Proving Grounds 2 - Prove that you can do it better
Title: Prove that you can do it better (Proving Grounds 2)
Word Count: ~10k
Pairing: Kara/Lee, Zak/OMC
Rating: M
Summary:Kara's surprised at how much she misses him.
A/N: Enormous thanks to lanalucy for beta. And we definitely have at least one more piece, possibly two (does that sound familiar?).
Her office, six feet wide by four feet deep, is quiet on a Friday afternoon. She's marking papers, drinking coffee, wishing for something a bit stronger.
Heel, girl, she tells herself, takes a few breaths. The widening gap in her chest is yawning open, grasping out ahead of her, and she's not sure if she can leave the building, or even the room, without doing something stupid.
The sims complex is three steps outside, dorms four blocks south, bars a mile west and Lee seventeen jumps away. Eighteen? It's hard to say. When he was here, it had been so easy to get caught up in him, his scent, his voice, the glowing gravity of his smile. And now he's gone, and she's here.
She closes her binder in frustration. It's been three months, two hours, five evals, and her thoughts keep skipping to back to him. It's infuriating.
She wants to call Zak, to have someone to talk to about this, to stop bouncing from normal, surface, functional, to her deeper self, the one who dwells and worries and yearns. Yearning is not her default state and she's sick of it. And it's been long enough. She's seen Zak out of uniform, off campus hand-in-hand with a tall drink of water, laughing. It's been long enough.
She dials, pauses before hitting send, and waits as the phone rings.
Zak picks up, "Kara, um, I...hey."
"Hey. Want to grab beers?"
He's silent for a fraction of a second, then "Yeah, um, let me...where?"
"Red Door. I'm going to head over now."
"Okay. I'll, um, I'll see you there."
She hangs up and laughs, because it's suddenly apparent how much she could frak with him when he gets there. Not that she will. Maybe. But she could.
~ ~
Inside the bar is like she's heard people describe a cozy sweater: warm, enveloping, comfortable, safe. She orders a beer, settles on a barstool. She's halfway through it when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and turns, smiling, to see a face of Zak that is more peaceful, more contented than she's ever seen him. The scathing comment she had planned dies on her lips. And now it's her pausing, grasping at straws. She wishes somehow that she had been honed by his absence, perfected, strengthened.
The thought is gone as soon as it arrives. "Zak." She stands, wraps her arms around his startled shoulders and breathes him in. His hands are still at his sides, and maybe that was the most surprising thing she could have done on seeing him. And seeing him is good, deep down. He's a friend, and she's been missing him in ways she didn't realize. "It's good to see you."
The smile on his face blooms like a sunrise, and she's smiling too.
"It's good to see you, too." He echoes back, and points at her drink. "What'cha having?"
"Whatever was on tap."
He motions to the bartender, points at Kara's drink and holds up his first finger, nods, sits.
"So," he says, reaching across the bar to grab a napkin. "How are you doing?" He tears off the corner of the napkin, and she smiles at the nervous tic.
"You know, busy time of year, lots of final evals to turn in...loving life, basically." Her face is sardonic, and he grins before he realizes he's doing it. The bartender sets his beer on the partially demolished napkin. "You?"
"Unsurprisingly, the same." He lifts up his glass toward her in a mock salute, and downs a few swallows. "Summer plans?" He asks.
"Flying, painting, and getting shitfaced." She takes a swig of her beer and smirks at him. "You?"
"Wow, I wish. Heading to Gemenon for some time in their sim suites, then a family reunion right before we start back up."
And she hopes her face hasn't lit up like her entire nervous system, because "Lee's coming back so soon?" is out of her mouth before she can stop it.
"And my father." Zak says, and the war of his face is fascinating.
"That excited, eh?"
"You haven't met my father." He says, and sighs. "They do not get along."
Her tongue skips to the edge of her mouth. She nods, makes what she hopes are noncommittal and curious noises.
"It's been a disaster basically since my parents divorced." He says, and shrugs. "I never know what to expect when we're all in a room together, but…" He tips the last of his beer down his throat, sets the glass down, and smiles. "It's nice to see them both, anyway."
He holds up his glass for another beer and gets hers as well, then they stand together, in a pattern they formed when skittering fingers and hard kisses were par for the course, and make their way to a Pyramid board. She digs a few cubits out of her pocket, and they continue to chat for a few minutes while the ball descends from the mechanics that trap it behind the goal.
She's six games up and he's pouting when a tall, blond man with cheekbones like lightning strikes wends his way through the crowd toward them. And he slides his hand onto Zak's hip and Zak shifts his body into this man's body for a kiss. Kara throws the ball harder than necessary into the goal, and the lights flash her seventh win. When the two men separate, and Zak looks at her, the flush that spreads across his face and his utterly mortified expression make her laugh so hard that she's folded over at the waist, clinging to the tall table they're standing next to. And she maybe elongates the laugh for a few seconds longer, long enough to dismiss the triple flares of frustration, jealousy and bitterness that she planned to hide, but when she stands, it's with a cockeyed smile, and a punch to Zak's shoulder, and a hand outstretched to the tall man. "Kara Thrace."
And now this man, too, is blushing, stuttering. "Ethan Mathis." He says, and then "I believe I'm in your Basic Flight unit next semester, Lieutenant Thrace."
She nods, quirks the corners of her mouth slightly downward and tilts her head slightly as she glances at Zak, wonders exactly how much about the history of this moment the blond man knows, decides it doesn't matter. "Good to meet you, Cadet Mathis. I look forward to kicking your ass." She takes his hand, squeezes, and releases.
Zak is retrieving the ball from the board, and he hands it to Ethan with a raised eyebrow. "See if you can beat her, I'm about done with losing for the night."
Ethan's grin in Zak's direction is so brightly affectionate that a feeling of utter desolation blossoms in the hollow of Kara's throat. "Get us some more drinks, would you, Adama? Winning makes me thirsty."
The eighth win is no more sweet for the bitterness it's covering.
~ ~
She's more tipsy than shitfaced when she opens her door that evening. But she's affected enough by the evening and the residue of bitterness about Zak's gleaming new love life that she flips on her com-linked console and taps until she can see the com availability on Columbia, and her heart beats slightly faster at the green box next to Adama, Lee.
He's selected and ringing before she can second-guess herself. She conveys the appropriate information to the personnel com officer, and waits. It's a ritual fairly familiar to her, the green flashing light on the bunkroom phone, a pilot in the room picking up to relay the call down the line based on the squadron's knowledge of which of their crewmates is where, picking up in the gym and calling out another crew's name, the phonee hollering out their ETA to a com closet, running down the corridors to make it. She waits, emotions churning, and the officer on the other end of the line says "Lieutenant Adama will be on the line in three minutes."
"Thank you."
The line goes silent but for the periodic clicks to let her know it's still live. Then Lee's voice, "Lieutenant Adama." And every ion of anger and fear slides out of her.
Her voice is more girl, more joyful than she would have preferred as she says "Lee."
His chuckle is so quickly followed by her name, so full of his smile that she sits in silence, enjoying just the knowledge that they are both experiencing this moment together.
"I've missed you." Nearly gets caught in her throat before hopscotching its way out.
"I've missed you too." He says, then. "How are you doing?"
And she's too tipsy to not tell the truth. "Completely frakking insane."
"So, normal?"
A laugh through her nose, biting her lip. "Yeah, why not."
"What's going on?"
"I met Zak's boyfriend tonight." She says, and his gentle murmur of assent, of sympathy cuts her down to nothing. He doesn't say anything, but she can hear him breathing, and it anchors her. "I didn't think it'd piss me off this much."
"It's okay." He says, and it's the final word. It is okay. And she feels better, grounded. She feels different in response to his voice: calm, sane, loved.
And the feeling, the caressing soft tenor of his voice picks her up on a wave, distributes her on a shore where she wants to be the same to him. She looks around her apartment, sees her efforts of the past few months, furniture rearranged, bathroom painted, new blanket for her bed. Those labors that seemed necessary, that seemed like a step away from Zak, toward future and opportunity, now yank her away from those few gleaming moments with Lee: falling asleep against his chest watching pyramid, staggering home and helping each other down the stairs, collapsing fully clothed into bed with him, sliding past each other in the bathroom, seeing him in the shower, hand gliding over himself, biting his lip.
And she's biting her own, breathing harder, and suddenly this call has gotten inappropriate. She guides the conversation to other topics, asks him about his flight, begins to make herself jealous of the deep space maneuvers he's enjoying on a twice-daily basis. Eventually the dull tone that signals to both of them that their call time is nearly up begins to sound in the background.
"I...uh...when do you get in?"
"Tuesday after next." He says, and there's a laugh in his voice. "Zak'll still be on Gemenon and my dad doesn't get in until Thursday. You free?"
She leans back in her chair, grins. "Am I ever."
The tone gets louder, and he says, "Want to pick me up?"
"Sure."
"Then I'll see you at 0500."
"Oh you frakker."
She can barely hear him over the tone, and thinks his voice has maybe cascaded back to tenderness as he says, "I'll see you then."
She hums to herself as the call ends.
~ ~
His eyes are open, too alert for this early in the morning, but she sees him before he sees her. She's holding a cup of coffee, another sits next to her feet and she doesn't leave her position slouched against the wall until he's standing directly in front of her. She glances up over the rim of her cup and nudges the coffee she bought for him with the toe of her boot. He bends down to take it, sips, sighs. "Thanks."
"No problem." She says, then, "We're going back to my place and then I'm going back to bed." She looks in his eyes, and of course they're just as puffy-rimmed and red as hers, and she tugs his bag from his hand. "You can join me."
When she pulls in, he's dead asleep on the seat. She shoves him none-too-gently and says "We're here." And now he's dragging himself out of the seat, looping a bag over his shoulder, and by the time they're starting up the stairs, he again looks awake. Nice skill to have.
She unlocks her door, strides down the stairs, strips off her BDUs and is in bed before he's down the stairs. His bag hits the floor and there's no more sounds of motion. "Lee, get your ass in here." She says, and his feet drag only slightly as he complies.
~ ~
Kara awakens mid-morning with her leg slung over his and pressing against a part of his anatomy that she suspects was distinctly different in size and state when they collapsed into sleep several hours before, and she isn't complaining, but this wasn't quite how she had planned to seduce him, so she carefully removes her leg, nudges his scalp with her upper arm and folds her hands beneath her head.
He awakens like an unfolding book: eyes, smile, shoulders moving in turn, and the heavy-eyed face he turns on her shoots a jolt of lust through her. She could think of worse ideas than swinging her leg over his hips and sliding down his body.
Lee sits up, bends one leg just slightly and reaches for his toes. "What time is it?"
The evasive maneuver would probably have fooled her if she wasn't already aware of his state, but she sits up, turns to look at the clock. "Oh nine thirty." She turns back to him, and his eyes are still so firmly on her that she can't help but bite her lip and cant her head sideways. "Anything you want to do while you're in town?"
"Well I have been dragging my ass to the pyramid court these past few months, so I wouldn't mind a chance to score a couple honest goals on you."
And maybe he knows that she let him get a few past her on their first go, because she's a teacher, and a good one, and knows that winning a little makes you yearn to win more. So she leans over, kisses him on the nose, and swings out of bed, grabbing a pair of shorts and a tank on her way toward the bathroom. "I'm still going to kick your ass." She says, and leaves the door open as she runs some water on her toothbrush. He remains in bed in that camouflaging posture, and she smirks at herself in the mirror, runs more water, shoves the door closed with her foot, and hopes that she catches him at it when she emerges.
He's digging through his bag instead, smoothing wrinkles in his blues and his BDUs and she bumps his shoulder with her hip, smiles, moves to the kitchen to start another pot of coffee.
Eventually he emerges, looking clean cut and Apollo all over, and a corner of her mouth quirks up just slightly as she imagines how she'll be dirtying him up over the next days, hopefully in a few creative ways.
"So," She says. "I've been waiting on those scores, Adama, how've you been doing on the Columbia; Pyramid brackets?"
He groans, returns to her bedroom and tosses her a tiny notebook as he emerges again, grabs a cup of coffee and leans against the counter, looking out the window.
The book catalogues no fewer than twenty games - scores, durations, names of his opponents, what shift it was on, and a pair of stars next to the two wins he's managed. Neither of the losers had ever beat him before, and they don't show up in the book again, but there's a gradually decreasing margin on every repeat opponent. It's meticulous, and scary, and Lee in a way that looms over her, casting a wide, gentle shadow. "Wow, you are such a tightass."
He glares at her over his coffee.
"I mean, no one's saying it's not an effective strategy sometimes, but, Lords, Lee, it's Pyramid, not war." She sets down the book, and he sets down his coffee.
"What makes you think this isn't war?" He says, eyebrows raised.
A laugh explodes out of her, and her smile is slow and cocky and everything she knows about herself and the game, "Oh, Apollo, you're never going to win against me."
And the look on his face is so tender that she wants to take it back, because there are more ways of winning, and he's already getting dangerously close.
~ ~
In their second game, he scores five honest points, two gimmes and one feint-pivot-lunge point that he'd thoroughly set up two times before. While she could have kept it, it was so demonstrative of his practice that she let it through. And he's not a bad opponent. He's likely to be a much better one much faster than she expected, and she'd expected a lot. Once the game is over, she pulls him over to the left board. "I want forty left round-hand points before we're done for the day."
He sets to it, and she takes the other side and picks up the pace so that they're racing before he's done.
"Nice work." She says, retrieving the basket of balls behind the goal, she shoves it at him and begins stripping off her arm guard.
"Thanks." He's doing the same, teeth on the glove tips, precise movements undoing latches and velcro, and he'd brought his own guard to the game, which gave her a thrill, because it's frakking hard to get that sort of thing when you're in deep space. He's been taking the game seriously.
He's spiraling his wrist, probably the first time he's noticing that little muscle on the the outside that guides the direction of the flick. It's not a muscle a pilot uses, since a stick isn't a ball, no matter how often they call it. And he would have made two more shots against her if he'd been more precise in aiming them.
"Again tomorrow?" She asks, and his grin says it all. He rucks the gear bag onto his shoulder, and they wend through the halls to the locker room.
Towels, soap, sandals, showers next to one another, and she's shouting over the rushing water and the barrier. "That was a nice feint you set up, very sophisticated."
A laugh. "So you saw through my one play."
"That's what I do, Leland, I told you, it's all about knowing what your opponent wants. It was ambitious, though. Well executed." A pause. "The other 90% of your game still needs work."
He laughs. "What was that thing you did, eight or nine times, where I'd have you in front of me, and then you'd bounce it off the A3 corner and suddenly you're behind me and in the goal?"
"I'm not telling you my plays, nugget."
"Well, keep doing them that often and I'll know them soon enough anyway."
She laughs, because he's describing somewhere between three and five different plays. Maybe she'll show him one of them tomorrow,see how observant he really is.
They're both done with the shower in the regulation eight minutes, and they suit up in civvies side-by-side. "I'm starving."
"Burgers," he says.
"What, the compressed protein strips on Columbia aren't doing it for you anymore?"
"Much as I did join the fleet for the food…no."
"Got anywhere in mind?"
"You choose."
In the car, they roll the windows down, and she puts something guttural and instrumental on the radio, looks over at his enormous grin, and guns it.
~ ~
The best burger joint around isn't at all around, but nearing the edges of the city, and she gets them there in twenty minutes, dodging in and out of the light midday traffic. The risks of a ticket are high, but driving is five steps removed from flying, and it feels good to be moving tangibly forward.
"So, I saw you got Gripkey on Columbia."
"Tinder? Yeah, he's one of the nuggets they took on Orange Squadron."
"How is he in the air?"
Lee raises his eyebrow. "Special interest?"
"Nice to know if my students are succeeding."
"He's a little green, but the cleanest green we've got in the roster."
"He's a good pilot, but a pissant."
"I wasn't going to say it."
"Even odds you were the same your first tour on a battlestar."
"I'd have thought I'd get at least three to one odds on that one."
She barks out a laugh, "Maybe you would."
His arm is just peeking through the open window, and his arm hairs are bristling. It's not a feeling you ever get on a battlestar, wind. The movement of air from fans, hissing through CO2 scrubbers, the breeze your body creates from running, yes, but not a pure, honest gale knocking the air from your lungs. It's as clear as day that he misses the planet when he's in space, and she's been missing space since she's been on the planet.
"Sucks to know what it's like to live interstellar, huh?" He prods, looking over at her. "Can't fly on the planet, can't live on a battlestar."
"You're the philosopher, Lee, I just miss shooting things."
"Oh come on, Starbuck, you didn't get your talent by sitting around, I bet you clocked triple the required sim hours during basic."
"Hundred ninety," she corrects.
"I stand corrected," he says. "I didn't realized I'd underachieved so much." She cocks an eyebrow at him. "One-forty," he answers. It was probably the biggest list of runs in his corps, but what else had she had to do? No family time gumming up the works, at least there were a few benefits to show.
"Don't forget that you had twice as long to get there."
"Oh, can it, you teach at the Academy, you know it's not the same as flight school."
She smirks, because she does, but she's missed yanking his chain, hearing his voice take on that slightly exasperated tone. He's so even keel, a straight shooter, and she'd put even odds that at least a quarter of his squadron thinks of him as a pissant, but there's so much under the surface that she could drown in him. That she wants to.
He's silent for a moment then: "Do you know what Zak's at?"
"Forty-three."
He shifts, looks out the window, and suddenly she feels like she's driving alone. He's ice, mist, gone. Then: "He doesn't love flying." And his eyes are on her, boring into her. "Doesn't even like it, I don't think."
"Then why do it?"
"Our dad…" An inarticulate gesture, a sigh. "He's been really insistent about it since we were kids."
"Sorry." And she is, because she knows how it feels to not be totally sure if you're in it because you want to be. Because she loves flying, but what would she be doing if her mother hadn't been so gung-ho about the military? If she'd had a chance to think that achieving something, being someone, could be accomplished without a chain of command, without one-upmanship against someone who wasn't competing, without pips on her collar and a piece of paper and head held high. They're both silent, he's looking out the window, she at the road, glancing over at him occasionally, the strong profile of his face, his shirt clinging to his skin, baring hints of his muscle beneath. "Did you ever want to do anything else?"
Then he's looking at her, and she yanks her eyes from his, focuses on the road, focuses on anything but the shock of his face as she asked it. "I don't know."
"Yeah, me neither."
Silence again, this time longer. And she wants to touch him, wants him to know, though she could never say it, that she understands this burden, this weight of expectation and doubt. Her hand leaves the gear shift to rest over his clenched hand, and it stays there, and they stay silent, until she has to move it to downshift onto their gradual glide onto surface streets.
And these are things Zak never told her. He let her assume that he was in flight corps for his own reasons, that he was driven to succeed, and it's only been since they split up, since he mentioned his extra sim time on Gemenon, that she took the time to check his log of successful sim hours.
"Zak is never going to be a pilot, Lee," she says, and the air between them hangs. She could say more, but he's breathing so shallowly, so slowly that she's afraid she's broken him.
Then, "I know." He shakes his head. "I know."
She's pulling into a parking spot, and so she kills the engine. "You're in for a treat, Adama."
He grins, but there's nothing behind it, and now she knows that he doesn't bounce back quite as quickly as she can. Thinks that maybe it's a good thing. Wishes she hadn't said it in the first place.
She's terse with the host who seats them, and they sit in silence, perfunctorily staring at their menus, sipping water. He leans back in his chair, and his eyes are locked on her, searching her face. "I wonder where we'd be if we hadn't loved flying."
She hopes he never thinks this again. If he hadn't loved flying, he'd be fine, an officer, LSO, coms, Admiral's Aide. Her, a marine? If she was lucky. Deck crew? Munitions tech? Below his notice, that's for frakking sure. "Let's not, okay." She says, and lifts her hand to summon the waitress.
"Tap beer and a cheeseburger." She says, and gestures at Lee.
"Ambrosia on the rocks and a cheeseburger."
"All right, either of you want salad, onion rings…"
"No, thanks." Lee says, smiling in that clever, joking way he has.
"Well let me know if you need anything."
"Wilco."
Then his eyes are back on her, serious again, unsmiling. "What's up, Kara?"
She rolls her eyes. "I'm serious. All work and no play, Leland."
He grins. "And what do you call this morning?"
"I seem to recall someone's meticulous notes and challenges to war."
"Oh come on."
"I'm just saying, you're the one who can't have fun."
He balls up his napkin, lobs it toward her. She dips her fingers into her water and flicks it at him. He retaliates, and by the time their drinks land on their table, they're both splattered with water, holding down laughter, and he asks the waitress, "Can I get a milkshake?"
"Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, banana?"
"Chocolate," he says, and when the waitress turns, he sticks his tongue out at Kara, and she leans across the table, snags his drink, bolts down half of it, and sticks her tongue out at him.
Then he's sucking her tongue into his mouth, his lips on hers, his breath moist and warm on her cheek. And her hands are on the back of his head, and they're plunging headlong into each other. She's grasping at his neck, teasing his bottom lip with her teeth, and his fingers are on her forearms, gentle, caressing. She opens her eyes to find his also open, languid and intense and so blue. She can't breathe, can't move.
He pulls away, leans back in his chair, drags air into his lungs. He's far away, feels so far away, and she's still half on top of the table, edge of the linoleum digging into her ribcage, panting.
His hand reaches toward her, and he runs a finger down her arm before picking up his glass, downing the other half himself. "I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have done that."
She leans back in her chair, eyes still locked on him, and attempts her most wicked, lascivious grin. "Nothing to regret on my account." And his grin is anything but wicked, it's that smile of his that explodes within her like a viper launch, that crackles heat in her bones. She tilts her head, smile still on her face, raises one eyebrow and says, "Maybe you do know how to have fun."
"I could show you more, if you want." He seems almost ashamed at the line, but this is the Lee she cherishes. Lee worried and playing along and kind.
All she can say is, "Yes."
His foot under the table bumps hers, and they don't talk much for the rest of lunch, but what they do say is innuendo and chiding and her head is spinning with desire by the time she picks up the bill and they walk out to her car.
Her hand is sneaking under his shirt as they cross the parking lot, edging toward his hip bone, and when they're in spitting distance of her car, his muscles are jumping under her fingers, and she backs against the passenger door, yanking him into her with his waistband. She's nipping at his upper lip, and his tongue is doing wonderful things to the sensitive flesh of her bottom lip, and she's enjoying all of the sensations of him against her, hard muscle, cold metal, smooth fabric, the slight stubble of hours. He's laser focused on her, shifts their thighs so they're interlocked and coaxes her head back to scrape his teeth across her jugular. His hands are at her hips, edging up. Her hips are shifting, tilting, finding that perfect point of friction and then his mouth is back on hers and they're falling into each other in a frenzy of action and stillness, and it's minutes or hours or eons later that he's panting into her ear. "I need...."
"Yes."
She levers up on her toes, wraps one leg around his waist, whips the other to meet it, moves her hips against his and they're both making guttural noises and her hands are between them, reaching toward his belt, his fly. "Not here." His hands are under her thighs, supporting her as he steps away from the car, and with a disappointed groan she uncoils from his body, settles back onto the ground and unlocks the car.
She verges on breaking land speed records on her way back to her apartment, and they're barely through the door when her hand is down his pants and he's stripping her out of her tank, and she's backing down the stairs, tugging his shirt up to expose his abs. He's pressing her against the railing, and she's never felt anything more than she feels him with her at that moment. He's elemental to her, rippling through the core of her being. And she's beyond the flow she hits when she's flying or playing Pyramid, because she's not jockeying with him for pleasure. They are one entity, and every touch clatters through her like electricity.
When it's over, his fingers trail across her ribcage, body half draped on the stairs, he's smiling at the ceiling, and she's smiling into his shoulder, and neither of them needs to say or do anything.
~ ~
She wakes in the late-dusk, bare assed and relaxed and warm and sore and hungry again. Lee's shoulder is a nice pillow, firm, curved, a pleasing crook to tuck her chin in. She shifts to look at him, and his eyes are open, meandering lazily over her body, and when they come to rest on her face, he smiles that smile of his, and she moves to kiss him.
"So," he says, smiling as they pull back. "You don't waste any time."
"Not much time to waste."
"Fair." His hands are stroking her back, her waist, her hips, her thighs, and he seems so calm, contented, happy. Sated in a way that she doesn't know if she's experienced before in someone she's just frakked.
Zak was always frenetic after frakking, giving her backrubs, wanting to get shit done - she's thinking it before she can stop herself. She rolls off of Lee, sits up, takes a deep breath. "Frak" comes out on a sigh, exasperated.
"What?" He's propped on one elbow, the other hand on her back, and this is so unfamiliar to her, this after. The only frame of reference she has for frakking this man is his brother and that seems completely and unequivocally wrong. She's frakked men in bars, in their apartments, sometimes even in hers, but it's been transactional: door, bed, condom, missionary, gone. Those interactions are so far removed from this: desperate, on her apartment floor, after dinner, with a man she enjoys talking to, who she wants to frak again in a few hours, the next day, every day.
She doesn't know what happens next.
But his hand on her back is nice, tracing circles, and it's effortless to look over at him, smile, dip in for another kiss, another. Lee maneuvers her so that she's sitting on the bottom step, and he's above her. He slides down her body, licking carefully over each mole and crevice and around the curves of her breasts, downward, fingers dragging almost incidentally over her nipples. She presses her chest upward, hungry for his touch. Her fingers can reach his chest, then his arms, then his shoulders and she's surprised to find him looking up at her from between her thighs. "Can I?"
And she laughs, abs jumping with contractions between them, smiles a bit arrogantly, nods just slightly. The moment his eyes unlock from hers, other pieces of them lock together and she's agog at the newness of the sensation, because Zak never - no, stop it. It's warm, and soft, and his tongue, "Oh gods, right there." His tongue is so clever, his lips and the absolute slick chaos of it is maddening, because it's one thing layering on top of the next, and it's overall and general and sensation and then it's pointed and sharp and pulling her taut and near to breaking. After a while she loses her mind in him, her legs spasming outward and back together, clenching, twitching. Her whole body is loose and tight, "Lee, oh, hmmm, yes." And quivering and weak and his tongue, still his tongue and his lips and the suction and the small puffs of air from his breathing and the complete inability to touch him push her over the edge and she's a nearly invertebrate pile of disjointed, nominally human parts.
Her head leaves her control with a thunk against the stairs, and she's beyond caring, but he slides up her body, murmurs something soft and hoists her up against him. "Bed? Sofa?" They take the four steps to the sofa and he falls as gently as he can on top of her, she feels him hard and pulsing against her stomach and moves one leg so her calf is dangling off the sofa, finds his hips with her hands to push him downward so that their warm, wet places touch, and then her hand is between them, guiding him into position, and his hips buck into her, driving home. It's a completely different, but still entirely encompassing sensation, and she looks up at his face, eyes closed, concentrating, beautiful, twitching a smile every few seconds, and kisses him, keeps kissing him, shifting her hips, adjusting the angle until he says "Nnngh, yes, Kara, frak, Gods, yes."
One of her hands finds his, guides it to her breast, and he's kneading, stroking, gasping against her mouth. And her pleasure is cresting again, sharp jolts of it with each motion of his body against hers, each stroke, each caress like lightning. And then he's trembling, his body melting except for the minute contractions of his pelvis into hers.
And it's easy now to relax into sleep again, brushing a hand across the slightly tousled back of his head, his breaths gradually shifting from frenzied toward sonorous.
~ ~
They wake again near midnight, and it's not clear what awoke them, but he's groggy when he says, "You have a blanket?"
"Bed," is her only reply, and they move together to her bedroom, her sheets cold and crisp. She slings a leg over him, pillows her head on his shoulder, and drops off again.
~ ~
In the morning she wakes to the smell of bacon and coffee, and she's glad that he's taken the lead, because she'd have been hopeless at figuring out what to do next. She gets up, drags on a bra and a pair of sweats and wanders into the kitchen to find him wearing a pair of boxers and taking a swig from a cup of coffee while he pokes at the pan with a fork.
"I see you found my stash."
"It's definitely the good stuff."
"Maybe I'll let you take a few back with you."
"Oh trust me, it wouldn't even make it through the first leg of my flight."
He puts the fork down on a folded towel, and brings his coffee over to her, wraps his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her into him for a kiss that goes on slightly too long for the bacon, which smells just burnt when he pulls back, hands her the coffee and takes two steps toward the stove.
"You mind washing a couple plates?" He asks, and she wonders how crazy he's being driven by the detritus strewn about the kitchen.
"Sure." She says, then "You making anything else?"
"Do you have anything else?"
"Ah, good point." She trails a hand across his back as she passes him. "Toast?"
"Sure."
Her hands are in the soapy water, getting a sinkload clean while she's at it, and he's humming tunelessly, and it feels so homey, so like Zak and her making breakfast on a weekend morning that she nearly forgets it's not, except that when she looks at him and he's looking back at her, there's something more there. And every time she thinks it it's like a ton of bricks in her stomach.
Because Zak made her happy. Completely, mind-bogglingly happy, and it feels like she's getting a case of whiplash to believe that, at the same time as she fraks his brother and knows that it's better, knows that it's more. Knows that her definition of love as a child was proven wrong by a flight student who wasn't even her first boyfriend, knows that that definition of love was shattered by Lee, knows that what she's feeling now is a pale shadow of what feels possible.
And the drive that kept her going in pyramid, that keeps her going in the cockpit, is not a safe game to play when it comes to the sparks her body sets off when it slams into Lee's. Because he's not a competitor, not an enemy, and she's been known to break hearts and shatter dreams. The cresting wave that last night began - that today is flowing into - tells her that someday she'll want him to feel like he can't live without her. And she will never be able to promise that she won't make him do it anyway.
But another truth about her is that that doesn't have to matter. Because the circular logic behind being someone who crushes dreams is knowing that you can. That you can do it and get away with it and live through it and be fine and do it again. He has a towel tucked into his waistband, his eyes half glancing at the TV he's flipped on to the news of the colonies, his profile, his smile turning toward her periodically.
And she promises herself at that moment to try not to break him. With Zak she'd thought that it would be easy, because he gave her everything. Zak was like jumping from a void of space into a galaxy. And Lee was like jumping into a solar orbit. Bright, large, encompassing, terrifying.
She dries two plates, brings them to him and sticks her still slightly wet finger into his ear. He instinctively pulls away, and she snatches the fork from his hand, sets it on a plate and yanks him bodily into her. Their lips are together and his body against hers sends desire sputtering through her. She pulls away and starts dividing the bacon onto their plates as she says, "I want to frak you all day."
He laughs. "That might be a bit challenging for me."
"Wimp."
"Adult human male, I think is the phrase you were looking for."
"So you're not interested?"
They're at the table, and he's taking slow bites, savoring as he chews. "I'm interested, there are just a few logistical challenges."
She hums patronizingly, a near constant stream of bread and meat making its way from her plate to her mouth. Her foot is sliding up his thigh.
"But we can certainly try."
So they do.
~ ~
They come up for air close to dinnertime, and they're both used to extreme wear on their bodies or they'd be limping toward the bar three blocks from Kara's apartment. She asks for a booth and says they'll wait for it at the bar, where she orders four glasses of a light beer on happy hour and downs one like water. "Electrolytes." She says, shoving his into his hand.
"Oh come on."
"Well, it's not a banana, but it's better than nothing."
He has no fewer than four distinct red splotches between his ears and the open collar of his civilian shirt, and she's sporting something closer to ten. He brushes a finger over one of the more violent looking ones and says, "I didn't think you'd bruise so easily."
Her lips twist in a pained smile that she tries to paint as cocky, and she doesn't reply.
It's a fleet bar, full of pilots and marines and officers on leave sleeping in barracks, and he nods at several faces she doesn't know as they both lean against the bar. The faces she's familiar with are mostly on leave themselves, vacationing in the Saggitaron islands, or visiting distant family. He lets out a burst of laughter as another familiar face walks through the door. "What is this place?" he asks her, "The beating heart of the planet?"
"Cheapest drinks near base and a military discount," she replies. "Half of the reason I signed my lease."
One of the faces he recognized approaches them. The man shakes Lee's hand and reaches out for Kara's. "Tony Spalta, Lieutenant Kara Thrace."
She reaches behind them for Lee's second beer and hands it to Tony. "Welcome to Delphi."
Tony tips his glass toward her and smiles rakishly, and Lee moves his free hand to rest on Kara's shoulder. It's more casual than she would have anticipated that he could accomplish, but the hand doesn't move as Tony tells her he's a tactical officer off Columbia and orders them all another round. He asks what she does and when she answers he looks around comically "There's a joke there: A T.O. walks into pilot bar..."
"Bearing 183, carom 224," Lee finishes and Kara is surprised to find herself laughing alongside Tony.
She leans in and whispers "Who knew you were funny?" Then, to Tony "What brings you to Delphi?" And Tony launches into a well-rehearsed spiel on the irritation of acuity testing, the bureaucracy involved in moving between specialty areas, and then winks as he closes with the admission that he doesn't mind getting planetside.
She's grinning and leaning just slightly into Lee's hand on her shoulder, and Tony says, "I guess I don't have to ask why you're here, huh, Apollo?"
Kara's eyes meet his, and his slightly panicked expression at the question is like a blank slate for her to write on. "I don't know if my draw is quite that strong," she says with a wry smile, "Lee's in town for a family thing."
"Wait, and you're just fringe benefits?"
Tony's expression is so incredulous that Lee lets out a little chuckle. "She exaggerates," he says and turns his head to brush his lips over her temple, a move that's so private her heart flips in her chest and she pulls away just slightly.
Tony makes a few more jokes before he excuses himself and leaves them to their devices. They order sandwiches and make their way to the back of the bar once they're in hand. They take up a casual game at a pyramid board and Kara's doing trick shots and they're laughing and getting drunk. Tony swings back, clearly several sheets to the wind, arm wrapped around the waist of a girl Kara thinks is probably a cadet, and challenges them to a pair board.
She's been coaching Lee for ten minutes, and Tony and the girl, Lena, fall irretrievably behind in three shots. Lee laughs as he tries to mimic a few of her trick shots, and the contrast between now and the last time she had him in a bar demonstrating her expertise at the hustle is so stark, and she remembers the emotion behind it, the fear and anger wending through her spine, but the cause of that feeling is gone and she can't dredge it up. Even the light seems brighter tonight, so she pulls him to kiss her, and while their tongues are darting in and out of play with each other, she nails another center shot in the board behind her shoulder.
Tony and Lena and a small crowd of faces who have been watching her shots sends up a brief cheer, and when she pulls out of the kiss she bows, and brings Lee with her, grinning.
They spend the rest of the night drinking and talking and she's lulled by his voice, his stories. When she talks he seems to be in a similar state. And when she kisses him at the edge of midnight on the dance floor and trails her hand over the front of his pants, she doesn't even need to take the lead because he's grabbing her hand and they're tripping over their feet to leave the bar, pushing each other into walls on the walk home to slant their mouths against one another, smiling and laughing and daring touches that the military would frown against if they were caught.
Then they're tumbling through the door and she undoes his belt, button, zipper, pushes his pants down far enough to draw him out of his boxers through the fly and shoves him against the door. She's panting and they're both drunk and it's over almost too fast, but she's grinning the whole time.
~ ~
She wakes in bed in the pre-dawn light not entirely certain of the route they took to get there, slightly sore, entirely relaxed, content to lie with her leg hooked over Lee's, watch him breathing. He stirs and she says, "I'm going to have to requisition you for all of my vacations."
He smiles, sleep rapidly draining out of him. "I might be able to make that happen."
She props herself up on her elbow, darts a kiss and then stands and starts pulling on her pyramid gear. "We need to get another game in before your family abducts you."
He chuckles as he stands, and circles around her and plucks some clean clothes out of his bag. "You have some priorities, Starbuck."
She sticks his tongue out at him, and he replies in kind.
They stop at a coffee shop on their way to the court and when they're inside, playing, she employs the dirtiest of her tricks, and she's winning by a significant margin before he begins to counter with some dirty tricks of his own, and eventually she reaches around for the ball and ends up giving him a quick squeeze, and he retaliates by pinching her nipple and then she's panting for altogether unsportsmanlike reasons. "Gods, Lee, are we here to play a game or to frak?"
He quirks his head to the side and says, "You tell me."
She throws the ball at his chest, spreads her hands in the air in front of her and says, "Fine, we can play clean, but I get to keep my points."
"Then I'll just keep mine too," he replies, and before she can fully gather herself again, he's loaded four points and the ball is ricocheting into the hole.
"Oh, frak you," she says, and backhands his shoulder as they line up at the pitch.
Somewhere around two thirds of the way through their game, his phone starts ringing and from the pieces of the conversation she overhears, Zak's on the ground and heading their way.
Fifteen minutes later, when they're finishing up either the last or second-to-last set of the game, there's a slight snicking sound of the door opening. Kara belatedly realizes that she hesitated on a step just slightly somewhere between three and five seconds after, and that she's letting Lee score on her. They start the last set and pride and panic play a role in her precision and speed as she fully loads the ball before it ricochets into the goal.
Zak is clapping and comes over to hug his brother as she gathers the gear. He follows them into the locker room and he's telling Lee stories about the people he met on Gemenon during the sim camp. She'd really hoped that they could get one more frak in the showers after the game, but instead she shucks off her clothes in the cubicle and steps into the shower feeling cock-blocked. She wonders if she'll even be able to see Lee again before he leaves. Despite the circumstances of her and Zak's split, they'd agreed at some point in between orgasms that it doesn't seem right to tell Zak just yet, and Godsdamnit she is not spending any time with Carolanne and the Commander, because Zak and Lee have both told her how much they relish the opportunity themselves.
"Anyway, Lieutenant Mackleson said he'd flown some sort of demonstration show with you and thought you were pretty stellar, so if you want his number, Kara, I can hook you up."
Her chuckle turns into a slightly hacking cough as she inhales a few drops of water while wondering what Lee thought of his brother's suggestion.
"You okay?" comes Lee's tenor over the tile barrier, and there's a slight levity in his voice.
"Yeah, fine," she replies, still coughing, and with a final rinse, turns off the water and reaches for her towel.
She emerges from the stall to Zak lounging against the lockers, and when he sees her his eyes go wide and he stands up, gets his feet rapidly under him and with an apologetic face toward both Kara and his brother's still running shower stall says, "I'll meet you guys outside, okay?"
Her smirk speaks for itself, and the second the door closes behind him she rounds on Lee's stall, where he's rinsing his hair and shoves him against the tile wall. "How fast do you think he's expecting us to get changed?" She asks, tossing her towel on the slightly wet floor.
Lee's reply is inarticulate as she crushes her mouth against his, braces her foot against the soap ledge and grabs his hand to bring it against her.
"You're going to have to be fast." Her hand is working him gently, but the semi-public venue must be appealing to him because he's hard and ready so fast and coaxing her into readiness, and the moment her body replaces the shower water with something more slick and welcoming, his hips are making a scooping motion under hers and he's inside. His thumb is on her clit and his other hand palming over her breasts and she bounces on the ball of her foot while he finds his rhythm. They're both quietly panting and gasping and she hopes he's on alert for the sounds that would signal another person entering the room because she's certainly not. And then Lee's face is contorting beautifully in front of her slitted eyes and she's panting into his mouth, veins of pleasure spreading like wildfire through her body, exploding across her skin and her eyelids and she tips off of the edge and falls, shuddering, against him.
Kara is tugging Lee out of his stall toward her for a kiss just as the door opens and Zak says, "Lee, you left your whole bag of shit out on the court. Good thing I caught them before..." And Kara and Zak freeze.
But Lee is still caught in the momentum of her pull, and his cheek glances off of Kara's. He is matter-of-fact as he says, "Well, frak," and rights himself to stand protectively in front of her.
"Oh can it, Lee, he's seen it before," she says, stepping around him to reach for her bag. Zak is still frozen in place. Both men are completely still, staring at one another, and as she pulls on her bra, Kara squares up to Zak and puts her hands on her hips. "I'm frakking your brother. Hopefully you gathered that. Do you really want to do this now?"
Zak is still gaping, silent, but shakes his head slowly and then more rapidly before turning and exiting the room.
Lee lets out a low hiss of breath and reaches for Kara, who, now that Zak has gone is staring, catatonic, at the door. He brings his arms around her and tilts his head until their foreheads are touching, moves his hands from her waist to her shoulders to her neck, and her eyes are closed and breaths are heaving out of her like a tired bellows and her only coherent thought is of how fast she can leave the room, leave the planet, leave both of these men behind. Because maybe the heart she's been gearing up to crush is her own, because maybe she didn't say they shouldn't tell Zak because it'd be weird or he'd be jealous, but because she didn't want him to know. Because if he didn't know, maybe he'd realize that he wanted her back.
And Lee is saying something, murmuring softly, and his hands are on her shoulders, stroking, and his eyes are confused and gentle and maybe slightly scared. So maybe she's succeeded in crushing his heart too. Just what she said she wouldn't do. Would try not to do.
As she looks at him, something Zak's presence in the room had shaken loose in her snaps back into place, the knowledge of Lee as himself, as an entity independent of his brother, as a person with all the complicated connections and stuttering thoughts and clattering, changing perfection. His thumbs are making tiny circles on the tight tendons where her skull meets her back, and she's looking at him and the words he is saying are little nothings over and over like "It's okay" and "Shhhh" and "He'll be fine." And she melts into him. Just holding him, and he's trembling slightly, and doing her best not to break his heart feels that much easier.
She kisses him on the nose and then the mouth quickly, and says, "Well, this should be interesting." She's already dressed and packed up just as he begins to kick into gear and she sits in front of him, legs straddling the bench his bag is propped on while she waits for him to finish. "Good game today, by the way," she says.
"So how many did you let me score this time?" he asks, nudging her knee with his.
"I never let you score, Adama," she says, rising to meet him and hosting her bags onto her shoulder. "I encourage it."
~ ~
Zak is in the hall, looking a little bit shell-shocked, and Kara kicks his shin as she walks past him. "Rolling out, nugget." He snaps up, and follows after them. His car is parked next to hers, and she rolls her eyes at him as he climbs into his car. Lee is glancing back and forth between them, and Zak is almost glaring at his brother as Lee circles his brother's sedan to get in on the passenger side. Kara tosses her bags in the back of her jeep, locks up and slides into Zak's car. They drive about three minutes before Zak pulls jerkily into a parking spot at a park, throws open his door and stalks out.
"He's your brother," Kara says to Lee, and pats him on the shoulder. "You can have the first crack."
They get out of the car, and Kara leans against the hood while Lee strides toward Zak's perch on a picnic table about a dozen yards away. Lee sits down next to Zak, and she can see their lips moving, but the sound is completely muted, so she leans back against the windshield, closes her eyes, and waits.
She drifts off for enough time to leave her completely disoriented when she wakes, but she leaves her eyes closed, because she's warm and comfortable, and she wants to bask in it.
The wind has died down, and probably what woke her was the voices filtering across the field, and they're harsh and ricocheting through her like bullets. She'd thought, honestly thought, that Zak would be happy for her, but there's obviously so much more in play that she doesn't know about, and she thinks back to the first night she met Lee, and how she made the best mistake of her life that night, and it's bulging inside her like a blood clot how messed up it all is. Then, for a moment, the wind catches its breath and she hears a handful of words from Zak.
"You always…prove that you can do it better."
Then Lee "That's not what this is about."
The rest of their words scatter as the wind picks up, and in a few minutes, Lee's footfalls are approaching her. His hand is on her shoulder, and when she opens her eyes, he smiles. She sits up and he kisses her pointedly. "Your turn," he says, gesturing broadly toward his brother, who is still sitting sulkily on the picnic bench he and Lee talked on.
"Ugh, really? she asks, but she stands and strides purposefully toward Zak.
Their eyes meet and hold as she makes the final approach, and she sits on the table, her feet on the bench next to him, facing Lee.
Zak sighs, but doesn't say anything for a few moments, then, "You will recall that I told you he was a girlfriend-stealer."
She turns on him, incredulous. "I am not your girlfriend, Zak. I don't belong to you." And after a pause, "Lee didn't do this on his own."
"Kara, it's hard to believe he's not taking advantage of you."
"Do I look like I'm being taken advantage of?" Then he's silent. "Listen, Zak, it hurt, it hurt a lot, when, Gods, when you told me. And Lee was...he was like an anchor." Her hands are moving in front of her inarticulately, and she's not looking at him. "I don't think...I don't know how I would have gotten through it without him, and the...the things that he put up with..." The guy at the pyramid game, the bar fight, her swinging moods. It's like a maglock crushing her lungs whenever she thinks about it. She waits for him to say something, but he's silent. "I wanted this to happen before I even knew he was going to be here this week."
"Did you want him when we were together?"
"Zak."
"Did you?"
"What, do you think you have a right to be jealous about this? You ended it. You're with someone else. This is none of your business."
"I'm not jealous." He snaps, and then, "I still love you." He says it in such a plaintive way and the combination is so childish, so trite that she wants to punch him, nearly does.
"What, so I should be chaste for the rest of my life?"
"It didn't have to be my brother!" He's standing now, facing her, and she shoves him back, stands nose-to-nose with him.
"No, it didn't, but it was, and it's still none of your godsdamned business." She wants to rip into him, wants to make it clear that his claim on her is over. That they had a lot of good times, but it's not going to be the same between them again, and that that's a good thing. And then she remembers how she felt when he saw her and Lee and realizes that he had nobody to snap him out of it, that maybe he didn't know how or where to snap to, and that maybe he just needs some time. That in the end she loves him too. Not in the same way as she thought she did before, but love nevertheless, in its full, cataclysmic glory.
"Fine."
And he's turned, about to walk away when she says, "Zak." He turns toward her again with his face falling in on itself like a black hole. "I'm really happy, and I need you to give this a chance." She doesn't even realize it but she's worrying her lip with her teeth, and the look in her eyes must tell him something, because in the moment it takes for him to scan her features, he's already stepping forward, already wrapping his arms around her shoulders like a steel band, and she buries her nose in his shoulder, and it's comforting and warm and home. Even though she knows now that it's not everything, not even close, it's good and it's sweet and it's a whole thing, this embrace, this moment, this man.
She sniffles just enough as he pulls away that he says, "Don't get weepy on me, Thrace."
"Got something in my eye."
"Pollen's a bitch this time of year." Noisily dragging air in through his nose, he checks her with his hip and cuffs her around the shoulder in a way she's uncertain how she ever mistook for romantic.
When they reach him, Lee is sitting on the hood, eyes guarded, and Kara grasps his hand and squeezes before swinging into the front seat next to Zak.
"So how'd that sim time go?" she asks him, and for the rest of the ride, she pays a nearly exclusive attention to Zak. Excepting only the fact that her hand has wiggled into the space between her seat and the car door to reach back for Lee's.
Word Count: ~10k
Pairing: Kara/Lee, Zak/OMC
Rating: M
Summary:Kara's surprised at how much she misses him.
A/N: Enormous thanks to lanalucy for beta. And we definitely have at least one more piece, possibly two (does that sound familiar?).
Her office, six feet wide by four feet deep, is quiet on a Friday afternoon. She's marking papers, drinking coffee, wishing for something a bit stronger.
Heel, girl, she tells herself, takes a few breaths. The widening gap in her chest is yawning open, grasping out ahead of her, and she's not sure if she can leave the building, or even the room, without doing something stupid.
The sims complex is three steps outside, dorms four blocks south, bars a mile west and Lee seventeen jumps away. Eighteen? It's hard to say. When he was here, it had been so easy to get caught up in him, his scent, his voice, the glowing gravity of his smile. And now he's gone, and she's here.
She closes her binder in frustration. It's been three months, two hours, five evals, and her thoughts keep skipping to back to him. It's infuriating.
She wants to call Zak, to have someone to talk to about this, to stop bouncing from normal, surface, functional, to her deeper self, the one who dwells and worries and yearns. Yearning is not her default state and she's sick of it. And it's been long enough. She's seen Zak out of uniform, off campus hand-in-hand with a tall drink of water, laughing. It's been long enough.
She dials, pauses before hitting send, and waits as the phone rings.
Zak picks up, "Kara, um, I...hey."
"Hey. Want to grab beers?"
He's silent for a fraction of a second, then "Yeah, um, let me...where?"
"Red Door. I'm going to head over now."
"Okay. I'll, um, I'll see you there."
She hangs up and laughs, because it's suddenly apparent how much she could frak with him when he gets there. Not that she will. Maybe. But she could.
~ ~
Inside the bar is like she's heard people describe a cozy sweater: warm, enveloping, comfortable, safe. She orders a beer, settles on a barstool. She's halfway through it when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and turns, smiling, to see a face of Zak that is more peaceful, more contented than she's ever seen him. The scathing comment she had planned dies on her lips. And now it's her pausing, grasping at straws. She wishes somehow that she had been honed by his absence, perfected, strengthened.
The thought is gone as soon as it arrives. "Zak." She stands, wraps her arms around his startled shoulders and breathes him in. His hands are still at his sides, and maybe that was the most surprising thing she could have done on seeing him. And seeing him is good, deep down. He's a friend, and she's been missing him in ways she didn't realize. "It's good to see you."
The smile on his face blooms like a sunrise, and she's smiling too.
"It's good to see you, too." He echoes back, and points at her drink. "What'cha having?"
"Whatever was on tap."
He motions to the bartender, points at Kara's drink and holds up his first finger, nods, sits.
"So," he says, reaching across the bar to grab a napkin. "How are you doing?" He tears off the corner of the napkin, and she smiles at the nervous tic.
"You know, busy time of year, lots of final evals to turn in...loving life, basically." Her face is sardonic, and he grins before he realizes he's doing it. The bartender sets his beer on the partially demolished napkin. "You?"
"Unsurprisingly, the same." He lifts up his glass toward her in a mock salute, and downs a few swallows. "Summer plans?" He asks.
"Flying, painting, and getting shitfaced." She takes a swig of her beer and smirks at him. "You?"
"Wow, I wish. Heading to Gemenon for some time in their sim suites, then a family reunion right before we start back up."
And she hopes her face hasn't lit up like her entire nervous system, because "Lee's coming back so soon?" is out of her mouth before she can stop it.
"And my father." Zak says, and the war of his face is fascinating.
"That excited, eh?"
"You haven't met my father." He says, and sighs. "They do not get along."
Her tongue skips to the edge of her mouth. She nods, makes what she hopes are noncommittal and curious noises.
"It's been a disaster basically since my parents divorced." He says, and shrugs. "I never know what to expect when we're all in a room together, but…" He tips the last of his beer down his throat, sets the glass down, and smiles. "It's nice to see them both, anyway."
He holds up his glass for another beer and gets hers as well, then they stand together, in a pattern they formed when skittering fingers and hard kisses were par for the course, and make their way to a Pyramid board. She digs a few cubits out of her pocket, and they continue to chat for a few minutes while the ball descends from the mechanics that trap it behind the goal.
She's six games up and he's pouting when a tall, blond man with cheekbones like lightning strikes wends his way through the crowd toward them. And he slides his hand onto Zak's hip and Zak shifts his body into this man's body for a kiss. Kara throws the ball harder than necessary into the goal, and the lights flash her seventh win. When the two men separate, and Zak looks at her, the flush that spreads across his face and his utterly mortified expression make her laugh so hard that she's folded over at the waist, clinging to the tall table they're standing next to. And she maybe elongates the laugh for a few seconds longer, long enough to dismiss the triple flares of frustration, jealousy and bitterness that she planned to hide, but when she stands, it's with a cockeyed smile, and a punch to Zak's shoulder, and a hand outstretched to the tall man. "Kara Thrace."
And now this man, too, is blushing, stuttering. "Ethan Mathis." He says, and then "I believe I'm in your Basic Flight unit next semester, Lieutenant Thrace."
She nods, quirks the corners of her mouth slightly downward and tilts her head slightly as she glances at Zak, wonders exactly how much about the history of this moment the blond man knows, decides it doesn't matter. "Good to meet you, Cadet Mathis. I look forward to kicking your ass." She takes his hand, squeezes, and releases.
Zak is retrieving the ball from the board, and he hands it to Ethan with a raised eyebrow. "See if you can beat her, I'm about done with losing for the night."
Ethan's grin in Zak's direction is so brightly affectionate that a feeling of utter desolation blossoms in the hollow of Kara's throat. "Get us some more drinks, would you, Adama? Winning makes me thirsty."
The eighth win is no more sweet for the bitterness it's covering.
~ ~
She's more tipsy than shitfaced when she opens her door that evening. But she's affected enough by the evening and the residue of bitterness about Zak's gleaming new love life that she flips on her com-linked console and taps until she can see the com availability on Columbia, and her heart beats slightly faster at the green box next to Adama, Lee.
He's selected and ringing before she can second-guess herself. She conveys the appropriate information to the personnel com officer, and waits. It's a ritual fairly familiar to her, the green flashing light on the bunkroom phone, a pilot in the room picking up to relay the call down the line based on the squadron's knowledge of which of their crewmates is where, picking up in the gym and calling out another crew's name, the phonee hollering out their ETA to a com closet, running down the corridors to make it. She waits, emotions churning, and the officer on the other end of the line says "Lieutenant Adama will be on the line in three minutes."
"Thank you."
The line goes silent but for the periodic clicks to let her know it's still live. Then Lee's voice, "Lieutenant Adama." And every ion of anger and fear slides out of her.
Her voice is more girl, more joyful than she would have preferred as she says "Lee."
His chuckle is so quickly followed by her name, so full of his smile that she sits in silence, enjoying just the knowledge that they are both experiencing this moment together.
"I've missed you." Nearly gets caught in her throat before hopscotching its way out.
"I've missed you too." He says, then. "How are you doing?"
And she's too tipsy to not tell the truth. "Completely frakking insane."
"So, normal?"
A laugh through her nose, biting her lip. "Yeah, why not."
"What's going on?"
"I met Zak's boyfriend tonight." She says, and his gentle murmur of assent, of sympathy cuts her down to nothing. He doesn't say anything, but she can hear him breathing, and it anchors her. "I didn't think it'd piss me off this much."
"It's okay." He says, and it's the final word. It is okay. And she feels better, grounded. She feels different in response to his voice: calm, sane, loved.
And the feeling, the caressing soft tenor of his voice picks her up on a wave, distributes her on a shore where she wants to be the same to him. She looks around her apartment, sees her efforts of the past few months, furniture rearranged, bathroom painted, new blanket for her bed. Those labors that seemed necessary, that seemed like a step away from Zak, toward future and opportunity, now yank her away from those few gleaming moments with Lee: falling asleep against his chest watching pyramid, staggering home and helping each other down the stairs, collapsing fully clothed into bed with him, sliding past each other in the bathroom, seeing him in the shower, hand gliding over himself, biting his lip.
And she's biting her own, breathing harder, and suddenly this call has gotten inappropriate. She guides the conversation to other topics, asks him about his flight, begins to make herself jealous of the deep space maneuvers he's enjoying on a twice-daily basis. Eventually the dull tone that signals to both of them that their call time is nearly up begins to sound in the background.
"I...uh...when do you get in?"
"Tuesday after next." He says, and there's a laugh in his voice. "Zak'll still be on Gemenon and my dad doesn't get in until Thursday. You free?"
She leans back in her chair, grins. "Am I ever."
The tone gets louder, and he says, "Want to pick me up?"
"Sure."
"Then I'll see you at 0500."
"Oh you frakker."
She can barely hear him over the tone, and thinks his voice has maybe cascaded back to tenderness as he says, "I'll see you then."
She hums to herself as the call ends.
~ ~
His eyes are open, too alert for this early in the morning, but she sees him before he sees her. She's holding a cup of coffee, another sits next to her feet and she doesn't leave her position slouched against the wall until he's standing directly in front of her. She glances up over the rim of her cup and nudges the coffee she bought for him with the toe of her boot. He bends down to take it, sips, sighs. "Thanks."
"No problem." She says, then, "We're going back to my place and then I'm going back to bed." She looks in his eyes, and of course they're just as puffy-rimmed and red as hers, and she tugs his bag from his hand. "You can join me."
When she pulls in, he's dead asleep on the seat. She shoves him none-too-gently and says "We're here." And now he's dragging himself out of the seat, looping a bag over his shoulder, and by the time they're starting up the stairs, he again looks awake. Nice skill to have.
She unlocks her door, strides down the stairs, strips off her BDUs and is in bed before he's down the stairs. His bag hits the floor and there's no more sounds of motion. "Lee, get your ass in here." She says, and his feet drag only slightly as he complies.
~ ~
Kara awakens mid-morning with her leg slung over his and pressing against a part of his anatomy that she suspects was distinctly different in size and state when they collapsed into sleep several hours before, and she isn't complaining, but this wasn't quite how she had planned to seduce him, so she carefully removes her leg, nudges his scalp with her upper arm and folds her hands beneath her head.
He awakens like an unfolding book: eyes, smile, shoulders moving in turn, and the heavy-eyed face he turns on her shoots a jolt of lust through her. She could think of worse ideas than swinging her leg over his hips and sliding down his body.
Lee sits up, bends one leg just slightly and reaches for his toes. "What time is it?"
The evasive maneuver would probably have fooled her if she wasn't already aware of his state, but she sits up, turns to look at the clock. "Oh nine thirty." She turns back to him, and his eyes are still so firmly on her that she can't help but bite her lip and cant her head sideways. "Anything you want to do while you're in town?"
"Well I have been dragging my ass to the pyramid court these past few months, so I wouldn't mind a chance to score a couple honest goals on you."
And maybe he knows that she let him get a few past her on their first go, because she's a teacher, and a good one, and knows that winning a little makes you yearn to win more. So she leans over, kisses him on the nose, and swings out of bed, grabbing a pair of shorts and a tank on her way toward the bathroom. "I'm still going to kick your ass." She says, and leaves the door open as she runs some water on her toothbrush. He remains in bed in that camouflaging posture, and she smirks at herself in the mirror, runs more water, shoves the door closed with her foot, and hopes that she catches him at it when she emerges.
He's digging through his bag instead, smoothing wrinkles in his blues and his BDUs and she bumps his shoulder with her hip, smiles, moves to the kitchen to start another pot of coffee.
Eventually he emerges, looking clean cut and Apollo all over, and a corner of her mouth quirks up just slightly as she imagines how she'll be dirtying him up over the next days, hopefully in a few creative ways.
"So," She says. "I've been waiting on those scores, Adama, how've you been doing on the Columbia; Pyramid brackets?"
He groans, returns to her bedroom and tosses her a tiny notebook as he emerges again, grabs a cup of coffee and leans against the counter, looking out the window.
The book catalogues no fewer than twenty games - scores, durations, names of his opponents, what shift it was on, and a pair of stars next to the two wins he's managed. Neither of the losers had ever beat him before, and they don't show up in the book again, but there's a gradually decreasing margin on every repeat opponent. It's meticulous, and scary, and Lee in a way that looms over her, casting a wide, gentle shadow. "Wow, you are such a tightass."
He glares at her over his coffee.
"I mean, no one's saying it's not an effective strategy sometimes, but, Lords, Lee, it's Pyramid, not war." She sets down the book, and he sets down his coffee.
"What makes you think this isn't war?" He says, eyebrows raised.
A laugh explodes out of her, and her smile is slow and cocky and everything she knows about herself and the game, "Oh, Apollo, you're never going to win against me."
And the look on his face is so tender that she wants to take it back, because there are more ways of winning, and he's already getting dangerously close.
~ ~
In their second game, he scores five honest points, two gimmes and one feint-pivot-lunge point that he'd thoroughly set up two times before. While she could have kept it, it was so demonstrative of his practice that she let it through. And he's not a bad opponent. He's likely to be a much better one much faster than she expected, and she'd expected a lot. Once the game is over, she pulls him over to the left board. "I want forty left round-hand points before we're done for the day."
He sets to it, and she takes the other side and picks up the pace so that they're racing before he's done.
"Nice work." She says, retrieving the basket of balls behind the goal, she shoves it at him and begins stripping off her arm guard.
"Thanks." He's doing the same, teeth on the glove tips, precise movements undoing latches and velcro, and he'd brought his own guard to the game, which gave her a thrill, because it's frakking hard to get that sort of thing when you're in deep space. He's been taking the game seriously.
He's spiraling his wrist, probably the first time he's noticing that little muscle on the the outside that guides the direction of the flick. It's not a muscle a pilot uses, since a stick isn't a ball, no matter how often they call it. And he would have made two more shots against her if he'd been more precise in aiming them.
"Again tomorrow?" She asks, and his grin says it all. He rucks the gear bag onto his shoulder, and they wend through the halls to the locker room.
Towels, soap, sandals, showers next to one another, and she's shouting over the rushing water and the barrier. "That was a nice feint you set up, very sophisticated."
A laugh. "So you saw through my one play."
"That's what I do, Leland, I told you, it's all about knowing what your opponent wants. It was ambitious, though. Well executed." A pause. "The other 90% of your game still needs work."
He laughs. "What was that thing you did, eight or nine times, where I'd have you in front of me, and then you'd bounce it off the A3 corner and suddenly you're behind me and in the goal?"
"I'm not telling you my plays, nugget."
"Well, keep doing them that often and I'll know them soon enough anyway."
She laughs, because he's describing somewhere between three and five different plays. Maybe she'll show him one of them tomorrow,see how observant he really is.
They're both done with the shower in the regulation eight minutes, and they suit up in civvies side-by-side. "I'm starving."
"Burgers," he says.
"What, the compressed protein strips on Columbia aren't doing it for you anymore?"
"Much as I did join the fleet for the food…no."
"Got anywhere in mind?"
"You choose."
In the car, they roll the windows down, and she puts something guttural and instrumental on the radio, looks over at his enormous grin, and guns it.
~ ~
The best burger joint around isn't at all around, but nearing the edges of the city, and she gets them there in twenty minutes, dodging in and out of the light midday traffic. The risks of a ticket are high, but driving is five steps removed from flying, and it feels good to be moving tangibly forward.
"So, I saw you got Gripkey on Columbia."
"Tinder? Yeah, he's one of the nuggets they took on Orange Squadron."
"How is he in the air?"
Lee raises his eyebrow. "Special interest?"
"Nice to know if my students are succeeding."
"He's a little green, but the cleanest green we've got in the roster."
"He's a good pilot, but a pissant."
"I wasn't going to say it."
"Even odds you were the same your first tour on a battlestar."
"I'd have thought I'd get at least three to one odds on that one."
She barks out a laugh, "Maybe you would."
His arm is just peeking through the open window, and his arm hairs are bristling. It's not a feeling you ever get on a battlestar, wind. The movement of air from fans, hissing through CO2 scrubbers, the breeze your body creates from running, yes, but not a pure, honest gale knocking the air from your lungs. It's as clear as day that he misses the planet when he's in space, and she's been missing space since she's been on the planet.
"Sucks to know what it's like to live interstellar, huh?" He prods, looking over at her. "Can't fly on the planet, can't live on a battlestar."
"You're the philosopher, Lee, I just miss shooting things."
"Oh come on, Starbuck, you didn't get your talent by sitting around, I bet you clocked triple the required sim hours during basic."
"Hundred ninety," she corrects.
"I stand corrected," he says. "I didn't realized I'd underachieved so much." She cocks an eyebrow at him. "One-forty," he answers. It was probably the biggest list of runs in his corps, but what else had she had to do? No family time gumming up the works, at least there were a few benefits to show.
"Don't forget that you had twice as long to get there."
"Oh, can it, you teach at the Academy, you know it's not the same as flight school."
She smirks, because she does, but she's missed yanking his chain, hearing his voice take on that slightly exasperated tone. He's so even keel, a straight shooter, and she'd put even odds that at least a quarter of his squadron thinks of him as a pissant, but there's so much under the surface that she could drown in him. That she wants to.
He's silent for a moment then: "Do you know what Zak's at?"
"Forty-three."
He shifts, looks out the window, and suddenly she feels like she's driving alone. He's ice, mist, gone. Then: "He doesn't love flying." And his eyes are on her, boring into her. "Doesn't even like it, I don't think."
"Then why do it?"
"Our dad…" An inarticulate gesture, a sigh. "He's been really insistent about it since we were kids."
"Sorry." And she is, because she knows how it feels to not be totally sure if you're in it because you want to be. Because she loves flying, but what would she be doing if her mother hadn't been so gung-ho about the military? If she'd had a chance to think that achieving something, being someone, could be accomplished without a chain of command, without one-upmanship against someone who wasn't competing, without pips on her collar and a piece of paper and head held high. They're both silent, he's looking out the window, she at the road, glancing over at him occasionally, the strong profile of his face, his shirt clinging to his skin, baring hints of his muscle beneath. "Did you ever want to do anything else?"
Then he's looking at her, and she yanks her eyes from his, focuses on the road, focuses on anything but the shock of his face as she asked it. "I don't know."
"Yeah, me neither."
Silence again, this time longer. And she wants to touch him, wants him to know, though she could never say it, that she understands this burden, this weight of expectation and doubt. Her hand leaves the gear shift to rest over his clenched hand, and it stays there, and they stay silent, until she has to move it to downshift onto their gradual glide onto surface streets.
And these are things Zak never told her. He let her assume that he was in flight corps for his own reasons, that he was driven to succeed, and it's only been since they split up, since he mentioned his extra sim time on Gemenon, that she took the time to check his log of successful sim hours.
"Zak is never going to be a pilot, Lee," she says, and the air between them hangs. She could say more, but he's breathing so shallowly, so slowly that she's afraid she's broken him.
Then, "I know." He shakes his head. "I know."
She's pulling into a parking spot, and so she kills the engine. "You're in for a treat, Adama."
He grins, but there's nothing behind it, and now she knows that he doesn't bounce back quite as quickly as she can. Thinks that maybe it's a good thing. Wishes she hadn't said it in the first place.
She's terse with the host who seats them, and they sit in silence, perfunctorily staring at their menus, sipping water. He leans back in his chair, and his eyes are locked on her, searching her face. "I wonder where we'd be if we hadn't loved flying."
She hopes he never thinks this again. If he hadn't loved flying, he'd be fine, an officer, LSO, coms, Admiral's Aide. Her, a marine? If she was lucky. Deck crew? Munitions tech? Below his notice, that's for frakking sure. "Let's not, okay." She says, and lifts her hand to summon the waitress.
"Tap beer and a cheeseburger." She says, and gestures at Lee.
"Ambrosia on the rocks and a cheeseburger."
"All right, either of you want salad, onion rings…"
"No, thanks." Lee says, smiling in that clever, joking way he has.
"Well let me know if you need anything."
"Wilco."
Then his eyes are back on her, serious again, unsmiling. "What's up, Kara?"
She rolls her eyes. "I'm serious. All work and no play, Leland."
He grins. "And what do you call this morning?"
"I seem to recall someone's meticulous notes and challenges to war."
"Oh come on."
"I'm just saying, you're the one who can't have fun."
He balls up his napkin, lobs it toward her. She dips her fingers into her water and flicks it at him. He retaliates, and by the time their drinks land on their table, they're both splattered with water, holding down laughter, and he asks the waitress, "Can I get a milkshake?"
"Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, banana?"
"Chocolate," he says, and when the waitress turns, he sticks his tongue out at Kara, and she leans across the table, snags his drink, bolts down half of it, and sticks her tongue out at him.
Then he's sucking her tongue into his mouth, his lips on hers, his breath moist and warm on her cheek. And her hands are on the back of his head, and they're plunging headlong into each other. She's grasping at his neck, teasing his bottom lip with her teeth, and his fingers are on her forearms, gentle, caressing. She opens her eyes to find his also open, languid and intense and so blue. She can't breathe, can't move.
He pulls away, leans back in his chair, drags air into his lungs. He's far away, feels so far away, and she's still half on top of the table, edge of the linoleum digging into her ribcage, panting.
His hand reaches toward her, and he runs a finger down her arm before picking up his glass, downing the other half himself. "I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have done that."
She leans back in her chair, eyes still locked on him, and attempts her most wicked, lascivious grin. "Nothing to regret on my account." And his grin is anything but wicked, it's that smile of his that explodes within her like a viper launch, that crackles heat in her bones. She tilts her head, smile still on her face, raises one eyebrow and says, "Maybe you do know how to have fun."
"I could show you more, if you want." He seems almost ashamed at the line, but this is the Lee she cherishes. Lee worried and playing along and kind.
All she can say is, "Yes."
His foot under the table bumps hers, and they don't talk much for the rest of lunch, but what they do say is innuendo and chiding and her head is spinning with desire by the time she picks up the bill and they walk out to her car.
Her hand is sneaking under his shirt as they cross the parking lot, edging toward his hip bone, and when they're in spitting distance of her car, his muscles are jumping under her fingers, and she backs against the passenger door, yanking him into her with his waistband. She's nipping at his upper lip, and his tongue is doing wonderful things to the sensitive flesh of her bottom lip, and she's enjoying all of the sensations of him against her, hard muscle, cold metal, smooth fabric, the slight stubble of hours. He's laser focused on her, shifts their thighs so they're interlocked and coaxes her head back to scrape his teeth across her jugular. His hands are at her hips, edging up. Her hips are shifting, tilting, finding that perfect point of friction and then his mouth is back on hers and they're falling into each other in a frenzy of action and stillness, and it's minutes or hours or eons later that he's panting into her ear. "I need...."
"Yes."
She levers up on her toes, wraps one leg around his waist, whips the other to meet it, moves her hips against his and they're both making guttural noises and her hands are between them, reaching toward his belt, his fly. "Not here." His hands are under her thighs, supporting her as he steps away from the car, and with a disappointed groan she uncoils from his body, settles back onto the ground and unlocks the car.
She verges on breaking land speed records on her way back to her apartment, and they're barely through the door when her hand is down his pants and he's stripping her out of her tank, and she's backing down the stairs, tugging his shirt up to expose his abs. He's pressing her against the railing, and she's never felt anything more than she feels him with her at that moment. He's elemental to her, rippling through the core of her being. And she's beyond the flow she hits when she's flying or playing Pyramid, because she's not jockeying with him for pleasure. They are one entity, and every touch clatters through her like electricity.
When it's over, his fingers trail across her ribcage, body half draped on the stairs, he's smiling at the ceiling, and she's smiling into his shoulder, and neither of them needs to say or do anything.
~ ~
She wakes in the late-dusk, bare assed and relaxed and warm and sore and hungry again. Lee's shoulder is a nice pillow, firm, curved, a pleasing crook to tuck her chin in. She shifts to look at him, and his eyes are open, meandering lazily over her body, and when they come to rest on her face, he smiles that smile of his, and she moves to kiss him.
"So," he says, smiling as they pull back. "You don't waste any time."
"Not much time to waste."
"Fair." His hands are stroking her back, her waist, her hips, her thighs, and he seems so calm, contented, happy. Sated in a way that she doesn't know if she's experienced before in someone she's just frakked.
Zak was always frenetic after frakking, giving her backrubs, wanting to get shit done - she's thinking it before she can stop herself. She rolls off of Lee, sits up, takes a deep breath. "Frak" comes out on a sigh, exasperated.
"What?" He's propped on one elbow, the other hand on her back, and this is so unfamiliar to her, this after. The only frame of reference she has for frakking this man is his brother and that seems completely and unequivocally wrong. She's frakked men in bars, in their apartments, sometimes even in hers, but it's been transactional: door, bed, condom, missionary, gone. Those interactions are so far removed from this: desperate, on her apartment floor, after dinner, with a man she enjoys talking to, who she wants to frak again in a few hours, the next day, every day.
She doesn't know what happens next.
But his hand on her back is nice, tracing circles, and it's effortless to look over at him, smile, dip in for another kiss, another. Lee maneuvers her so that she's sitting on the bottom step, and he's above her. He slides down her body, licking carefully over each mole and crevice and around the curves of her breasts, downward, fingers dragging almost incidentally over her nipples. She presses her chest upward, hungry for his touch. Her fingers can reach his chest, then his arms, then his shoulders and she's surprised to find him looking up at her from between her thighs. "Can I?"
And she laughs, abs jumping with contractions between them, smiles a bit arrogantly, nods just slightly. The moment his eyes unlock from hers, other pieces of them lock together and she's agog at the newness of the sensation, because Zak never - no, stop it. It's warm, and soft, and his tongue, "Oh gods, right there." His tongue is so clever, his lips and the absolute slick chaos of it is maddening, because it's one thing layering on top of the next, and it's overall and general and sensation and then it's pointed and sharp and pulling her taut and near to breaking. After a while she loses her mind in him, her legs spasming outward and back together, clenching, twitching. Her whole body is loose and tight, "Lee, oh, hmmm, yes." And quivering and weak and his tongue, still his tongue and his lips and the suction and the small puffs of air from his breathing and the complete inability to touch him push her over the edge and she's a nearly invertebrate pile of disjointed, nominally human parts.
Her head leaves her control with a thunk against the stairs, and she's beyond caring, but he slides up her body, murmurs something soft and hoists her up against him. "Bed? Sofa?" They take the four steps to the sofa and he falls as gently as he can on top of her, she feels him hard and pulsing against her stomach and moves one leg so her calf is dangling off the sofa, finds his hips with her hands to push him downward so that their warm, wet places touch, and then her hand is between them, guiding him into position, and his hips buck into her, driving home. It's a completely different, but still entirely encompassing sensation, and she looks up at his face, eyes closed, concentrating, beautiful, twitching a smile every few seconds, and kisses him, keeps kissing him, shifting her hips, adjusting the angle until he says "Nnngh, yes, Kara, frak, Gods, yes."
One of her hands finds his, guides it to her breast, and he's kneading, stroking, gasping against her mouth. And her pleasure is cresting again, sharp jolts of it with each motion of his body against hers, each stroke, each caress like lightning. And then he's trembling, his body melting except for the minute contractions of his pelvis into hers.
And it's easy now to relax into sleep again, brushing a hand across the slightly tousled back of his head, his breaths gradually shifting from frenzied toward sonorous.
~ ~
They wake again near midnight, and it's not clear what awoke them, but he's groggy when he says, "You have a blanket?"
"Bed," is her only reply, and they move together to her bedroom, her sheets cold and crisp. She slings a leg over him, pillows her head on his shoulder, and drops off again.
~ ~
In the morning she wakes to the smell of bacon and coffee, and she's glad that he's taken the lead, because she'd have been hopeless at figuring out what to do next. She gets up, drags on a bra and a pair of sweats and wanders into the kitchen to find him wearing a pair of boxers and taking a swig from a cup of coffee while he pokes at the pan with a fork.
"I see you found my stash."
"It's definitely the good stuff."
"Maybe I'll let you take a few back with you."
"Oh trust me, it wouldn't even make it through the first leg of my flight."
He puts the fork down on a folded towel, and brings his coffee over to her, wraps his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her into him for a kiss that goes on slightly too long for the bacon, which smells just burnt when he pulls back, hands her the coffee and takes two steps toward the stove.
"You mind washing a couple plates?" He asks, and she wonders how crazy he's being driven by the detritus strewn about the kitchen.
"Sure." She says, then "You making anything else?"
"Do you have anything else?"
"Ah, good point." She trails a hand across his back as she passes him. "Toast?"
"Sure."
Her hands are in the soapy water, getting a sinkload clean while she's at it, and he's humming tunelessly, and it feels so homey, so like Zak and her making breakfast on a weekend morning that she nearly forgets it's not, except that when she looks at him and he's looking back at her, there's something more there. And every time she thinks it it's like a ton of bricks in her stomach.
Because Zak made her happy. Completely, mind-bogglingly happy, and it feels like she's getting a case of whiplash to believe that, at the same time as she fraks his brother and knows that it's better, knows that it's more. Knows that her definition of love as a child was proven wrong by a flight student who wasn't even her first boyfriend, knows that that definition of love was shattered by Lee, knows that what she's feeling now is a pale shadow of what feels possible.
And the drive that kept her going in pyramid, that keeps her going in the cockpit, is not a safe game to play when it comes to the sparks her body sets off when it slams into Lee's. Because he's not a competitor, not an enemy, and she's been known to break hearts and shatter dreams. The cresting wave that last night began - that today is flowing into - tells her that someday she'll want him to feel like he can't live without her. And she will never be able to promise that she won't make him do it anyway.
But another truth about her is that that doesn't have to matter. Because the circular logic behind being someone who crushes dreams is knowing that you can. That you can do it and get away with it and live through it and be fine and do it again. He has a towel tucked into his waistband, his eyes half glancing at the TV he's flipped on to the news of the colonies, his profile, his smile turning toward her periodically.
And she promises herself at that moment to try not to break him. With Zak she'd thought that it would be easy, because he gave her everything. Zak was like jumping from a void of space into a galaxy. And Lee was like jumping into a solar orbit. Bright, large, encompassing, terrifying.
She dries two plates, brings them to him and sticks her still slightly wet finger into his ear. He instinctively pulls away, and she snatches the fork from his hand, sets it on a plate and yanks him bodily into her. Their lips are together and his body against hers sends desire sputtering through her. She pulls away and starts dividing the bacon onto their plates as she says, "I want to frak you all day."
He laughs. "That might be a bit challenging for me."
"Wimp."
"Adult human male, I think is the phrase you were looking for."
"So you're not interested?"
They're at the table, and he's taking slow bites, savoring as he chews. "I'm interested, there are just a few logistical challenges."
She hums patronizingly, a near constant stream of bread and meat making its way from her plate to her mouth. Her foot is sliding up his thigh.
"But we can certainly try."
So they do.
~ ~
They come up for air close to dinnertime, and they're both used to extreme wear on their bodies or they'd be limping toward the bar three blocks from Kara's apartment. She asks for a booth and says they'll wait for it at the bar, where she orders four glasses of a light beer on happy hour and downs one like water. "Electrolytes." She says, shoving his into his hand.
"Oh come on."
"Well, it's not a banana, but it's better than nothing."
He has no fewer than four distinct red splotches between his ears and the open collar of his civilian shirt, and she's sporting something closer to ten. He brushes a finger over one of the more violent looking ones and says, "I didn't think you'd bruise so easily."
Her lips twist in a pained smile that she tries to paint as cocky, and she doesn't reply.
It's a fleet bar, full of pilots and marines and officers on leave sleeping in barracks, and he nods at several faces she doesn't know as they both lean against the bar. The faces she's familiar with are mostly on leave themselves, vacationing in the Saggitaron islands, or visiting distant family. He lets out a burst of laughter as another familiar face walks through the door. "What is this place?" he asks her, "The beating heart of the planet?"
"Cheapest drinks near base and a military discount," she replies. "Half of the reason I signed my lease."
One of the faces he recognized approaches them. The man shakes Lee's hand and reaches out for Kara's. "Tony Spalta, Lieutenant Kara Thrace."
She reaches behind them for Lee's second beer and hands it to Tony. "Welcome to Delphi."
Tony tips his glass toward her and smiles rakishly, and Lee moves his free hand to rest on Kara's shoulder. It's more casual than she would have anticipated that he could accomplish, but the hand doesn't move as Tony tells her he's a tactical officer off Columbia and orders them all another round. He asks what she does and when she answers he looks around comically "There's a joke there: A T.O. walks into pilot bar..."
"Bearing 183, carom 224," Lee finishes and Kara is surprised to find herself laughing alongside Tony.
She leans in and whispers "Who knew you were funny?" Then, to Tony "What brings you to Delphi?" And Tony launches into a well-rehearsed spiel on the irritation of acuity testing, the bureaucracy involved in moving between specialty areas, and then winks as he closes with the admission that he doesn't mind getting planetside.
She's grinning and leaning just slightly into Lee's hand on her shoulder, and Tony says, "I guess I don't have to ask why you're here, huh, Apollo?"
Kara's eyes meet his, and his slightly panicked expression at the question is like a blank slate for her to write on. "I don't know if my draw is quite that strong," she says with a wry smile, "Lee's in town for a family thing."
"Wait, and you're just fringe benefits?"
Tony's expression is so incredulous that Lee lets out a little chuckle. "She exaggerates," he says and turns his head to brush his lips over her temple, a move that's so private her heart flips in her chest and she pulls away just slightly.
Tony makes a few more jokes before he excuses himself and leaves them to their devices. They order sandwiches and make their way to the back of the bar once they're in hand. They take up a casual game at a pyramid board and Kara's doing trick shots and they're laughing and getting drunk. Tony swings back, clearly several sheets to the wind, arm wrapped around the waist of a girl Kara thinks is probably a cadet, and challenges them to a pair board.
She's been coaching Lee for ten minutes, and Tony and the girl, Lena, fall irretrievably behind in three shots. Lee laughs as he tries to mimic a few of her trick shots, and the contrast between now and the last time she had him in a bar demonstrating her expertise at the hustle is so stark, and she remembers the emotion behind it, the fear and anger wending through her spine, but the cause of that feeling is gone and she can't dredge it up. Even the light seems brighter tonight, so she pulls him to kiss her, and while their tongues are darting in and out of play with each other, she nails another center shot in the board behind her shoulder.
Tony and Lena and a small crowd of faces who have been watching her shots sends up a brief cheer, and when she pulls out of the kiss she bows, and brings Lee with her, grinning.
They spend the rest of the night drinking and talking and she's lulled by his voice, his stories. When she talks he seems to be in a similar state. And when she kisses him at the edge of midnight on the dance floor and trails her hand over the front of his pants, she doesn't even need to take the lead because he's grabbing her hand and they're tripping over their feet to leave the bar, pushing each other into walls on the walk home to slant their mouths against one another, smiling and laughing and daring touches that the military would frown against if they were caught.
Then they're tumbling through the door and she undoes his belt, button, zipper, pushes his pants down far enough to draw him out of his boxers through the fly and shoves him against the door. She's panting and they're both drunk and it's over almost too fast, but she's grinning the whole time.
~ ~
She wakes in bed in the pre-dawn light not entirely certain of the route they took to get there, slightly sore, entirely relaxed, content to lie with her leg hooked over Lee's, watch him breathing. He stirs and she says, "I'm going to have to requisition you for all of my vacations."
He smiles, sleep rapidly draining out of him. "I might be able to make that happen."
She props herself up on her elbow, darts a kiss and then stands and starts pulling on her pyramid gear. "We need to get another game in before your family abducts you."
He chuckles as he stands, and circles around her and plucks some clean clothes out of his bag. "You have some priorities, Starbuck."
She sticks his tongue out at him, and he replies in kind.
They stop at a coffee shop on their way to the court and when they're inside, playing, she employs the dirtiest of her tricks, and she's winning by a significant margin before he begins to counter with some dirty tricks of his own, and eventually she reaches around for the ball and ends up giving him a quick squeeze, and he retaliates by pinching her nipple and then she's panting for altogether unsportsmanlike reasons. "Gods, Lee, are we here to play a game or to frak?"
He quirks his head to the side and says, "You tell me."
She throws the ball at his chest, spreads her hands in the air in front of her and says, "Fine, we can play clean, but I get to keep my points."
"Then I'll just keep mine too," he replies, and before she can fully gather herself again, he's loaded four points and the ball is ricocheting into the hole.
"Oh, frak you," she says, and backhands his shoulder as they line up at the pitch.
Somewhere around two thirds of the way through their game, his phone starts ringing and from the pieces of the conversation she overhears, Zak's on the ground and heading their way.
Fifteen minutes later, when they're finishing up either the last or second-to-last set of the game, there's a slight snicking sound of the door opening. Kara belatedly realizes that she hesitated on a step just slightly somewhere between three and five seconds after, and that she's letting Lee score on her. They start the last set and pride and panic play a role in her precision and speed as she fully loads the ball before it ricochets into the goal.
Zak is clapping and comes over to hug his brother as she gathers the gear. He follows them into the locker room and he's telling Lee stories about the people he met on Gemenon during the sim camp. She'd really hoped that they could get one more frak in the showers after the game, but instead she shucks off her clothes in the cubicle and steps into the shower feeling cock-blocked. She wonders if she'll even be able to see Lee again before he leaves. Despite the circumstances of her and Zak's split, they'd agreed at some point in between orgasms that it doesn't seem right to tell Zak just yet, and Godsdamnit she is not spending any time with Carolanne and the Commander, because Zak and Lee have both told her how much they relish the opportunity themselves.
"Anyway, Lieutenant Mackleson said he'd flown some sort of demonstration show with you and thought you were pretty stellar, so if you want his number, Kara, I can hook you up."
Her chuckle turns into a slightly hacking cough as she inhales a few drops of water while wondering what Lee thought of his brother's suggestion.
"You okay?" comes Lee's tenor over the tile barrier, and there's a slight levity in his voice.
"Yeah, fine," she replies, still coughing, and with a final rinse, turns off the water and reaches for her towel.
She emerges from the stall to Zak lounging against the lockers, and when he sees her his eyes go wide and he stands up, gets his feet rapidly under him and with an apologetic face toward both Kara and his brother's still running shower stall says, "I'll meet you guys outside, okay?"
Her smirk speaks for itself, and the second the door closes behind him she rounds on Lee's stall, where he's rinsing his hair and shoves him against the tile wall. "How fast do you think he's expecting us to get changed?" She asks, tossing her towel on the slightly wet floor.
Lee's reply is inarticulate as she crushes her mouth against his, braces her foot against the soap ledge and grabs his hand to bring it against her.
"You're going to have to be fast." Her hand is working him gently, but the semi-public venue must be appealing to him because he's hard and ready so fast and coaxing her into readiness, and the moment her body replaces the shower water with something more slick and welcoming, his hips are making a scooping motion under hers and he's inside. His thumb is on her clit and his other hand palming over her breasts and she bounces on the ball of her foot while he finds his rhythm. They're both quietly panting and gasping and she hopes he's on alert for the sounds that would signal another person entering the room because she's certainly not. And then Lee's face is contorting beautifully in front of her slitted eyes and she's panting into his mouth, veins of pleasure spreading like wildfire through her body, exploding across her skin and her eyelids and she tips off of the edge and falls, shuddering, against him.
Kara is tugging Lee out of his stall toward her for a kiss just as the door opens and Zak says, "Lee, you left your whole bag of shit out on the court. Good thing I caught them before..." And Kara and Zak freeze.
But Lee is still caught in the momentum of her pull, and his cheek glances off of Kara's. He is matter-of-fact as he says, "Well, frak," and rights himself to stand protectively in front of her.
"Oh can it, Lee, he's seen it before," she says, stepping around him to reach for her bag. Zak is still frozen in place. Both men are completely still, staring at one another, and as she pulls on her bra, Kara squares up to Zak and puts her hands on her hips. "I'm frakking your brother. Hopefully you gathered that. Do you really want to do this now?"
Zak is still gaping, silent, but shakes his head slowly and then more rapidly before turning and exiting the room.
Lee lets out a low hiss of breath and reaches for Kara, who, now that Zak has gone is staring, catatonic, at the door. He brings his arms around her and tilts his head until their foreheads are touching, moves his hands from her waist to her shoulders to her neck, and her eyes are closed and breaths are heaving out of her like a tired bellows and her only coherent thought is of how fast she can leave the room, leave the planet, leave both of these men behind. Because maybe the heart she's been gearing up to crush is her own, because maybe she didn't say they shouldn't tell Zak because it'd be weird or he'd be jealous, but because she didn't want him to know. Because if he didn't know, maybe he'd realize that he wanted her back.
And Lee is saying something, murmuring softly, and his hands are on her shoulders, stroking, and his eyes are confused and gentle and maybe slightly scared. So maybe she's succeeded in crushing his heart too. Just what she said she wouldn't do. Would try not to do.
As she looks at him, something Zak's presence in the room had shaken loose in her snaps back into place, the knowledge of Lee as himself, as an entity independent of his brother, as a person with all the complicated connections and stuttering thoughts and clattering, changing perfection. His thumbs are making tiny circles on the tight tendons where her skull meets her back, and she's looking at him and the words he is saying are little nothings over and over like "It's okay" and "Shhhh" and "He'll be fine." And she melts into him. Just holding him, and he's trembling slightly, and doing her best not to break his heart feels that much easier.
She kisses him on the nose and then the mouth quickly, and says, "Well, this should be interesting." She's already dressed and packed up just as he begins to kick into gear and she sits in front of him, legs straddling the bench his bag is propped on while she waits for him to finish. "Good game today, by the way," she says.
"So how many did you let me score this time?" he asks, nudging her knee with his.
"I never let you score, Adama," she says, rising to meet him and hosting her bags onto her shoulder. "I encourage it."
~ ~
Zak is in the hall, looking a little bit shell-shocked, and Kara kicks his shin as she walks past him. "Rolling out, nugget." He snaps up, and follows after them. His car is parked next to hers, and she rolls her eyes at him as he climbs into his car. Lee is glancing back and forth between them, and Zak is almost glaring at his brother as Lee circles his brother's sedan to get in on the passenger side. Kara tosses her bags in the back of her jeep, locks up and slides into Zak's car. They drive about three minutes before Zak pulls jerkily into a parking spot at a park, throws open his door and stalks out.
"He's your brother," Kara says to Lee, and pats him on the shoulder. "You can have the first crack."
They get out of the car, and Kara leans against the hood while Lee strides toward Zak's perch on a picnic table about a dozen yards away. Lee sits down next to Zak, and she can see their lips moving, but the sound is completely muted, so she leans back against the windshield, closes her eyes, and waits.
She drifts off for enough time to leave her completely disoriented when she wakes, but she leaves her eyes closed, because she's warm and comfortable, and she wants to bask in it.
The wind has died down, and probably what woke her was the voices filtering across the field, and they're harsh and ricocheting through her like bullets. She'd thought, honestly thought, that Zak would be happy for her, but there's obviously so much more in play that she doesn't know about, and she thinks back to the first night she met Lee, and how she made the best mistake of her life that night, and it's bulging inside her like a blood clot how messed up it all is. Then, for a moment, the wind catches its breath and she hears a handful of words from Zak.
"You always…prove that you can do it better."
Then Lee "That's not what this is about."
The rest of their words scatter as the wind picks up, and in a few minutes, Lee's footfalls are approaching her. His hand is on her shoulder, and when she opens her eyes, he smiles. She sits up and he kisses her pointedly. "Your turn," he says, gesturing broadly toward his brother, who is still sitting sulkily on the picnic bench he and Lee talked on.
"Ugh, really? she asks, but she stands and strides purposefully toward Zak.
Their eyes meet and hold as she makes the final approach, and she sits on the table, her feet on the bench next to him, facing Lee.
Zak sighs, but doesn't say anything for a few moments, then, "You will recall that I told you he was a girlfriend-stealer."
She turns on him, incredulous. "I am not your girlfriend, Zak. I don't belong to you." And after a pause, "Lee didn't do this on his own."
"Kara, it's hard to believe he's not taking advantage of you."
"Do I look like I'm being taken advantage of?" Then he's silent. "Listen, Zak, it hurt, it hurt a lot, when, Gods, when you told me. And Lee was...he was like an anchor." Her hands are moving in front of her inarticulately, and she's not looking at him. "I don't think...I don't know how I would have gotten through it without him, and the...the things that he put up with..." The guy at the pyramid game, the bar fight, her swinging moods. It's like a maglock crushing her lungs whenever she thinks about it. She waits for him to say something, but he's silent. "I wanted this to happen before I even knew he was going to be here this week."
"Did you want him when we were together?"
"Zak."
"Did you?"
"What, do you think you have a right to be jealous about this? You ended it. You're with someone else. This is none of your business."
"I'm not jealous." He snaps, and then, "I still love you." He says it in such a plaintive way and the combination is so childish, so trite that she wants to punch him, nearly does.
"What, so I should be chaste for the rest of my life?"
"It didn't have to be my brother!" He's standing now, facing her, and she shoves him back, stands nose-to-nose with him.
"No, it didn't, but it was, and it's still none of your godsdamned business." She wants to rip into him, wants to make it clear that his claim on her is over. That they had a lot of good times, but it's not going to be the same between them again, and that that's a good thing. And then she remembers how she felt when he saw her and Lee and realizes that he had nobody to snap him out of it, that maybe he didn't know how or where to snap to, and that maybe he just needs some time. That in the end she loves him too. Not in the same way as she thought she did before, but love nevertheless, in its full, cataclysmic glory.
"Fine."
And he's turned, about to walk away when she says, "Zak." He turns toward her again with his face falling in on itself like a black hole. "I'm really happy, and I need you to give this a chance." She doesn't even realize it but she's worrying her lip with her teeth, and the look in her eyes must tell him something, because in the moment it takes for him to scan her features, he's already stepping forward, already wrapping his arms around her shoulders like a steel band, and she buries her nose in his shoulder, and it's comforting and warm and home. Even though she knows now that it's not everything, not even close, it's good and it's sweet and it's a whole thing, this embrace, this moment, this man.
She sniffles just enough as he pulls away that he says, "Don't get weepy on me, Thrace."
"Got something in my eye."
"Pollen's a bitch this time of year." Noisily dragging air in through his nose, he checks her with his hip and cuffs her around the shoulder in a way she's uncertain how she ever mistook for romantic.
When they reach him, Lee is sitting on the hood, eyes guarded, and Kara grasps his hand and squeezes before swinging into the front seat next to Zak.
"So how'd that sim time go?" she asks him, and for the rest of the ride, she pays a nearly exclusive attention to Zak. Excepting only the fact that her hand has wiggled into the space between her seat and the car door to reach back for Lee's.