine of her full light since then, thought maybe he'd imagined it. But now he's seeing it, and he thinks she's laughed like this around him before, but he can't be sure, because it's so different this time. Her face holds the bloom of Aurora at daybreak, she is so free he wants to rope himself to her cloud-rooted hair and go up and up and up with her.

"What, did you drool on my face?" She swipes a hand across her chin, and when he doesn't respond, her eyes meet his. "Are you having a stroke?"

"Ah, no." He says, "Just trying to regain equilibrium."

"I am sorry."

"Oh, Kara," He pats her on the head. "You don't kiss that badly."

"Frak you." She pushes past him, bumping his shoulder, and moves to the sofa, shoves his sheets and blankets aside, and slumps into the cushions. "I need to watch about seven pyramid games and drink." He joins her on the couch, and she turns her shoulders toward him, her face close. "Heavily."

"I'm game."

"Then get the booze, Apollo. I'm not moving from this spot until I have no choice."

He stands, and as he does, his phone rings. He fishes it out of his pocket, ducks into the kitchen. Kara is looking for the remote, openly trying not to pay attention to him. The blare of the noise on the television comes on right as he answers, "Zak."

"Lee, oh thank gods. Where are you?"

"Kara's."

"Shit. She cancelled all her sim sessions this afternoon. I didn't know until I got here. Is she there?"

"Yeah."

"Frak."

"It's fine."

"It's, no, it's…"

"So it didn't go so well, I take it."

"No, it was, godsdamn it, Lee, she was so calm. Like she shut down. I don't think I've ever seen her calm."

"She'll be fine."

"I don't know how to do this. Frak. I want to be there. I want to be there being the one to comfort her. I am so bad at this."

Lee finds a bottle of ambrosia in his hand, and he turns toward the door. The yellow half-circle of Kara's head is visible above the top of the sofa. The noise coming from the set is raucous but he feels a visceral need to be right there with her right now. "I'm here. You calm down. Do your homework or something. I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe."

"Tell her I'm sorry."

"I will."

~ ~ ~

Three games later, Kara is well under the influence, and is no longer paying attention to the moves the players are executing.

"You know I used to play," she says, casually, and her body is limp and languid on the cushions behind her.

"Were you good?"

"I was frakking amazing." Her lips curve. "Or I thought I was. Some other people thought so too, though, so it's fair to say."

"I suck at pyramid."

She laughs. "I doubt it."

"No, really."

"But you don't suck at flying."

"True."

"And I'd bet my wings you're good in bed."

"Excuse me?"

"Apollo, you have a reputation."

"Cut it out, Kara."

"No, but seriously. Sex and flying and pyramid are like the same frakking thing."

"You frak your viper?"

"No, but it's…" She groans inarticulately, and pulls her limbs and torso from the seat, swings a leg over his and she's straddling him. She pulls his hands between hers, interlaces their fingers, leans back to sit on his knees, moving his hands back and forth between hers. "Don't you touch a woman like you touch a viper? That's what it's like to play the game. You watch for responses, you listen for every noise, you hold everything in your head at once and it's so full that you can't think, you have to act. You feel your teammates like you feel your wingman, like you feel the person you're frakking. You push yourself to the limit, and when you do it right, everything just...opens up in front of you."

"I think we might have different ways of flying."

She leans in, her nose and forehead touching his, eyes as big and hazel as autumn trees "And frakking?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

Kara has been laughing all night, and he wonders if it's a bad sign, but he's been drinking too much to step back and analyze. But her laugh now, this time, is harsh enough to spike his brain. She laughs until she can't breathe and then leans against him, her shoulders still shaking.

She mumbles some sort of question against his neck, slurred and inaudible. He hums in the affirmative and her eyes flutter. "Lee Adama, you are a prince."

"Kara Thrace, you are drunk."

Her laugh now is more like a gurgle, and then she's gone. Her breath on his cheek is steady and her body is warm, and he lets himself close his eyes too.

Hours later, into the early morning, Lee awakens, shifts. He reaches out to turn off the TV, and Kara instinctively curls into his side. Her skin is slightly too warm on his, his heart beating slightly too fast. A knot forms in his throat as he reaches up to just brush his hand across her shoulder. It's a feeling he doesn't know, isn't comfortable with: yearning both for her and to be rid of her, desire alongside a choking paralysis. The combination of feelings he would have called love in the past is as small as a moon orbiting the way he feels in this moment, and he hopes against hope that in the morning it is gone.

~ ~ ~

In the morning, the feeling is still there, and so is Kara, tucked against his side, warm and soft and smelling stale and slightly sweet. Lee knows he would play pyramid with her, and fly with her, and sleep with her every possible moment for the rest of his life if not for the feeling that she would slide away like an avalanche beneath his feet. So he nudges her with his shoulder and in a conspiratorial whisper says, "Starbuck." She shifts, lifts her head just slightly, shoves her nose between his neck and the sofa and squeezes her eyes tight.

"It's not morning."

"Beg to differ."

"Frak." She lifts her head, looks at him with bloodshot eyes. "What time is it?"

"Is there a clock in here I'm not seeing?"

"No. Frak." She agonizingly pushes herself up from him and trudges into the kitchen. "0630. I have class starting in an hour."

"Basic?"

"No, thank the Lords. Combat demonstrations in the sims." She's leaning against the counter, her hair poufing out at the back. She reaches over to pull the pot from the coffee maker and transfers it to her other hand, runs water, and starts the coffee. Her elbows fall to the counter, shoulders following shortly after. "I'll call in sick."

"What and put me up to the ethics board for lying for you?"

"Lee, look at me. I'm sick."

"I don't think that's the intent of the regulation."

"If you're reading the rulebook, tell me how I can get out of duty today."

"Honestly, you were probably pushing it pretty close with yesterday."

"Godsdamnit."

Lee stands, walks over to her, and rubs a hand over her shoulders. "Hey, listen, I'll come with you. Call it a demonstration of different combat styles or something, and you can just sit in the back of the room."

"You think that'll go over with the brass?"

"Don't you set your own lesson plans?"

"Well sure…"

"Then I don't see why not."

A cup of coffee has come through the filter, and Lee pours it in a mug, shoves it into her hands. "Drink this while I shower."

She takes a sip and calls out as he turns on the water. "Do you even have a flight suit?"

"Never leave home without it."

~ ~ ~

Kara perks up slowly over the course of the day, and in the afternoon they reconnoiter a double-sim demo station and start to show off pair formations in combat. It feels good to fly with her, even if the VR is a poor excuse for deep space. At some point between flight demos, she's in front of the sims gesticulating at the students, and Lee see's Zak's face at the back of the crowd. She clearly sees him too, and jerks her chin toward Lee, then Zak, mutters, "Get him out of here," and goes back to her demonstration. She climbs up into the sim and gathers the class around her as he weaves toward Zak.

Zak's eyes are slightly panicked and his shoulders are slumping. Lee puts a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"I should have tried harder." Zak says, and the manic flickering of his eyes between the sim Kara's strapping into and Lee's face makes Lee want to envelop his brother in his arms until his life stops being hard, because that's the only way he could feel like he was doing anything remotely useful. "I should have tried harder to love her like she needed me to."

Lee looks at him and tilts his head. "Really, Zak?"

"Yes!" He nearly shouts. "Nothing I'm doing is right, Lee. At least when it was wrong before I wasn't hurting anyone."

Lee stares at him, a short cheer rises from the students behind them. "Zak, who weren't you hurting? Yourself, her…" He struggles to find the name of his brother's frak buddy, gives up. "I'm serious. I know this is hurting you right now, and I'm pretty sure it's hurting Kara even more, but you need to suck it up and try to understand that sometimes doing the right thing feels like shit."

His brother swallows, adam's apple bobbing, and Lee closes his eyes briefly, the alcohol, lack of sleep and physical exertion of the sims hitting him all at once.

"I just...Lee, she's my best friend. I don't want to go through this without her, and I don't want her to have to go through this without me, and I'm…"

"No. Zak, listen, I know you wish this hadn't happened, but you can't act like it hasn't. Maybe you can be friends with her someday, but not right now." He hears the popping sounds that signal the sim pressure seal breaking and grips his brother's shoulder again. "I'm leaving in a week, and I'm probably going to stay with Kara most of it, so…"

"No, it's all right. You should. I'll...oh god, I have to tell Mom."

"It will be okay. Zak, I promise you, it will be okay."

Zak nods, turns halfway away from Lee, then turns back. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now go."

He makes his way back to the sim and shoots a careless grin at Kara. She's back into explanation mode and weaving her hands into and between each other. Lee picks up his helmet and settles it over his head. "Want to show them?"

She smiles. "If you think you can handle it." And she's back into the sim firing it up before he can respond.

~ ~ ~

After the day of classes is over they're both covered in sweat and exhausted and she slumps against him as he unlocks the door, laughing. "We need to go out," she says, and he assents grudgingly. She pulls a beer from her fridge and strolls into her room to change. When she emerges she's in tight jeans and a dark, low cut shirt, and he knows immediately that they've moved to a different stage of grief. Her arms are tan and taut, her throat is bare and long and she looks both invulnerable and deeply flawed.

He has never wanted a woman more. The rush of it hits him in the gut and makes him feel like the worst person to ever have walked the planet. He grabs her beer and takes a pull. "Where are we going?"

She reclaims the beer, downs the rest and hands him the empty. "Nowhere in particular. Couple of good spots around here I haven't been in a while. You game to get frakked up?"

Her smile quirks up on the side and he knows she'll go without him so he tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. "I'm not the one who has to work in the morning."
She belts out a laugh, bumps shoulders with him and heads up the stairs. "I don't mean to bruise your manhood, Lee, but you're going to wish you could keep up."

And of course it's true. In the first bar she orders them a series of shots and he's struggling to match her at five, she takes the sixth from his line and downs it as her seventh, then taps his nose with her finger and spirals onto the dance floor, bumping rhythmically with several strangers before emerging on the other side near the pyramid boards.

It's almost amusing to watch her act as she convinces the four thick-armed men tossing balls through the holes to bet with her on a game. She gets stellar odds to win, and invites him to join in, and he only shakes his head, hoping his smile isn't giving her away.

She no-holes her first ball, the men betting against her smile at her indulgently, and each of them does a significantly better job. On her second ball she hits a low scoring target and the tallest man, a redhead who has nearly two feet on Kara, asks her if she wants some pointers. Her doe eyes and small pout are so the antithesis of Starbuck that Lee almost laughs out loud, but instead he swallows it down with his beer and continues to watch her work. By the end of the game she has the men eating out of the palm of her hand, she's missed their scores by a significant margin, and Lee knows a true grift is underway.

The redhead and a slighter, more handsome blond both offer Kara a drink, and she takes them both up on it. Her hits and points improved over the course of the game, and she managed to center-hole her last ball in a way that looked like pure accident. She shrugs minutely as she and the other men pay the winner, and she asks if they want to play again.

"Let's play no stakes." Suggests the redhead, touching her elbow.

She's slurring in a high pitch so different from her true drunken slur that Lee wonders if she really has no idea how sexy her actual voice is. It grates on him, but the redhead is leaning in closer, brushing his fingers across swatches of her exposed skin. She says something about getting better and not wanting to ruin their fun just because she's not very good, and they place another round of bets, and her buy in is lower than the first time, and the pot is bigger, and she no-holes her first three balls before center-holing two in a row. The game ends out with her scoring at the top, and it looked like such an accident that the men place another round of bets, higher still, each hoping to win back their stakes. The redhead is nearly slobbering on Kara's neck and Kara has three more drinks in her and is bouncing like a ball between the redhead and the blond.

Kara scores a perfect game, and her smile gets wicked, and by the time Lee realizes this, too, was a part of her evening plans, it's too late, and she's stuffed nearly two hundred cubits into her pocket, and insults are flying, and then fists. She takes a good blow to her cheekbone that blossoms immediately around her eye, and then Lee, too, is in the fray, punching and kicking all four of them as they approach. Then more sober heads intervene, and Kara is slipping through the dance crowd, and Lee is yanking his arm out of a bystander's grip with some mumbled explanation about my friend and a breakup and I'm sorry.

Outside, Kara is leaning against a cold wall, laughing and hiccoughing, and he leans next to her. "So, that was fun."

"Like taking candy from a baby. I wasn't sure I still had it."

"You don't lose hand eye coordination as a pilot, Starbuck."

"Not the throw - the grift, the art of it. I haven't done that in a long time."

"What? You grow up in a carnival?"

Her hiccups continue. "If only. No, I honed that little money-making strategy in OCS. Great way to stretch the paycheck. Free drinks too."

"Not a bad way to get a black eye, either." His hands are chilled by the air and the wall and he reaches out to prod her quickly-forming bruise.

"Ugh, yeah, that's going to be a bitch to get in a helmet for the next few days."

"Worth it though," he says, and he's surprised to realize he means it. It was unexpectedly exhilarating to watch her so in her element and out of his, to realize the mystery behind her eyes was more than his imagination.

She licks over her bottom lip and then catches it in her teeth. "Sure was."

"Where to next?"

"Flannagan's."

"Lead the way."

She laughs shallowly and then stands, meandering toward the street, where she steps directly out into traffic, and an oncoming taxi stops eight inches from her knees. She taps the hood twice and swings around to the back seat. Lee, open-mouthed, follows.

~ ~ ~

In the morning, the evening is more than a little hazy, and they're both in her bed, fully dressed, stinking of liquor. She must have had foresight enough to set an alarm, and when they're up, she's nearly chipper. His head is pounding like a jackhammer.

"Coffee?"

"You cannot possibly be this okay right now."

"Practice makes perfect, Lee."

"You're a sadist."

"I'm going to campus. I don't have class this afternoon if you can drag yourself out of bed." She sets a glass of water on the nightstand and leans over him as though she's about to kiss him, then her eyes go dull as she pulls back and scrutinizes him. "Drink the whole glass."

"Yes, Sir."

"Damn straight."

He stays in bed for the better part of the morning, but he's ready and freshly showered when she calls him for lunch, and he did drink the water, and he feels remarkably better. They have lunch at a kiosk in the park and someone mentions boxing, so they head to the PTC and suit up and strap on their gloves. They hit the bags next to each other and Kara's egging him on and inevitably they end up in the ring.

After, they're both wiping sweat and blood from their skin and laughing so hard she has to lean against him and her skin is so soft and moist against his that their arms and chests pull apart like magnets - still attempting to cling to one another.
She hiccoughs and collapses against him again in remembrance of either a very good or a very bad combo. She is sparking with energy and completely void of the angst that characterized her past two days and when she asks "What next?" he has no idea what to suggest.

"Lee you are the worst houseguest. At least keep me entertained."

"Want to scalp some tickets to a game?"

"I don't see the C-bucs unless the Panthers are in town."

"Kara, you are the worst host, at least keep me entertained." He tried to match her intonation and likely failed, but she's laughing again and gasps out a yes.

~ ~ ~

They buy nosebleed tickets off of a man on the street, and as they're standing in line for beer, she laughingly nudges him toward two tall, thin, lovely women being escorted by a concierge into a box. "See if you can get us in there." She says and for the dozenth time in the past few days he is agog at her. "Oh, fine." She says, and beer in hand she wends her way down the aisles and up the stairs and to their seats.

"These aren't bad." He says.

"These seats are the reason I splurge when the Panthers are in town." She says and looks behind them. "It's only a good seat when there are more people behind you than in front of you."

There are two rows behind them, but he can see the big screen just fine, and the crowd and the sun sinking into an evening breeze and the heat off her body as she leans slightly away from the man to her left are just enough to make him forget that she's not his and this is not a date.

The players come out onto the field and before two minutes are up, she's shouting obscenities at the screens, the players, the refs. It's not at all clear who she's rooting for, but her enthusiasm is infectious, and the men to their left are egging her on. She introduces them to Lee as Marcus and Liam and they shake hands and Lee tries to give them both meaningful looks. He suspects he failed to truly intimidate them when Liam buys Kara a beer, and tries to engage her in conversation.

Kara and the stranger talk for a minute, but the roar of the crowd over a goal snaps her back to the game and she's watching again, her muscles bunching, weight shifting, and he wonders if she's imagining herself in the game, plotting the plays, executing. She's tense, and he sees why she'd like the close up seats.

He leans into her ear during a timeout and whispers "You look like you're trying to coach them from here."

"They should be so lucky."

He thinks about what she said about flying, about frakking, and it's so clear now that the statement was the truth at the center of her. The hand that has been squeezing his heart since that night tightens infinitesimally, and he suddenly feels like he can't breathe. For the next two minutes of the game he can't move, he doesn't try. It seems like the things around him have quieted, stilled.

Then the crowd is standing for a goal and cheering, and he's following and she elbows him in the side, grinning, and he wants to kiss her so badly that he knows he needs to walk away. "Beer?"

"Sure." She looks up at him as he stands and her grin is so sweet and a smile rips his face open too.

When he comes back to the seats with two beers in hand she's gone and so is Marcus and Liam is practically pouting, and it's not immediately obvious what's happened but five minutes pass and then ten, and he's no longer fooling himself.

The game ends and they're not back, and Liam shoves past Lee's knees, scowling. He's still sitting there when the cleaning crew begins to filter their way up the stadium, and he's not sure if he should stay or go back to her apartment without her, or maybe go somewhere else. He thinks he'll stay until the cleaning crew reaches his row. He folds his elbows across his chest and rests them on his knees while he watches them climb higher and higher with their trash bags and grabbing claws.

"AllRed's fan?" asks the teenaged boy who approaches his row.

"Something like that." He stands and makes his way down the steep stairway, a feeling of vertigo the only thing reminding him he's not already falling.

It takes a few minutes to find the last open set of gates, and Kara is standing outside them, not quite contrite, but less than confident. "Good game?" she asks.

"It was a close one."

She looks directly into his eyes and then says, "Let's go home."

Her strides seem looser than usual and she's got a glow in her cheeks and they walk the whole way in silence, each with their hands clasped behind their backs.

When they reach the apartment, she steps straight into the shower, emerges dressed in cutoff shorts and a stretched out black tank. He's in his boxers and tank on the sofa, and she sits next to him and leans close, pillows her head on his shoulder, sighs. "That was fun."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it."

She begins to snore softly, and he swivels his arm to lift her up and drag her to her bed. When she's settled, she grabs his arm and won't let him go until he's lying beside her. She turns, shifts again and her body is snug against his. It takes him hours to drop into sleep.

~ ~ ~

By the end of the week, he's woken up more in her bed than out of it, and the pattern of her breathing, the smooth brush of her skin and her subtle scent are ingrained in his body like she's one of his limbs. His flight out is in twelve hours, and every time the thought hits him, his lungs pull air hard and slow like he's in his viper without an oxygen line.

She emerges from the shower wrapped in a towel, her skin so peachy golden he can only just contain the urge to drag his teeth across her shoulder as he brushes past her into the bathroom. They ready themselves in tandem, a machine oiled with years on a battlestar, and his propriety slips moment by moment as he brushes his teeth and she combs her hair and puts on lotion and deodorant and the moment she closes the door so he can shower his hands are gripping and squeezing his cock and it takes a bare minute before he's swallowing his own moans, bracing against the wall with his left forearm, head against the cold tile as warm water sluices over him.

His shoulders slump momentarily, and a breath squeezes its way through his lips. It takes longer to gather himself than it did to collapse, and by the time he's reaching for his shampoo, he's straightening his shoulders. His spine, his military posture, his shame are all back in place, and he steps out of the spray to lather up and there she is, eyes slightly wide, body so still, her hand in a death grip on the edge of the sink.

Lee's heart bobbles into his throat and then drops to his stomach because he didn't say her name, but it was her body he was imagining and her heat and cacophony he was feeling and even though she couldn't have known any of that, she shouldn't have seen it.

But even so, she's not seeing him, so he finishes washing his hair, ducks back under the spray, and pointedly does not look toward her. Eventually his periphery picks up the motion of her form ducking through the door, door swinging closed, and he rushes through the rest of his shower, drying himself off roughly, and tugging on his boxers before emerging.

As he dresses, she's normal, chatting across the kitchen as she makes coffee, smiling cheekily, the picture of normality, or at least, normality as it's been for them for the past six days. He plays along.

"So what are we doing today?"

"Lee Adama, so impatient. I told you I have a plan, why ruin the surprise?"

"Because I don't want to spend my last day planetside in some shitty bar."

"Well you won't." She says, finishing off the last of her coffee. "Trust me."

"If only I thought I could." He shoots back, drains his coffee cup and slides it away from himself.

She rolls her eyes, walks past him and bumps her shoulder into his. "You are going to love it." And her articulation on the word 'love,' the way the tip of her tongue touches the middle of her top lip, the confidence and cocky sparkle in her eyes gives him a thrill of delighted surprise that somehow, one of the puzzle pieces of her personality she seemed to have lost when he walked through the door after Zak's revelation to her, is back. The Kara Thrace he knew and perhaps loved even before this trip is sliding into place like a hard seal, and however beautiful she was damaged and sad, it can't hold a candle to her radiant and whole.

~ ~ ~

She parks, grabs a bag from the back of her car and drags him with her into an unfamiliar building. They take two turns in white hallways and then she opens a door that's facing into sunlight. The bag settles at her feet, and he wants to laugh hysterically when he sees where they are. Because of course it's a regulation pyramid court, and of course she's tossing him an arm guard.

He's seen a game of pyramid, and he's not at all confident he'll last five minutes in any type of game with her without making himself completely obvious.

He slides into the glove and tightens the straps on the arm guard and smiles at her. "So, any tips for a newbie?"

She tosses the ball between her hands, then at him, and grins. "You know what someone's first set at pyramid has in common with the first time they have sex?" She places the ball in the middle of the center pitch, cocks her stance and places her left forearm against the right edge of the triangle.

"I imagine you'll be telling me soon enough." He joins her in the starting position, as she holds up her right arm and dangles three fingers in front of his face, counting down.

The moment her fist closes, the hand she was counting with plunges down to grab the ball, hand and ball still in the safe zone, she pivots so her back is to his, ricochets the ball against the left corner board, springs away from him and center-holes the ball in a matter of seconds.

And he's gaping as she swings back around, ball in hand, smirk on her face. She tosses him the ball. "It's not very satisfying, and it's over too fast."

He tosses the ball back at her. "You're supposed to be the instructor, make me better."

She lines up on the pitch again, and he follows. "What do you think the most important thing is during a set?"

"Having the ball."

She smiles indulgently. "Knowing what your opponent wants."

"Isn't that obvious?"

"Not always." She sets the ball in the center of the pitch. "You think I want the ball?"

"Yes."

"So then what do you do if I don't take it?"

"I take it."

"Let's try that." She holds up her hand again, and this time, when her fingers count down, he's there first, and he's feeling good even though he knows she wasn't trying, he stands, takes two steps forward, ducks to the right to bank off of the side board, lines up his shot, and Kara catches it in her frakking hand.

She leans against the point board, underhands him the ball and says "Any idiot playing can be okay at pyramid if they have the physics: agility, speed, vertical, catch, aim," she holds out her hand and he throws her the ball. "To be a good player you need to know how to plan plays, execute, adjust." She stands from her slouch and joins him at the pitch. "But it's just like flying, and it's just like frakking, because if you don't know what the other person is thinking and planning as soon as they do, you're never going to impress anyone." She sets the ball on the pitch, they both poise with their arms on their respective edges. She begins her count down and as she reaches one, she purrs, "Impress me."

And it takes three or four sets, but eventually she begins to say things like "Good" and "Yes" as he pivots around her or into her. And maybe twenty minutes into it, as he steps in front of her just as she's jumping forward to catch her rebound, he falls backward and she falls forward and her lips are centimeters from his for a fraction of a second before she rolls off him and onto the grass. She's laughing, and standing, and radiant. And this is the moment he knew was inevitable before they began, because his heart is in his throat and his stomach is clenching and he's re-wiring his viper in his mind, he's trying not to look at her, standing over him, miles of leg, the curve of her breast, that peachy skin glowing in the sun.

"See, I told you you'd be good at this." She turns away from him and it's a blessing; he stands facing away from her, takes two deep breaths, trying not to think about where she is in relation to him, trying not to calculate the vectors and curves of her body like a ship, like a lover, and she's right in comparing the three, because they're exactly the same.

When he turns around she's taking a swig of water. He joins her. She's breathing hard but steady, and he knows he's much the same. It's not the types of movement he's used to, but running and boxing and jump rope and weight training leave him physically well enough equipped for the sport. Still, he'll be sore tomorrow. "How long do you want to go?"

"Another few sets." She says, shrugging. "Just wanted to get you on the court, start getting you into shape so I might have a real opponent next time you come down. They have a court on Columbia?"

He hums ascent in his throat as he swallows another pull of water.

"Then I'm assigning you homework, Leland Adama. Play a game a week, at least. And keep track of your scores, so I know you're not bullshitting me."

He holds up his hand in a mock salute. "Yes sir."

She tosses her water bottle down and struts back to the court.

~ ~ ~

In the end, he only scored twice, to her hundred-odd goals. And maybe she was going easy on him, but his muscles are burning and his brain is firing in ways it hasn't about flying in years, and it feels good. He feels good. He had anticipated returning to Columbia worn, beaten, and exhausted from the effort of holding her together, of holding himself apart from her, but now he feels like laughing.

He feels a glow on the day, and as they head to the showers before catching lunch and going to the spaceport, he thinks this feels like childhood, like nostalgia, like one of those days you look back on and can't help but smile.

It's over too soon, as she parks at the 'port, walks with him to the ship. His bags are in the porter's hands, and he's checking the clock, and she's smiling. Before he can turn to board the plane, her arms are around him, tight, and her head is tucked next to his and their bodies are as close as if they're the same person, and she smells like musk and salt and standard issue soap and the smell, the feel of her fills him with warmth.

And she says, "Thank you."

She breaks the seal between them, moves off by inches, and he smiles. "Anytime." He wonders when the next time will be, because as he moves away from her he feels the threads the past days have woven between them strain taut, flexible, resilient.