[bsg] artemis rising
Title: Artemis Rising
Author: Claira
Spoilers: None
Rating: R
Summary: The Word document for this was titled "Academy pilots go on a beach holiday and there is outmaking" for about a year. That should give you a hint. Kara/Lee.
Word count: 11, 200+ (!!!)
A/N: I was cleaning out my WIP folder, and stumbled across this - I'd written it at someone's challenge, and there were about six or seven pages, which was about five more than I thought I'd done. I reread it and liked it and then it took over two days of my life, and now it's 24 pages long. I am aware that it's shamelessly self-indulgent, but how long has it been since, well, anyone on BSG was happy onscreen? Way too long.
With huge thanks to elzed who did a wonderful job at encouraging and betaing, and bantha_fodder for her (as usual) invaluable crit.
*
Artemis Rising
Three hours after their last exam - astrophysics, a McAllister special - Lee feels like his brain has been scooped out with a spoon, run through a blender and thrown back into his head with no consideration for order.
“This break is going to suck,” he says, and glances over to where Kara is lying on her stomach on his bed, crumpling her study notes into neat paper balls. He slams a textbook shut and then winces. “Dad’s coming home, and Mom’ll probably spend half the time yelling at him, and Zak’s off on some camping trip so he won’t even be there - are you even listening to me?”
She rolls onto her side slightly, and one of her paper missiles flies past him and into his wastepaper basket.
“Your break is going to suck,” she replies, her bare feet waving lazily to and fro. “Because your parents will fight and Zak’s away. And you have a headache, and question three on the paper was far too difficult for the marks it was worth.”
“Oh,” he says, a little taken aback by her rather succinct account of the last twenty minutes. “Right.”
She nods, and another ball hits the edge of the wastebasket and bounces inside. “Are you having fun there?” he says, knowing he sounds irritated, which he also knows is exactly the wrong tack to take with Kara Trace.
Sure enough, she smirks. “Much.”
“Shouldn’t you be packing?”
“No?”
“No?” he says, shoving his notes into a folder haphazardly and shoving it into his overcrowded shelf. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.” Another paper ball lands in his wastebasket.
“Why not?”
She shrugs. “I have my reasons,” she says with that infuriating smile on her face, and he doesn’t have patience for it anymore.
“Are you capable of giving a straight answer?”
Kara shrugs, and throws three more balls at the wastebasket. Two miss.
“Kara?” he prompts, and then her chin rises and the look on her face informs him that somewhere in there he missed the cue where he was supposed to shut the frak up.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she snaps, “Because my family would prefer it if I was in another frakking star system. So I don’t need to pack, because for the next week I’m going to be cleaning lecture rooms so I can earn some sim time so I don’t go insane, like every other vacation I’ve had here since we’ve been here.”
Kara stands up before he can think of anything resembling a graceful recovery.
“Happy, Lee?” she says. “Is that a straight enough answer for you?”
“I - Kara - “
“Have fun packing,” she says over her shoulder, and the door shuts behind her.
Lee sinks down onto his bed, and his headache is now nothing compared to the knowledge that he’s known Kara long enough to call her a friend for a year now, and not once did ever notice anything to make him think his cocky, confident wingman was hiding anything of that magnitude.
The hurt look in her eyes is on his mind the whole night.
*
The next morning Lee makes a few phone calls, and when everything has been organized and his credit card has been used for the first time in three months, and he’s had the pleasure of telling his mother that no, he has plans this week, he tracks Kara down in the quad.
She's lying on her stomach poking sticks upright in the grass. He sits down beside her, and he can see the tension in her shoulders.
“So,” he says casually, and he’s very proud of the way his voice doesn’t shake at all. “I hear the Aegean Peninsula is nice this time of year.”
“It probably is.”
“I’ve booked a unit.”
“Where are you going with this, Lee?”
He clears his throat. “I want you to come. It’s just for the week - “
“Lee -” She cuts him off, sitting up and hugging her knees to her chest and he can almost see her anger rising. He might not know everything about her but he knows that she has never, ever accepted pity from anyone.
“Oh, shut up, Kara,” he says, tiredly. “I’m being selfish, okay? I don’t want to spend a week at home, I just want to go somewhere where I can lie in the sun and sleep and not think about anything resembling physics or Washburne Gauntlets. And I’m not going by myself.”
There’s a pause, and he can feel the offer hanging between them, suspended on the finest of threads, and he barely breathes as he waits for her reaction. Then:
“Lee,” Kara says, softly. “Are you afraid of being alone?”
“Oh, frak you.” He reaches over and punches her arm, hard enough to sting but she only laughs harder.
“No, really, Lee - scared of the dark?”
“Starbuck - ”
“No, I’ll come. Wouldn’t want you frightened by the monsters in your closet.”
“I take it all back. You are the last person I want to spend any time with,” he tells her, and she chokes back the last of her laughter and shuffles a little closer to him.
“As long as there’s a bar close by,” she tells him, bumping his shoulder with hers.
“Of course. Who do you think is buying my drinks?”
“In your dreams, Apollo.”
“Be packed by oh-eight-hundred tomorrow, Starbuck, or I’m leaving you behind.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, waving a hand dismissively, but her face is glowing and he thinks just for a second there is something like gratitude in her eyes, and that makes him grin like an idiot.
*
For once, she’s actually ready on time, standing outside her dorm block with her duffel next to her on the pavement. He pulls over and she climbs in, throwing her bag into the back seat and hitting his shoulder in the process.
“Ow! Gods, be careful!”
“Whatever, Lee,” she says, and while he’s muttering things about manners being a foreign concept and it’s his car and would she mind? she digs out a music chip out of her pocket, and reaches for the audio controls.
“My car, my music!” he protests, but it’s too late, because she’s already swapped the chips.
“Relax, Lee.” Her eyes are dancing. “I promise you’ll like it.”
Three songs in, he has to admit that Kara has what he describes to her as ‘surprisingly good taste’, and once she’s reached over and hit him, and he’s hit her back and she’s rearranged herself in the passenger seat, things have gone back to comfortable.
“When did you make this?” he asks idly, as she winds her window down and pushes her hair back from her face.
“Last night,” she says, “You can’t have a road trip without a soundtrack, Apollo. Gods, where have you been living all these years?”
*
It’s just over five hours to the beach, and Kara falls asleep with two hours to go. He toys with the idea of waking her up, but she really had looked tired - paler than he’s used to seeing her, and when he glances at her she seems small and crumpled, with her head bumping against the window whenever they go over a rough spot of the road. Besides, Lee’s feeling magnanimous - he’s on vacation and he’s not going home, there’s the prospect of cold beer and fish and chips to look forward to - so he lets her sleep for exactly one hour and fifty minutes before turning the music up almost as loud as it will go.
She jerks awake, and the look on her face is priceless, once she’s shaken the last vestiges of sleep away. “Was that really necessary?”
“No,” he says cheerfully.
She rolls her eyes and rubs her face. “How long was I out?”
“We’re almost there, put it that way.”
*
They check into their room - Kara gleefully claiming the biggest bed, although both are far bigger than anything they get back at the dorms. Within two seconds, she’s dumped her duffel, opened it, picked through it for her swimsuit and is bouncing into the bathroom to change.
“Come on, Lee,” she says over her shoulder, and as the door slides shut he looks mournfully at the mess she’s just created chucking things out of her bag.
"It's the middle of the day!" he says, unzipping his duffel and digging through it to find his beach things.
"It's the middle of the afternoon!"
"I just drove five hours!"
"Then stay here if you want. I'm going swimming."
He rolls his eyes even though she can't see him. "Fine. Don't come out, I'm changing."
Kara's laugh sounds muffled. "How will you live on a battlestar, Lee?"
"Not all of us are natural exhibitionists, Kara!"
"Such a pity, too."
"Oh, shut up."
"Are you done yet?"
"Yeah, yeah," he says, tying the drawstring on his board shorts as she comes back into the room. Her hair is ruffled, evidence of her fast change, and she makes a point of sliding her gaze down over his bare chest.
"Nice, Apollo," she says, with a wink, before grabbing her towel and sunblock and ducking past. He just misses when he snaps his towel at her, and then he steps over her mess and follows her into the blinding sunshine.
The beach isn’t the prettiest of the coastline, but that also means it’s not the most crowded, nor the most commercial, and the water is a brilliant blue. Kara stands and looks out to sea for a moment, and takes a deep breath. He does the same. The salty tang is strong in the air, and he can feel his muscles relaxing already. Nine days with nothing to think about. It seems like heaven.
Kara’s already stripping off, her t-shirt gone and her shorts following quickly. She’s wearing a very nice black swimsuit, and Lee spends more than a moment covertly checking her out before tossing his own towel next to hers on the sand. The next minute, her sunblock flies at him and he just manages to snag it before it hits him in the face.
"Hey!"
"Just checking your reflexes," she says innocently. "You passed. Do my back?"
He’s tempted to write something funny in sunblock, but she’d kill him, so he rubs it in - her skin is warm and soft under his palms, and pale, although a week in the sun is likely to change that.
"Mmm," she breathes out, and rolls her neck a little. "I want a backrub later, Apollo."
"If you buy me dinner."
"So you do have a price! Mandy will be so pleased to know that."
He rolls his eyes, and throws the tube back at her. She catches it neatly.
"Do my back, please?"
"Only because you asked nicely."
*
They spend the entire afternoon in the surf - well, Kara does. Lee swims back to shore after an hour and finds a nice spot on the sand in the shade, and falls asleep to the sounds of crashing waves and screeching seagulls.
He's woken by a cold touch on his shoulder, and he blinks awake to find Kara sitting beside him.
"What?"
"Your back will burn," she says, and sure enough, he's lying in full sunlight now.
"Oh. Thanks," he says, shaking his head to clear the sleep away, and turns over, lifting himself on his elbows. "What time is it?"
"Sixteen hundred."
He nods slowly. "Is it too early to eat?"
She laughs. "Gods, no."
"You’re a woman after my own heart," he says, as he gets to her feet.
"Save it for Mandy," she retorts, but he notices her cheeks look a bit pink - and then he dismisses it as sunburn, because there’s no way Starbuck could be blushing.
“You’ve got the first round,” he tells her, and she protests all the way back up from the shore.
*
He dozes off early on the first night - almost embarrassingly so, but three weeks of exams and pressure have left him with a backlog of tiredness that his nap on the beach did nothing to put a dent in.
Besides, his bed is comfortable, and he can hear Kara clicking through tracks on her music player, and soon he’s almost completely asleep. He vaguely hears something rustle close by, and then the book he’s still holding onto slides away from his fingers, and a sheet is pulled up over him. Her shadow seems to linger a moment before she steps away, and he wants to thank her but moving anything is too much effort.
The next second the light clicks off, and the blackness surrounds him completely.
*
It’s past 11 when Kara drags him out of bed the next morning - “You can’t sleep the entire day away, Lee!” - and it takes brunch and a coffee before he starts feeling even a little human again.
The tiny chemist has a bin of toys out the front - perfect for long-suffering parents, Lee thinks idly, as he digs through it, waiting for Kara to pay for her bottle of water. Beach balls, water pistols, miniature tennis racquets. A skipping rope.
Right down the bottom, under an old inflatable air mattress, he finds them. Lee smiles.
He finds Kara paying, and dumps the two buckets and matching shovels on the counter next to her.
The look she gives him makes him laugh out loud. “Oh, don’t be like that, Starbuck,” he says, pulling some change out of his pocket. “Look, I picked the pink set just for you.”
“If you think I am going anywhere near that thing, Lee, you have another thing coming.”
“Fine. If you’re scared of my castle-making prowess, you stay up here safe on the shore, Kara.”
“Excuse me?”
“And then,” Lee says, with practiced timing, “Then you’ll have to live with the fact that I’m better at building sandcastles than you for the rest of your life.”
Kara snatches the buckets off the counter. “I’m taking the blue,” she tells him. “Pink suits you more, anyway.”
The sales girl is trying her best not to laugh, and Lee winks at her as he turns to leave. Kara’s already stalked outside.
She glowers, all the way out of the shop, down along the beach, and down to the water. It isn’t until he’s selected a suitable patch of sand - not too wet, not too dry - for his castle and has sat down to fill his bucket that she gives a long sigh and sits down beside him.
“So,” she says, waving her shovel in his face. “How exactly is this done, Adama?”
“You’ve never made a sand castle?”
“No.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I guess I never went to the beach when I was a kid.” She shrugs, and dumps a load of sand into her bucket.
“You missed a fundamental part of your childhood, then,” he tells her, and something flickers across Kara’s face, raw and open and painful, and she digs her shovel into the sand with a little more force than Lee thinks is necessary.
“Uh,” she starts, then pauses, and Lee feels terrible, so he flicks a handful of wet sand at her. “Lee!”
“What?” he asks innocently, and picks up her pink shovel.
“Oh, frak you!”
There may be many things Lee doesn’t know about Kara Thrace, but there are a few he does, so he’s ready with his return attack when the contents of her bucket fly at him.
It’s not his best save, and he knows that deep down something isn’t right but Kara laughs as he tackles her back into the sand, and the sunlight and water make her expression a little easier to forget.
*
They spend the second night getting drunk on cheap bottles of wine from the corner liquor store, sitting in between their beds playing a drinking game that Lee is sure that Kara made up, given how badly he’s losing. When most of the wine is gone and he can’t play cards anymore because all the numbers are blurring, he tosses them aside - to loud protests from Kara - and leans back against his bed.
“I am so glad I’m here,” he says drowsily, staring up at the ceiling fan.
“”Yeah?” Kara sits back opposite him and stretches her feet out.
“I hate my family anyway.”
He hears her sigh. “Me too.”
“Families suck.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Seriously,” he says, nudging her hip with one foot. “Mine really, really sucks.”
“Mine sucks more.”
“Whatever, Kara.”
“Whatever yourself,” she says, taking a swig out of the bottle. “This is one thing - one more thing - I will beat you at, Apollo.”
“Yeah? Well, my Dad loves my brother more than me.”
“At least you have a Dad. My Dad left when I was seven.”
“My mother is a drunk.”
“My mother beat the crap out of me.”
His whole body freezes - clearly better at reacting than his brain, which takes a bit of time to catch up. “What?”
Kara’s already got a face that he recognizes - the one she always wears when she’s really put her foot in it - and she brings her knees up to her chest. “Told you I’d win.” She smiles, but he’s having none of it. He sits up straight.
“What did you frakking say?”
“It’s okay, Lee - “
“No, that is not okay, Kara. That is not okay.”
She shrugs again. “Really? Because nobody cared.”
He wants to shake her, get something out of her that isn’t acceptance.
“What do you mean?”
“I went to hospital a million times, Lee. I had to have things set, and - because my mother was in the frakking fleet, nobody - “
Kara breaks off, and in the half-light she looks so young, with her eyes wide and hurt and Lee leans out and pulls her into his arms before he thinks about all the reasons he shouldn’t. Kara stiffens before relaxing, almost curling her body into his. “I’m so sorry,” he says into her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
She laughs into his neck. “Not your fault.”
“Don’t care.”
“Thanks,” she says after a moment, and he doesn’t push her.
“Anytime.”
“You win,” he says lightly. “Your family sucks way more.”
“I always win.”
“Brat.”
He holds her until she tenses again in his arms, and then lets her go, and the conversation moves onto other, lighter things - the pyramid season, the new sim being installed at the academy. But even with the alcohol, when she finally falls asleep sprawled on his bed, all he can think about it what she told him.
*
The next day, neither of them mention the conversation of the night before, which is almost a relief because he has no idea what he’d say to her if she did bring it up. It’s hard not to watch her, though - not to see her with broken bones or a black eye, and the third time Kara catches him staring, she rolls her eyes.
“What, Apollo?” she says. “Am I really that amazing?” Because she’s lying beside a pool, she’s not wearing all that much and Lee thinks the view is actually pretty amazing, but he's definitely not going to say so.
He splashes her with water instead.
By four that afternoon, it’s obvious Kara is sunburned, which she promptly blames on him, since it was apparently his fault for not applying enough sunblock to her back, despite the fact she'd fallen asleep beside the pool while he was off buying them both something to eat.
After twenty minutes, Lee decides it's just easier to go along with her delusions than to argue any further, and Kara decides to drag him to the rather seedy-looking bar at the end of the street as his punishment. Luckily for him, the bar actually has an excellent menu and when the food comes, it lives up to the promise, and Lee's quite pleased with how things have turned out for precisely half the dinner, which is how long it takes Kara to reach for the cocktail list.
She scans it quickly - he doesn't know why she's even looking at it, because ambrosia and beer are far more her drinks of choice than anything pink and fruity - and then she laughs and throws the card at him.
"This bar would make Helo proud," she says, grinning.
He reads his way down the list. There's the usual - Sex on the Beach, Screaming Orgasm, Mudslide Shooter - and then there's a few more original ones he hasn't seen before. Aphrodite's Nipple. Skip and Go Naked. Slow Grind. When he glances back at Kara, she's already grabbing her wallet.
"No, Kara," he says half-heartedly, but it's too late and she's already out of her seat.
"I've got the first round!"
"That's not necessary!"
"I'll get you Between the Sheets!" she calls over her shoulder, loud enough that several other patrons at the bar look over at him. One laughs. Lee drops his head into his hands.
He should have known Kara would never let him off easy.
*
Two hours later, Lee thinks that he's going to have the worst hangover he's ever had, up to and including several spectacular nights out at the Bacchanalia Festival for the past two years. So far Kara's made him match her drink for drink, and she looks like she's getting a year’s worth of laughter out of seeing him stumble through the cocktail menu, trying to avoid anything that looks like it might be pink. He's running out of options and Kara seems to be only getting started.
"So, what are we having next, flyboy?"
He sighs and picks up the menu, and tries to pick something that doesn't look like it will come with an umbrella.
"A Screwdriver?"
"Hmm," Kara drawls, twirling a straw around her fingers. "I was thinking something else. Something a little more - exciting." Her voice drops so it's low and gravely, and it makes his skin tingle a bit. "Don't you want a Flaming Hard-on?"
Lee can feel the tips of his ears turning red, and thinks frak it, and leans towards her, into what is assuredly her personal space.
"Perhaps I'd prefer Sex on the Beach," he says, dragging one finger slowly along her arm, up to her shoulder.
Kara's eyes widen appreciatively. "Maybe you can have them both," she says, and pops the straw in her mouth and drains the rest of her last cocktail in a way that would definitely make his mother blush.
The bartender snorts with laughter, and Lee rolls his eyes and leans back. Kara slaps both palms on the bar.
"Line 'em up," she says, and Lee groans.
*
“You are creasing my shirt,” he says, watching Kara sway a little on her feet despite the hand she has on his arm.
“Mama’s boy.”
“Brat. Just get the key out of your pocket.”
“I don’t know why you care. You look better without one anyway.”
“Say that again?”
“Got it!” She waves the key at him, and he snatches it from her and holds it behind his back.
“Password?”
“Lee Adama is an annoying pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, but you think I’m a hot annoying pain in the ass.”
“You put in enough hours in the gym, Apollo,” she says, and Lee narrows his eyes because he’s pretty sure there’s a flush on her cheeks that wasn’t there a moment ago.
“Are you blushing?”
“No.”
“You totally are. Aw, Kara, you think I’m hot?”
“Unlock the frakking door, Adama.”
“You do.”
“I’m going to ram this umbrella up your nose in a minute.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“I’d love to.”
“Really.”
“Try me.”
“Just open the door!”
“Password?”
She rolls her eyes and Lee laughs, and in that moment she tries to snatch the key from him and ends up falling into him and he almost goes over as well, but in the last second manages to find enough balance to keep them upright.
“Well done, Thrace,” he says, as he sets her on her feet. “Spectacular - ”
Her face is inches from his, and he loses the rest of his sentence as he takes in the curves of her cheekbones, and line of her lips. One of his hands slides up her arm without him even thinking about it, thumb rubbing the hollow of her throat.
“Oh,” Kara says, and he sees her throat constrict as she swallows, “Lee,” and his name on her lips is breathy and full of a want he’s never heard before. Kara licks her lips and he leans in a little, bumps her nose with his.
There’s a single moment where he has the chance to laugh, lean back and make some crack about how drunk he is, that he’d even think about kissing her but Kara’s eyes have already fluttered closed and her hands are resting on his chest and Lee kisses her, kisses her hard and pushes her into the door.
She tastes of sugar and Kara and it’s completely intoxicating and Lee can’t help himself, curls one hand around the back of her neck and pulls her closer, closer. Kara arches her back, rubbing against him and Lee moans and wonders why they haven’t done this before, it’s so good, it feels right.
He pulls her knee up, and she hooks her heel around thighs and sort of shimmies against him and things are about to get very improper for a public location when he hears the sound of door opening not too far away. He drops her leg, manages to push her back enough to a respectable distance, just as an elderly man walks past them.
“Evening,” the man says, looking amused, and Lee nods and smiles and tries not to look like he just had Kara’s leg around his waist and knows he’s failing completely.
By the time the man rounds the corner, Kara is shaking with laughter beside him and he pries the keys from her hand.
“Shut up,” he orders, and she just laughs harder. Kara’s mouth is red and her smile is wicked and he actually has to turn his body away from her so he can concentrate on opening the frakking door.
She’s still laughing when the door shuts behind them, her eyes bright and he catches her by the waist and walks them both backwards until his knees hit the bed. Falls into it, taking Kara with him, yanks her mouth down to his again. She doesn’t resist.
*
When he wakes up it’s past three, and even in the pitch black, his head throbs and he needs water and painkillers. Kara’s sprawled on top of him, legs tangled with his and her fingers are clutching at his shirt.
He smiles and goes back to sleep.
*
Part 2 here.
Author: Claira
Spoilers: None
Rating: R
Summary: The Word document for this was titled "Academy pilots go on a beach holiday and there is outmaking" for about a year. That should give you a hint. Kara/Lee.
Word count: 11, 200+ (!!!)
A/N: I was cleaning out my WIP folder, and stumbled across this - I'd written it at someone's challenge, and there were about six or seven pages, which was about five more than I thought I'd done. I reread it and liked it and then it took over two days of my life, and now it's 24 pages long. I am aware that it's shamelessly self-indulgent, but how long has it been since, well, anyone on BSG was happy onscreen? Way too long.
With huge thanks to elzed who did a wonderful job at encouraging and betaing, and bantha_fodder for her (as usual) invaluable crit.
*
Artemis Rising
Three hours after their last exam - astrophysics, a McAllister special - Lee feels like his brain has been scooped out with a spoon, run through a blender and thrown back into his head with no consideration for order.
“This break is going to suck,” he says, and glances over to where Kara is lying on her stomach on his bed, crumpling her study notes into neat paper balls. He slams a textbook shut and then winces. “Dad’s coming home, and Mom’ll probably spend half the time yelling at him, and Zak’s off on some camping trip so he won’t even be there - are you even listening to me?”
She rolls onto her side slightly, and one of her paper missiles flies past him and into his wastepaper basket.
“Your break is going to suck,” she replies, her bare feet waving lazily to and fro. “Because your parents will fight and Zak’s away. And you have a headache, and question three on the paper was far too difficult for the marks it was worth.”
“Oh,” he says, a little taken aback by her rather succinct account of the last twenty minutes. “Right.”
She nods, and another ball hits the edge of the wastebasket and bounces inside. “Are you having fun there?” he says, knowing he sounds irritated, which he also knows is exactly the wrong tack to take with Kara Trace.
Sure enough, she smirks. “Much.”
“Shouldn’t you be packing?”
“No?”
“No?” he says, shoving his notes into a folder haphazardly and shoving it into his overcrowded shelf. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.” Another paper ball lands in his wastebasket.
“Why not?”
She shrugs. “I have my reasons,” she says with that infuriating smile on her face, and he doesn’t have patience for it anymore.
“Are you capable of giving a straight answer?”
Kara shrugs, and throws three more balls at the wastebasket. Two miss.
“Kara?” he prompts, and then her chin rises and the look on her face informs him that somewhere in there he missed the cue where he was supposed to shut the frak up.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she snaps, “Because my family would prefer it if I was in another frakking star system. So I don’t need to pack, because for the next week I’m going to be cleaning lecture rooms so I can earn some sim time so I don’t go insane, like every other vacation I’ve had here since we’ve been here.”
Kara stands up before he can think of anything resembling a graceful recovery.
“Happy, Lee?” she says. “Is that a straight enough answer for you?”
“I - Kara - “
“Have fun packing,” she says over her shoulder, and the door shuts behind her.
Lee sinks down onto his bed, and his headache is now nothing compared to the knowledge that he’s known Kara long enough to call her a friend for a year now, and not once did ever notice anything to make him think his cocky, confident wingman was hiding anything of that magnitude.
The hurt look in her eyes is on his mind the whole night.
*
The next morning Lee makes a few phone calls, and when everything has been organized and his credit card has been used for the first time in three months, and he’s had the pleasure of telling his mother that no, he has plans this week, he tracks Kara down in the quad.
She's lying on her stomach poking sticks upright in the grass. He sits down beside her, and he can see the tension in her shoulders.
“So,” he says casually, and he’s very proud of the way his voice doesn’t shake at all. “I hear the Aegean Peninsula is nice this time of year.”
“It probably is.”
“I’ve booked a unit.”
“Where are you going with this, Lee?”
He clears his throat. “I want you to come. It’s just for the week - “
“Lee -” She cuts him off, sitting up and hugging her knees to her chest and he can almost see her anger rising. He might not know everything about her but he knows that she has never, ever accepted pity from anyone.
“Oh, shut up, Kara,” he says, tiredly. “I’m being selfish, okay? I don’t want to spend a week at home, I just want to go somewhere where I can lie in the sun and sleep and not think about anything resembling physics or Washburne Gauntlets. And I’m not going by myself.”
There’s a pause, and he can feel the offer hanging between them, suspended on the finest of threads, and he barely breathes as he waits for her reaction. Then:
“Lee,” Kara says, softly. “Are you afraid of being alone?”
“Oh, frak you.” He reaches over and punches her arm, hard enough to sting but she only laughs harder.
“No, really, Lee - scared of the dark?”
“Starbuck - ”
“No, I’ll come. Wouldn’t want you frightened by the monsters in your closet.”
“I take it all back. You are the last person I want to spend any time with,” he tells her, and she chokes back the last of her laughter and shuffles a little closer to him.
“As long as there’s a bar close by,” she tells him, bumping his shoulder with hers.
“Of course. Who do you think is buying my drinks?”
“In your dreams, Apollo.”
“Be packed by oh-eight-hundred tomorrow, Starbuck, or I’m leaving you behind.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, waving a hand dismissively, but her face is glowing and he thinks just for a second there is something like gratitude in her eyes, and that makes him grin like an idiot.
*
For once, she’s actually ready on time, standing outside her dorm block with her duffel next to her on the pavement. He pulls over and she climbs in, throwing her bag into the back seat and hitting his shoulder in the process.
“Ow! Gods, be careful!”
“Whatever, Lee,” she says, and while he’s muttering things about manners being a foreign concept and it’s his car and would she mind? she digs out a music chip out of her pocket, and reaches for the audio controls.
“My car, my music!” he protests, but it’s too late, because she’s already swapped the chips.
“Relax, Lee.” Her eyes are dancing. “I promise you’ll like it.”
Three songs in, he has to admit that Kara has what he describes to her as ‘surprisingly good taste’, and once she’s reached over and hit him, and he’s hit her back and she’s rearranged herself in the passenger seat, things have gone back to comfortable.
“When did you make this?” he asks idly, as she winds her window down and pushes her hair back from her face.
“Last night,” she says, “You can’t have a road trip without a soundtrack, Apollo. Gods, where have you been living all these years?”
*
It’s just over five hours to the beach, and Kara falls asleep with two hours to go. He toys with the idea of waking her up, but she really had looked tired - paler than he’s used to seeing her, and when he glances at her she seems small and crumpled, with her head bumping against the window whenever they go over a rough spot of the road. Besides, Lee’s feeling magnanimous - he’s on vacation and he’s not going home, there’s the prospect of cold beer and fish and chips to look forward to - so he lets her sleep for exactly one hour and fifty minutes before turning the music up almost as loud as it will go.
She jerks awake, and the look on her face is priceless, once she’s shaken the last vestiges of sleep away. “Was that really necessary?”
“No,” he says cheerfully.
She rolls her eyes and rubs her face. “How long was I out?”
“We’re almost there, put it that way.”
*
They check into their room - Kara gleefully claiming the biggest bed, although both are far bigger than anything they get back at the dorms. Within two seconds, she’s dumped her duffel, opened it, picked through it for her swimsuit and is bouncing into the bathroom to change.
“Come on, Lee,” she says over her shoulder, and as the door slides shut he looks mournfully at the mess she’s just created chucking things out of her bag.
"It's the middle of the day!" he says, unzipping his duffel and digging through it to find his beach things.
"It's the middle of the afternoon!"
"I just drove five hours!"
"Then stay here if you want. I'm going swimming."
He rolls his eyes even though she can't see him. "Fine. Don't come out, I'm changing."
Kara's laugh sounds muffled. "How will you live on a battlestar, Lee?"
"Not all of us are natural exhibitionists, Kara!"
"Such a pity, too."
"Oh, shut up."
"Are you done yet?"
"Yeah, yeah," he says, tying the drawstring on his board shorts as she comes back into the room. Her hair is ruffled, evidence of her fast change, and she makes a point of sliding her gaze down over his bare chest.
"Nice, Apollo," she says, with a wink, before grabbing her towel and sunblock and ducking past. He just misses when he snaps his towel at her, and then he steps over her mess and follows her into the blinding sunshine.
The beach isn’t the prettiest of the coastline, but that also means it’s not the most crowded, nor the most commercial, and the water is a brilliant blue. Kara stands and looks out to sea for a moment, and takes a deep breath. He does the same. The salty tang is strong in the air, and he can feel his muscles relaxing already. Nine days with nothing to think about. It seems like heaven.
Kara’s already stripping off, her t-shirt gone and her shorts following quickly. She’s wearing a very nice black swimsuit, and Lee spends more than a moment covertly checking her out before tossing his own towel next to hers on the sand. The next minute, her sunblock flies at him and he just manages to snag it before it hits him in the face.
"Hey!"
"Just checking your reflexes," she says innocently. "You passed. Do my back?"
He’s tempted to write something funny in sunblock, but she’d kill him, so he rubs it in - her skin is warm and soft under his palms, and pale, although a week in the sun is likely to change that.
"Mmm," she breathes out, and rolls her neck a little. "I want a backrub later, Apollo."
"If you buy me dinner."
"So you do have a price! Mandy will be so pleased to know that."
He rolls his eyes, and throws the tube back at her. She catches it neatly.
"Do my back, please?"
"Only because you asked nicely."
*
They spend the entire afternoon in the surf - well, Kara does. Lee swims back to shore after an hour and finds a nice spot on the sand in the shade, and falls asleep to the sounds of crashing waves and screeching seagulls.
He's woken by a cold touch on his shoulder, and he blinks awake to find Kara sitting beside him.
"What?"
"Your back will burn," she says, and sure enough, he's lying in full sunlight now.
"Oh. Thanks," he says, shaking his head to clear the sleep away, and turns over, lifting himself on his elbows. "What time is it?"
"Sixteen hundred."
He nods slowly. "Is it too early to eat?"
She laughs. "Gods, no."
"You’re a woman after my own heart," he says, as he gets to her feet.
"Save it for Mandy," she retorts, but he notices her cheeks look a bit pink - and then he dismisses it as sunburn, because there’s no way Starbuck could be blushing.
“You’ve got the first round,” he tells her, and she protests all the way back up from the shore.
*
He dozes off early on the first night - almost embarrassingly so, but three weeks of exams and pressure have left him with a backlog of tiredness that his nap on the beach did nothing to put a dent in.
Besides, his bed is comfortable, and he can hear Kara clicking through tracks on her music player, and soon he’s almost completely asleep. He vaguely hears something rustle close by, and then the book he’s still holding onto slides away from his fingers, and a sheet is pulled up over him. Her shadow seems to linger a moment before she steps away, and he wants to thank her but moving anything is too much effort.
The next second the light clicks off, and the blackness surrounds him completely.
*
It’s past 11 when Kara drags him out of bed the next morning - “You can’t sleep the entire day away, Lee!” - and it takes brunch and a coffee before he starts feeling even a little human again.
The tiny chemist has a bin of toys out the front - perfect for long-suffering parents, Lee thinks idly, as he digs through it, waiting for Kara to pay for her bottle of water. Beach balls, water pistols, miniature tennis racquets. A skipping rope.
Right down the bottom, under an old inflatable air mattress, he finds them. Lee smiles.
He finds Kara paying, and dumps the two buckets and matching shovels on the counter next to her.
The look she gives him makes him laugh out loud. “Oh, don’t be like that, Starbuck,” he says, pulling some change out of his pocket. “Look, I picked the pink set just for you.”
“If you think I am going anywhere near that thing, Lee, you have another thing coming.”
“Fine. If you’re scared of my castle-making prowess, you stay up here safe on the shore, Kara.”
“Excuse me?”
“And then,” Lee says, with practiced timing, “Then you’ll have to live with the fact that I’m better at building sandcastles than you for the rest of your life.”
Kara snatches the buckets off the counter. “I’m taking the blue,” she tells him. “Pink suits you more, anyway.”
The sales girl is trying her best not to laugh, and Lee winks at her as he turns to leave. Kara’s already stalked outside.
She glowers, all the way out of the shop, down along the beach, and down to the water. It isn’t until he’s selected a suitable patch of sand - not too wet, not too dry - for his castle and has sat down to fill his bucket that she gives a long sigh and sits down beside him.
“So,” she says, waving her shovel in his face. “How exactly is this done, Adama?”
“You’ve never made a sand castle?”
“No.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I guess I never went to the beach when I was a kid.” She shrugs, and dumps a load of sand into her bucket.
“You missed a fundamental part of your childhood, then,” he tells her, and something flickers across Kara’s face, raw and open and painful, and she digs her shovel into the sand with a little more force than Lee thinks is necessary.
“Uh,” she starts, then pauses, and Lee feels terrible, so he flicks a handful of wet sand at her. “Lee!”
“What?” he asks innocently, and picks up her pink shovel.
“Oh, frak you!”
There may be many things Lee doesn’t know about Kara Thrace, but there are a few he does, so he’s ready with his return attack when the contents of her bucket fly at him.
It’s not his best save, and he knows that deep down something isn’t right but Kara laughs as he tackles her back into the sand, and the sunlight and water make her expression a little easier to forget.
*
They spend the second night getting drunk on cheap bottles of wine from the corner liquor store, sitting in between their beds playing a drinking game that Lee is sure that Kara made up, given how badly he’s losing. When most of the wine is gone and he can’t play cards anymore because all the numbers are blurring, he tosses them aside - to loud protests from Kara - and leans back against his bed.
“I am so glad I’m here,” he says drowsily, staring up at the ceiling fan.
“”Yeah?” Kara sits back opposite him and stretches her feet out.
“I hate my family anyway.”
He hears her sigh. “Me too.”
“Families suck.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Seriously,” he says, nudging her hip with one foot. “Mine really, really sucks.”
“Mine sucks more.”
“Whatever, Kara.”
“Whatever yourself,” she says, taking a swig out of the bottle. “This is one thing - one more thing - I will beat you at, Apollo.”
“Yeah? Well, my Dad loves my brother more than me.”
“At least you have a Dad. My Dad left when I was seven.”
“My mother is a drunk.”
“My mother beat the crap out of me.”
His whole body freezes - clearly better at reacting than his brain, which takes a bit of time to catch up. “What?”
Kara’s already got a face that he recognizes - the one she always wears when she’s really put her foot in it - and she brings her knees up to her chest. “Told you I’d win.” She smiles, but he’s having none of it. He sits up straight.
“What did you frakking say?”
“It’s okay, Lee - “
“No, that is not okay, Kara. That is not okay.”
She shrugs again. “Really? Because nobody cared.”
He wants to shake her, get something out of her that isn’t acceptance.
“What do you mean?”
“I went to hospital a million times, Lee. I had to have things set, and - because my mother was in the frakking fleet, nobody - “
Kara breaks off, and in the half-light she looks so young, with her eyes wide and hurt and Lee leans out and pulls her into his arms before he thinks about all the reasons he shouldn’t. Kara stiffens before relaxing, almost curling her body into his. “I’m so sorry,” he says into her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
She laughs into his neck. “Not your fault.”
“Don’t care.”
“Thanks,” she says after a moment, and he doesn’t push her.
“Anytime.”
“You win,” he says lightly. “Your family sucks way more.”
“I always win.”
“Brat.”
He holds her until she tenses again in his arms, and then lets her go, and the conversation moves onto other, lighter things - the pyramid season, the new sim being installed at the academy. But even with the alcohol, when she finally falls asleep sprawled on his bed, all he can think about it what she told him.
*
The next day, neither of them mention the conversation of the night before, which is almost a relief because he has no idea what he’d say to her if she did bring it up. It’s hard not to watch her, though - not to see her with broken bones or a black eye, and the third time Kara catches him staring, she rolls her eyes.
“What, Apollo?” she says. “Am I really that amazing?” Because she’s lying beside a pool, she’s not wearing all that much and Lee thinks the view is actually pretty amazing, but he's definitely not going to say so.
He splashes her with water instead.
By four that afternoon, it’s obvious Kara is sunburned, which she promptly blames on him, since it was apparently his fault for not applying enough sunblock to her back, despite the fact she'd fallen asleep beside the pool while he was off buying them both something to eat.
After twenty minutes, Lee decides it's just easier to go along with her delusions than to argue any further, and Kara decides to drag him to the rather seedy-looking bar at the end of the street as his punishment. Luckily for him, the bar actually has an excellent menu and when the food comes, it lives up to the promise, and Lee's quite pleased with how things have turned out for precisely half the dinner, which is how long it takes Kara to reach for the cocktail list.
She scans it quickly - he doesn't know why she's even looking at it, because ambrosia and beer are far more her drinks of choice than anything pink and fruity - and then she laughs and throws the card at him.
"This bar would make Helo proud," she says, grinning.
He reads his way down the list. There's the usual - Sex on the Beach, Screaming Orgasm, Mudslide Shooter - and then there's a few more original ones he hasn't seen before. Aphrodite's Nipple. Skip and Go Naked. Slow Grind. When he glances back at Kara, she's already grabbing her wallet.
"No, Kara," he says half-heartedly, but it's too late and she's already out of her seat.
"I've got the first round!"
"That's not necessary!"
"I'll get you Between the Sheets!" she calls over her shoulder, loud enough that several other patrons at the bar look over at him. One laughs. Lee drops his head into his hands.
He should have known Kara would never let him off easy.
*
Two hours later, Lee thinks that he's going to have the worst hangover he's ever had, up to and including several spectacular nights out at the Bacchanalia Festival for the past two years. So far Kara's made him match her drink for drink, and she looks like she's getting a year’s worth of laughter out of seeing him stumble through the cocktail menu, trying to avoid anything that looks like it might be pink. He's running out of options and Kara seems to be only getting started.
"So, what are we having next, flyboy?"
He sighs and picks up the menu, and tries to pick something that doesn't look like it will come with an umbrella.
"A Screwdriver?"
"Hmm," Kara drawls, twirling a straw around her fingers. "I was thinking something else. Something a little more - exciting." Her voice drops so it's low and gravely, and it makes his skin tingle a bit. "Don't you want a Flaming Hard-on?"
Lee can feel the tips of his ears turning red, and thinks frak it, and leans towards her, into what is assuredly her personal space.
"Perhaps I'd prefer Sex on the Beach," he says, dragging one finger slowly along her arm, up to her shoulder.
Kara's eyes widen appreciatively. "Maybe you can have them both," she says, and pops the straw in her mouth and drains the rest of her last cocktail in a way that would definitely make his mother blush.
The bartender snorts with laughter, and Lee rolls his eyes and leans back. Kara slaps both palms on the bar.
"Line 'em up," she says, and Lee groans.
*
“You are creasing my shirt,” he says, watching Kara sway a little on her feet despite the hand she has on his arm.
“Mama’s boy.”
“Brat. Just get the key out of your pocket.”
“I don’t know why you care. You look better without one anyway.”
“Say that again?”
“Got it!” She waves the key at him, and he snatches it from her and holds it behind his back.
“Password?”
“Lee Adama is an annoying pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, but you think I’m a hot annoying pain in the ass.”
“You put in enough hours in the gym, Apollo,” she says, and Lee narrows his eyes because he’s pretty sure there’s a flush on her cheeks that wasn’t there a moment ago.
“Are you blushing?”
“No.”
“You totally are. Aw, Kara, you think I’m hot?”
“Unlock the frakking door, Adama.”
“You do.”
“I’m going to ram this umbrella up your nose in a minute.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“I’d love to.”
“Really.”
“Try me.”
“Just open the door!”
“Password?”
She rolls her eyes and Lee laughs, and in that moment she tries to snatch the key from him and ends up falling into him and he almost goes over as well, but in the last second manages to find enough balance to keep them upright.
“Well done, Thrace,” he says, as he sets her on her feet. “Spectacular - ”
Her face is inches from his, and he loses the rest of his sentence as he takes in the curves of her cheekbones, and line of her lips. One of his hands slides up her arm without him even thinking about it, thumb rubbing the hollow of her throat.
“Oh,” Kara says, and he sees her throat constrict as she swallows, “Lee,” and his name on her lips is breathy and full of a want he’s never heard before. Kara licks her lips and he leans in a little, bumps her nose with his.
There’s a single moment where he has the chance to laugh, lean back and make some crack about how drunk he is, that he’d even think about kissing her but Kara’s eyes have already fluttered closed and her hands are resting on his chest and Lee kisses her, kisses her hard and pushes her into the door.
She tastes of sugar and Kara and it’s completely intoxicating and Lee can’t help himself, curls one hand around the back of her neck and pulls her closer, closer. Kara arches her back, rubbing against him and Lee moans and wonders why they haven’t done this before, it’s so good, it feels right.
He pulls her knee up, and she hooks her heel around thighs and sort of shimmies against him and things are about to get very improper for a public location when he hears the sound of door opening not too far away. He drops her leg, manages to push her back enough to a respectable distance, just as an elderly man walks past them.
“Evening,” the man says, looking amused, and Lee nods and smiles and tries not to look like he just had Kara’s leg around his waist and knows he’s failing completely.
By the time the man rounds the corner, Kara is shaking with laughter beside him and he pries the keys from her hand.
“Shut up,” he orders, and she just laughs harder. Kara’s mouth is red and her smile is wicked and he actually has to turn his body away from her so he can concentrate on opening the frakking door.
She’s still laughing when the door shuts behind them, her eyes bright and he catches her by the waist and walks them both backwards until his knees hit the bed. Falls into it, taking Kara with him, yanks her mouth down to his again. She doesn’t resist.
*
When he wakes up it’s past three, and even in the pitch black, his head throbs and he needs water and painkillers. Kara’s sprawled on top of him, legs tangled with his and her fingers are clutching at his shirt.
He smiles and goes back to sleep.
*
Part 2 here.