Word Count:41,124
Date:10/29/04
Series: Mini
Rating: M+
Category: Relationships
Pairing/Focus: Lee, Kara
Warnings: In a word… SMUT alert! This story contains sex –
and lots of it – and while I’ve attempted to stay within character
parameters, it’s certainly not my usual continuity. It was a miscellaneous
thought that I ran with. So if graphic description offends you – don’t
read. If premarital sex bothers you – don’t read. If you don’t like the
whole Kara/Lee dynamic – don’t read. End warning – have a nice day.
Summary:
Spoilers/Disclaimers:
Chapter 1
Kara Thrace settled herself into the back corner of her bunk and took two deep breaths. If she could just get her breathing under control, then she’d be okay. She knew she would. If she could just get through tonight, then she’d be fine in the morning. She had to be. She just had to be.
The main pilots’ quarters were horribly quiet in the stillness between shifts. There was no one else there besides Kara. Her squadron had been the first to engage the Cylons, long before they had known that their computers would be their downfall, and now her squadron was gone. All of them. Every frakking one, and she would have been dead too if she’d been with them. She almost wished that she had been. Almost.
Lords, she couldn’t stop shaking. The dream had been intense – so real that she had felt the sweat dripping down her back and heard the fear in Lee’s voice. She had almost lost him yesterday. First Zak, and then Lee. She didn’t think she could have lived through that. So she’d done the only thing she could – she had decided that either they would come home together or they would die together. Killing him in a ship-to-ship collision seemed a hell of a lot more humane than leaving him behind to die at Cylon hands, or be captured. So she had rammed him, and through luck or skill or a little of both they had made it back. But not in the dream. In the dream she had killed them both, and William Adama had been watching.
Frak, she had to get it out of her mind. It kept playing over and over like a broken vid tape, and it was going to make her nuts. With a final attempt at a deep breath, Kara pulled herself out of bed to stand on shaking legs. She grabbed a duty shirt from her locker to cover up the running bra she was wearing, and slipped her socked feet into her running shoes. She wasn’t steady enough to run – not by a long ways – but the clothing choices were both easier and more comfortable than boots and a full uniform.
The corridors of the Galactica were nearly deserted tonight. Kara supposed everyone was either asleep or at work, as they had gotten none of the former and had far too much of the latter to manage. She rubbed the material on her arms, trying to get some feeling into them and relieve the chills that were coursing through her. She had always hated nightmares, but at the very least she’d always been able to wake up. Tonight, her waking situation was little better than the fiery death that she had seen in sleep. In many ways, it was worse.
She didn’t know how she wound up down in the port flight pod. There wasn’t a hell of a lot left of it. The interior was blackened from the fire that had taken so many lives, and the stench was horrible. Here, she had lost almost all of the friends she’d ever made. The cleanup had not yet begun beyond moving out the bodies and closing off the entryways, but she knew ways around that. Taking a little known path that had been designed for wiring repair years before, she fitted herself though the small hatchways until she was nestled into a corner within the sealed area. There was plenty of air – the ship had sealed itself after the vent, and pressurization had been complete with the exception of the few compartments that had decompressed during the fire – but she still felt more than a little closed in. She felt that way anywhere, and yet she also felt that there was no place small enough for her to feel secure in. Ever.
She hadn’t cried. Not yet. She was sure the storm would come, but she wasn’t looking forward to it. Some women looked vulnerable and sweet when they cried, but Kara only looked red and puffy; her nose ran and her eyes swelled shut. It wasn’t an attractive sight. And it wasn’t that she cared about being attractive. If she had, she would have been sporting the makeup and high-fashion clothes that so few of them even had anymore. She didn’t care what she looked like. She only cared that no one would see her fall apart. Besides, if she started crying, she wasn’t entirely sure she would ever be able to stop.
So instead she sat, and she tried to turn off a mind that was in overdrive, replaying both reality and nightmare in a seamless, horrifying vision that she could not make go away. Slowly, it was driving her crazy. She couldn’t help but wish it would go ahead and get the job done, so that she wouldn’t know how much she was hurting.
“You okay?”
Kara’s head whipped around at the familiar voice. In the near-total darkness of the sealed bay, she had thought she must certainly be alone. The voice had come from the direction from which she had entered the compartment. If it had been anyone else, she would have seriously contemplated murder for intruding on both her privacy and her quiet, but she couldn’t very well kill the man she had risked everything to save.
“Yeah,” she finally croaked out. “Just great.”
Lee Adama obliterated all light that was coming from the passageway behind him as he forced himself through the repair hatch and into her space. He settled down next to her as though they were best friends, rather than the long-distance memory that he had become in the past two years.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked softly.
He was sitting at her side on the floor, his back against the bulkhead just as hers was. Lords, if it had been anyone else…
“Looking for someplace quiet,” she said in a raspy voice. She stared resolutely at the opposite side of the passageway, into darkness and the echoes of death. She hadn’t looked at him since she’d realized who had come to invade her temporary sanctuary.
“I saw you come in,” he told her, his voice still oddly soft. She felt as much as saw the shrug from the corner of her eye. “I wondered if you were alright.”
“No one is alright, Lee,” she told him. “Not anymore.”
He didn’t say anything to that. She was grateful. They sat that way, silent and still, for a very long time. Kara didn’t bother to wonder how long. The only alternative to this would be either work or sleep, and neither held any appeal. She was tired, but the nightmares were waiting and she had no desire to make their job easier.
She heard a slight sound to her right, and it took her a moment to place it. Lee sniffed again, and she turned to see him facing the same wall she’d been intently trying to analyze in the dark. There were shining trails down his cheeks that were revealed by the vague light coming from the hatchway he’d left open. He wasn’t bawling, nor was he sobbing. He was essentially silent, except for the continuing trails of tears that descended his cheeks.
She knew how he felt. A part of her wished for the release that tears would give, but if she gave in she wasn’t entirely sure she would be able to stop. But neither could she deny Lee the luxury of grieving. She sincerely hoped that it helped him; he deserved to heal. But, as a friend, she felt that she had some kind of duty to do something to ease his burden. She didn’t have a clue as to what, but she had to do something.
Kara eased herself to her right, and rested her body against Lee’s. She slipped her right hand into his left, and held on tightly. His returned grip was nearly painful in its intensity, but she didn’t withdraw. Side by side, their hands interlocked and their legs and bodies parallel, they sat there. Time lost its relevance, and the darkness became their shield. Together, she hoped that they could be strong enough that at least one of them might survive it.
She had no clue how long Lee cried. Gradually, the occasional sniffles stopped, and he was left with the dried white trails of salt from where he hadn’t bothered to wipe away the tears. Kara rested her head on his shoulder, squeezed his hand slightly to let him know that she was there, and she waited. Silence stretched between them once more, but Kara didn’t move away. Even as she had given comfort, she had received it in return. Besides, it had been a damned long time since she had touched anyone outside of fighting or playing around, and his warmth felt good against her.
Long moments later she felt his body shift. She released his hand, thinking he was going to pull away, but instead he turned to her. In the dim lighting she could see pain in his eyes, and a quiet desperation as well. He faced her then, looked at her for a long time, and then he did the unimaginable. Lee gently laid his lips on hers.
Kara had been kissed before. She had dated and screwed around just as much as any of her friends at the academy, and at one point she had even been engaged, but she had never – never – felt a kiss like this. Warm and soft and damp, Lee kissed her just as meticulously as he did anything else. Given that level of dedication, she could do no less than return the gesture. She kissed him back.
She had to assume that the kiss was given in thanks. She had been a friend, and had helped him out of a tight spot. She had sat next to him in silence while he grieved. She had shared a moment of pain, and he must be grateful. Either that or it was forgiveness. Perhaps he was telling her that he understood what she had done two years before, or at least that he wasn’t holding a grudge as he had done with his father. Or maybe he just needed some simple human contact. Lords knew she did on occasion, even if the instances had become few and far between in recent years.
Whatever his reasons, he gently and thoroughly kissed her, and she kissed him back to the best of her ability. And then something shifted. When exactly the kiss went from innocent friendship into something more, Kara was uncertain. But it most definitely did. No longer either innocent or merely friendly, the pressure of Lee’s mouth increased, the invitation of his tongue was felt, and Kara realized that there was more happening than a simple declaration of anything.
She was lost long before his hand cupped her cheek and his tongue traced her lower lip. Capturing his upper lip gently with her teeth, she heard his faint gasp and sharp intake of breath. She had played his game, and now she eased back to see if he would come to his senses and retreat.
He did nothing of the sort. Instead, he put his left arm had behind her back even as the right hand held her in place, and he pulled her close. His tongue delved into her mouth, seeking and searching and finding something he must have liked because he groaned softly and pulled her even more tightly against him.
Kara decided that she had two choices. The first was to return to reality, pull back, and probably punch him in the face for his trouble. Her second option was to accept the sensual oblivion he was offering and see just how far he was willing to take this. Wrapping both of her arms around his neck, she took the second option. She knew she would regret it, and had absolutely no illusions – this was definitely not the right thing to do. And yet she held tight as she let him pull her under.
Lords, but he could kiss. Kara wasn’t a novice, but this was another league entirely from what she was used to. Somewhere between desperate and crazed, he was devouring her with a single-minded intensity that she’d never experienced. His mouth covered hers, lured her in, and then he pulled her deeper. She was faced with a sensory onslaught that she wasn’t sure how to cope with, and damn-it she liked it. There was no thought in the kiss – no reason – only fire. He tasted of warmth and salt, and a sweetness beneath it that was addictive. She couldn’t have stopped if she had wanted to, and she didn’t want to. She wanted this to go on forever.
His hand was no longer necessary to hold her head in place because she was doing a fine job of staying there without assistance, but when she felt his had leave her cheek, she thought that the wonderful kiss was over. Instead of pulling back, Lee simply slid his hand down and began to toy with the top button of her work shirt. She pulled him closer, sucked on his lower lip for a moment, and then sighed as she felt the first button, and the second, and the next give way. His fingers brushed over breasts encased in no more than a thin cotton running bra, and her nipples tightened almost painfully. The groan she heard that time was her own.
Another button opened, and another, and then his hand was eased beneath the elastic supporting her breasts and his warm fingers found very sensitive skin. Kara tried her best to catch her breath, but it was damned hard. His mouth was over hers, and there wasn’t any space in between, his hand on her chest was doing amazing things to her equilibrium and the hand behind her back was slipping down, down, past the loose waistband and inside her military-issue sweats. When his fingers clenched against her skin, she began to wonder if it was possible for a being to really spontaneously combust. Had she really been cold earlier?
How and when she was shifted so that he was over her she really didn’t notice. But Kara found herself on her back, Lee’s hand between her butt and the flooring, and her shirt wide open. He finally pulled his head away long enough to take a gasping breath, and to give her the opportunity to do the same. Before she could turn the inhalation into words, she heard his voice, and her world spun away from beneath her.
“God, Kara,” he murmured, his lips never quite leaving her face, her jaw, her neck. When he nipped at her collarbone and then licked away the sting, she thought she was going to go completely insane. How in hell did he do that?
She wasn’t used to being a passive participant in much of anything, and if the truth were known she had been half in love with this man for longer than she could remember. He had been someone she hadn’t even considered getting involved with – he’d been Zak’s brother, for Lords’ sake – but Zak was long dead and Lee’s actions were showing her without a doubt that she was very much alive. He had started this, but she’d be damned if he was going to finish it without her enjoying every frakking step along the way.
Moving her hands from around his neck, she slid them down his solid chest until she could pull at some buttons for herself. He wasn’t protesting, and in fact he raised himself off her just a bit to make the task easier. Almost. His finger and thumb rolling one nipple rhythmically were destroying anything she had resembling concentration. But despite his distractions, she managed to get beneath the one shirt only to find two more in her way.
“Frak,” she muttered, clawing at the material. Lee just laughed, shrugged strong shoulders, and then his hands were off her body for just a moment.
Seeing the flex and play of muscles, however dim the light she was watching by, was worth the momentary cessation of sensation. His work shirt slid away, and then two regulation undershirts disappeared quickly up and over his head. By the time he managed to get his arms free and back to her body, she was already doing some exploring of her own. Damn, but the man had a fine chest. He wasn’t huge, but what weight he had was perfectly distributed, solid, and fairly screamed strength. He wasn’t bulky, but rather lean and tight, and his skin was both smooth and warm. She closed her eyes, just enjoying the feel of the warm expanse of chest and then the rapid hardening of his nipples into tiny hard knots. He gasped and she had to smile. She knew the feeling.
Despite her preoccupation with his upper body, he had expanded his exploration of hers. She had a moment’s hesitation when she felt the waistband of her sweats give way, but swallowed it even as the fleece material slid down her legs. She kicked off her running shoes as he pulled the material off her legs, too far gone to be embarrassed, and too entranced by his body to argue. Her hands went straight to his buckle and began a tug of war with the stubborn catch. To his credit, he didn’t do it for her. But he watched, and that kept her off balance and slightly clumsy. It wasn’t a feeling she liked, nor one she was used to. But she stuck with it, and soon the belt gave way, and then the buttons that were holding his pants in place.
Following his lead, once the material loosened she slid her hands towards his backside and cupped firm, warm flesh. Lee’s ass was amazing – just tight enough, and just the right size. From the baby-soft hair at the base of his spine to the smooth buttocks she caressed and squeezed and enjoyed until his attention began to falter. He’d been nuzzling her breasts, finally having gotten the bra up out of his way, and his breath sucked in as she slid her hands from his back to his front and discovered just how serious he was about this little encounter.
Lee stopped breathing; she did too. She slid her hands over his body in fascination, amazed at how hard he was, and how hot. She might have seen bigger men in her life – one of the hazards of military life was co-ed living conditions – but she’d never seen anyone so… obviously ready to… well, ready. She had to wonder just how this was going to work. What was she supposed to do next? She couldn’t have formed a coherent thought if her life had depended on it, and she felt like it just might.
“Are you okay with this?” he asked her. His voice was shaking, and he had gone from not breathing at all to breathing about ninety miles per hour.
“I swear if you stop I’m gonna put a knee where it will do the most good,” she muttered, reaching up and pulling his head down for another long, deep, wet kiss. However this was going to work, she needed it to happen. Now. Whatever his reasons, whatever the consequences, she would deal with it later because at that very moment she didn’t give a flying frak about anything except getting him inside her.
He seemed just as eager. She felt his hands beneath her arms, and then her bra was gone. His hands resumed their posts at her breasts, kneading gently and toying with nipples that had gone from sensitive to just… oh… yes.
And then he was there. She had expected discomfort – he’d been really ready, and she hadn’t bothered to do this in quite a while – but all she felt was smooth, slick stretching. She was filled, not slowly but not too quickly. Perfect. That was it… he felt perfect. If the sigh he’d given upon entering her was any indication, it felt pretty damned good to him, too. God, she hoped so. Nothing this good should be one-sided.
He was still for a long moment. Then his breathing steadied a little, and he was moving. Kara, who had just begun to catch her own breath, promptly lost it again. The pressure was unbelievable. Not painful but just… building. Lee braced his arms on either side of her head, and somehow managed to keep enough of his weight off her that she wasn’t crushed between him and the flooring, and yet the weight that she did feel was pretty amazing. He set a steady pace, not rushing and yet not lazy. But it was the very consistency of the movement that was driving her higher, and higher, and oh God if he didn’t move faster she was going to go insane, but she wanted this to last forever because it felt so frakking good and she didn’t know if she was going to be able to stand much more but if he stopped she’d come apart and if…
Lights and colors burst in and around her as she reached the top and slid over. Her hands clutched at Lee’s back as the war and the death and the hurting were eliminated in favor of a peace that pervaded every part of her. Nothing mattered except this comfort, this rightness that she couldn’t understand or explain or express. So long as he was in her, and around her, everything was fine. She was safe and secure, and damn-it she was even happy. Despite everything that had happened, she was happy.
At some point he must have hit the top, too, because he had stopped moving, and was breathing heavily next to her face. His body felt a little heavier, but not uncomfortable, and the pressure that had filled her was less. Not gone – not exactly – but not as intense. While she had loved the ride he’d taken her on, she did regret not seeing him go over that same precipice she had.
After several moments of lying that way, Lee lifted himself up to look at her. With the angle he was at, she couldn’t really see his eyes, but his expression was far too serious for what she was feeling. She reached up and placed a hand along his cheek, and she smiled. He looked so very serious, and she felt so wonderful. She didn’t want reality to intrude just yet.
So she closed her eyes, and she tugged him down towards her until his head was resting against her neck and he slipped his arms under her to roll on his side. The way he was holding her, she went with him. And he held her then, right up against him, and she knew that she should be cold. They were lying naked – or mostly so – on the floor of a deserted compartment that had been the site of numerous deaths, and yet she felt more alive than she’d been in… more alive than she’d ever been. She smoothed her cheek against his chest, feeling the warmth and resilience of him, listening to the steady slowing of his heartbeat.
She needed to move. She needed to get up before she did something stupid, like falling asleep. But he was so warm, and he felt so very right tucked in against her. Still, she needed to get back to her room so that she could get some rest. But then he kissed her, gently, right on the top of her head. It was a tenderness totally at odds with the passion they had just shared, and it touched her. How could she leave when he felt so good? How could she leave when this felt so perfect?
One minute, she promised herself. One more minute, and then she’d get up and get her clothes back on. She’d think of something to say to him – some way to thank him for getting her through this night – and then she’d leave so that they could still be friends. One more minute, she decided. One more… and then she was fast asleep.
Chapter 2
Lee Adama held his last remaining friend in his arms and said a prayer that he hadn’t destroyed their relationship completely. Talk about things getting out of hand… He had only meant to be sure she was okay. He had only meant to provide her with a little silent support. What the frak had he been thinking?
Well, what he’d been thinking was that she’d looked so miserable, so shaky, that he had needed to be sure she was okay. Aside from being a good friend, and from having saved his life only hours before, she had also been his brother’s girl and so he’d felt a responsibility to ensure that she was okay. That was all he had planned; he had just wanted to check on her.
Watching her disappear through an obscure hidden hatch into a dimly lit inner corridor had confused him. He had squeezed through himself before realizing that it was really an old repair passage. He had followed her by sound, and then had come out behind her in the blackened compartment. There hadn’t been much light, but from what there was he could see her expression was desolate. He hadn’t been able to just sit there and watch her; he’d had to do something.
Remembering those first days after Zak’s death, when they had been arranging the funeral and coping with his loss, he had treasured those few times when she had just sat down next to him and… sat. No words of comfort could touch the pain they had each been in, so they hadn’t tried. They had just… been there. That was all he’d planned to do for her… just be there.
He hadn’t expected her to move closer to him, or to reach out and take his hand in hers. It had been the surprise as much as anything else that had driven home all he had lost. His brother had been dead for two years, but now so was his mother, and his aunt, and all the cousins that he’d dreaded visiting on holidays as a child. They were gone – either vaporized or dying in the radiated remains of Caprica. Everyone, and everything, was gone.
Except that it wasn’t. He still had his father, and he also had one good friend. There was an old Caprican saying that if you had one true friend, you didn’t need any others. He had always believed that. So intent had he been on his career that Lee hadn’t been a social person growing up. He hadn’t made friends often or easily, and those he did make he usually intimidated or alienated in some way. He had gotten used to just having Zak, whom he supposed had to put up with him because they shared the same blood. After losing Zak, Lee had kept himself even more apart. He hadn’t wanted to hurt again. But he had gotten occasional letters from Kara to check up on him, and he had answered with the casual details of what he was doing and how he was. She had done the same, and somehow in all the correspondence a friendship had deepened. He’d heard about her lousy choices in boyfriends, her frustrations with her CAG, and her love of flying for his father. He had griped about the jerks he’d dated, whined that the War College was going to hell around him, and had wondered at how excited his mother was about her new boyfriend. They had commiserated on paper as neither could do face-to-face.
But they were face to face, now. And commiserating wasn’t all they had been doing. Damn-it, he hadn’t even thought that this could happen. But when her fingers had threaded through his, squeezing gently in silent support, he had finally been able to let go just a little. The world was over, everyone he knew or loved was dead, and they had the most uncertain future that could be imagined. Added to this, he was now Commander of the Air Group, putting him in place of one of the respected dead, and giving him responsibilities he was neither prepared for nor competent in. The pressure of it all had just… squeezed out. Kara hadn’t laughed, or lectured, or told him to buck-up and be a good little soldier. She had just let him cry, and somehow it had helped.
But when it had been over, and her head had come to rest on his shoulder, he had needed to thank her. The kiss had just been intended for friendship – thanks given for a wonderful gift both offered and received. And then Kara had blown it all to hell and back because she had returned the kiss.
One thing Lee had learned in the past was that battle of any kind tended to give him an adrenaline rush that was pure and intense, whether in a verbal argument, a physical fight, or a Viper battle. The high was unbelievable, and the drop afterwards was exhausting. And then after that, there came the annoying need to prove himself alive. Yesterday, Lee had looked at death coming towards him. He had known he would die, and had been resigned to it, if not happy about it. Oh Lords, he had thought, my father will lose his last son, and I never even told him I was wrong.
And then Kara had been there, and flashing through his world she had kept him safe and brought him home. The adrenaline level had been intoxicating, and the drop afterwards had been dismal. And after that… after that, she had kissed him back.
Lee had often thought that life would be a hell of a lot easier if men weren’t ruled at least somewhat by their crotch. He was better at hiding it than some were, but when a pretty woman walked by there were parts of his anatomy that stood up and took notice, regardless of how he felt professionally or emotionally on the issue. It didn’t mean that he acted on the impulses, but they were there. He was human after all. But when Kara had kissed him back – full, beautiful lips moving smoothly against his – every survival instinct he had was pushed to the fore.
She had been so soft, and sweet, and she had tasted so good. God, she’d been willing. And that was what he had needed – the physical release that could be found in a willing body. Yet not only was she willing, but she was damned near perfect physically. Every part of her had seemed to fit every part of him with no gaps or discomfort. She hadn’t argued as he’d undressed her, but instead she had fumbled right along with him until they could get enough clothing clear to enjoy one another. And oh, enjoy he did. When he had plunged inside her, the world had stopped for just a moment, as he’d found himself exactly where he had needed to be without even knowing it. And when she had come apart, her body tugging at his, any thought of prolonging their encounter had been cut off as he went off like a rocket, complete with the vertigo and disorientation that inevitably followed.
He had tried not to crush her, but that was as far as his thoughts had been able to reach. And when she had smiled at him, cutting off any thoughts of apology or explanation, he had been lost. He had let her pull him down, had tugged her close to him, and in mere seconds it seemed he had followed her into sleep.
Which brought him to this moment, when waking up in a friend’s arms was more than a little uncomfortable. If it had been any other quick lay, he might have been able to sneak off through the still open hatch – Lords, they hadn’t even closed the hatch; anyone could have seen – and tried to face her with some form of nonchalance at work. But it was Kara, and she deserved better than to wake up naked and alone in an abandoned compartment. He had started this. He would finish it.
He hadn’t even managed to get his pants off. It was an embarrassing thought. While she had kicked off running shoes so that he could get her sweats free and he had enjoyed the feel of her legs wrapped around his hips as she pulled him in even closer, he had not been able to get his own duty pants down past his combat boots. So there he was, cold on a metal floor with his pants around his ankles, his belt digging into one hip – that would likely bruise – and a warm, willing, wonderful woman laying almost on top of him.
God, she looked so sweet when she slept. All that energy toned down into an innocent expression that he knew was a lot closer to reality than the mask she showed everyone else. He had seen her with Zak – relaxed and laughing and so very gentle – so he knew what she really was on the inside.
Oh good Lords, Zak! He’d slept with Zak’s girl. That thought was just now hitting him, sending a blush through his body that warmed him more thoroughly than Kara was managing. He was supposed to care for her, protect her, and yes maybe love her. But as a sister. He wasn’t supposed to… Dear Lords, what had he been thinking? How could he have let himself…?
But she hadn’t seemed to mind. He had even offered her an out, but she hadn’t taken it. She had been as involved in whatever it was – emotion or reaction or whatever the hell – as he had been. And frak, it had felt good. Not just physically, but… something else. He hadn’t held anything back with her. He hadn’t wanted to. Even afterwards, when he’d known he should ease himself away and get the rest of his clothes back on, just holding her had been more important. They had both been going non-stop for three days; it was no wonder they had collapsed.
But what now? Sweetly cuddled into his arms, she was lovely to look at, and she was the only thing keeping the chill of the floor and the air at bay, but what the hell was she going to say when she woke with the man who was essentially her big brother nearly nude and wrapped around her? And his body had taken notice of that situation, rising to the opportunity as it had the night before. Thankfully, he was far more in control today.
Today. What time was it? Shifting his arm slightly, he looked at the lighted dial on his watch. They had duty in a couple of hours. They had been sleeping almost eight, if he’d kept any awareness of time while he’d broken down. He was pretty sure he had. He had a thing for time, able to count off seconds without losing pace. It was one of the things that made him good in a Viper; he could mentally calculate the distance, angle, and time to hit a moving target. He didn’t know where the skill had come from. It had always been there.
When she shifted in his arms, he tensed. He wasn’t ready to let go, and yet he knew there was work to be done, and there was a piper to pay. Unable to resist, he leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead while her eyes were still closed. He didn’t know if he’d be able to face her once they opened.
And then they did. While the color was hidden by the darkness, Lee could definitely see the flutter of eyelids and the tension of her features. He would have liked to have had a better look. She had the most expressive eyes he’d ever seen, and he knew that if he could get a look he would have a lot better idea of where to go with this, and what she needed him to do.
Her arms tightened minutely. “Hey,” she said in a gravelly, sexy voice. Her voice was always low, always just a little sexy. It always had been. A bedroom voice, Zak had called it, and Lee cut that thought off before it could even really form. He had enough to deal with at the moment without adding intense guilt to the mix.
“Hey,” he answered. Great conversation. But it was the one thing he could say when he had no clue what else to offer.
“You cold?” she asked, nuzzling into his neck and placing a soft kiss at its base. Damned, but that felt really good.
“A little,” he admitted. “You?”
“My back is,” she said, and almost involuntarily his arms began moving, his hands rubbing up and down her back in an effort to warm her. He saw the wide expanse of her smile as she lifted her head. “You have to be freezing. I can’t even walk on these floors in bare feet.”
He smiled back. There was no use denying it. Not only was he cold, but he was stiff, and beginning to feel the muscles that the previous day’s accident had wrenched about.
“I need clothes,” she muttered, and her smile faltered just a bit as she pushed up on him and looked around. She was most likely feeling a few sore spots herself. She reached with one hand, sat up and self-consciously pulled her bra into place. Next came the shirt, which was inside out. Lee didn’t even really remember removing the garments, but he remembered nuzzling beneath them, desperate for the taste of her.
Her attention was on finding her sweats now, and he was grateful. The moment she shifted from his legs, he pulled up his underwear and pants, shoving his stiff length inside and thinking that a zipper would have been a hell of a lot easier than buttons. He had his belt buckled and was reaching for his undershirts by the time she started putting on her shoes. And then it was done. Both were dressed, the stolen moment was over, and they were faced with what had happened.
“Lee,” she began, but he cut her off.
“Don’t,” he pleaded. “Look, I’m sorry things got out of hand. Really. I just…” He took a deep breath before continuing. “I have no clue what happened. I mean, I remember, but as for why…”
“It’s okay,” she informed him. “I think we both needed it. It’s been… a hell of a few days.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I’d been climbing the walls for hours,” she told him. “I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t turn my head off… so thank you. You got my mind off… everything.”
He had to smile at her. “It was good to be of service,” he said with a small smile. “But I should be thanking you.”
“Was I that good?” she said in a wry voice as she checked around to be sure they hadn’t dropped anything in their haste to dress – or undress.
“You don’t need to fish for compliments,” he told her honestly. “You were amazing.”
Her smile was shy, but he couldn’t see if she had blushed at the comment. Knowing her, she probably had. And she’d probably disembowel him if she thought he’d seen it.
“When are you back on shift?” she asked, clearly trying to change the subject even as she did her best to straighten clothes that she had hastily put on.
“I took early watch,” he told her. “You’re there, too.”
“Great, what’s the drill today?”
He sighed but his heart wasn’t in it. “The first order of business is putting back together those two Vipers you decided to smash.”
“I guess you would have rather taken on a base star with no engines or weapons?” she asked wryly. “Cool. Next time I’ll know. My back hurts like hell, and I could really use less aggravation.” She said the last with a mild punch to his arm, clearly a joke as he’d seen her right hook and it was something to fear.
“I appreciated the save,” he told her softly, and he genuinely meant it. They had stood up while dressing, and were already moving towards the hatch that led into the repair corridor.
She shrugged, but she didn’t turn around. He heard her voice change slightly as she cleared her throat, her guard coming back up he supposed, whereas before she had been relaxed and natural. He had a lot of experience in dealing with her armor – she had been known for it when she’d been teaching at the Academy. “I guess I’m evened out now,” she muttered. “Kill one Adama, save another. It’s all about balance.”
He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t kill Zak,” Lee told her, and he couldn’t decide why it was so important that she understand. “He did that all by himself. You may have contributed to his choices, but you didn’t kill him.”
“Is that what you told your father?” she asked sarcastically, her voice shaking slightly but whether from fury or some other emotion he wasn’t sure. “Oh, no, that’s not right. You called your father a murderer and didn’t speak to him for two years. Now I remember.”
“Kara…”
“Stop.”
“No! We need to get this straight.”
“It’s already straight,” she corrected. “Lee, we’re not talking about this.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s been over for two years,” she said, and her voice was cracking. He wished that he could see her face clearly, but he had turned to face her and his back was to the light with her standing in his shadow. “He’s been gone for two years, and he’s not coming back. It’s over.”
“Is it?”
“It has to be,” she said simply.
“Then why did you tell me? Why did it matter so much?”
She closed her eyes before she answered. “That’s an easy one. I didn’t think I’d be coming back. I figured it was better for you to hate someone who was dead than to hate your own father. He’d already lost one son; he doesn’t need to lose you too.”
“So this is about my dad?” he asked.
“It’s not about anything,” she said with a sigh. “Lee, I need a shower, and something to eat, and then we’re both on duty. We can tear each other apart some other time. Right now I just want to get on with my day. It had a great start, but it looks like it’ll be downhill from here on out. I may as well get it over with.”
“It was a good start,” he agreed, surprising himself. She was giving him the opportunity he could only have hoped for, and he wasn’t entirely ready to let her do it. He hadn’t started a morning so well in a hell of a long time, and she deserved to know that.
“But it won’t happen again,” she told him simply. “It can’t. There’s too much… Lee, it’s too screwed up between us. It wouldn’t work, and I don’t feel like getting my heart broken.”
“So I’d break yours?” he asked softly.
“Or I’d break yours,” she said with a shrug. “Same difference. But yeah, you’d probably break mine. You left a trail all across Caprica of sweet little co-eds that couldn’t hold your interest. I won’t be a notch.”
“So we’re supposed to forget it happened?” he asked. It had been what he wanted. Why in hell was her suggestion bothering him? He was sure it was her reference to his less than selective past, but he wasn’t going to let her bait him. Yes, he’d been fairly free with physical encounters, but he’d had his reasons. It was easier to have sex with someone than to talk to them, and he had been lonely a lot of the time. Kara wouldn’t understand that, though. She had always made friends so easily.
“That would be best,” she told him. Then, brushing her bangs out of her face with both hands, she added, “Damn-it Lee, I enjoyed last night. I don’t want to ruin it this morning.
He looked at her a long moment, trying to find her logic and to see what she was trying to tell him. It wasn’t easy. Aside from the dim light, her expression wasn’t anything he recognized, either from knowing her as a friend or from working with her. He chalked it up to the mysteries of the female mind and let it be. “I don’t either,” he told her. “There’s no reason we can’t stay professional on the deck.”
She finally smiled. Lee was amazed at the relief that washed over him as she did so. The smile was pure Kara: wide, generous, and full of mischief. “I have never been professional on the deck,” she informed him in no uncertain terms. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to start now.”
He couldn’t look at her wide-eyed amusement and not smile back. “Point taken,” he admitted. Then, extending his hand, “Friends?”
She looked at his hand for a long moment, not reaching for it. He began to feel more than a little silly standing there with his hand out, but he would have felt worse pulling it back in. Finally Kara took a step forward, took his hand in both of hers, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear.
She squeezed his hand once before letting go and turning to leave. “Kara?”
She looked back over her shoulder at him, and she waited.
“You’re welcome,” he told her softly. And when she turned her back to ease back down the repair shaft, he knew she was smiling.
Chapter 3
Kara turned the wrench one more time with a tired hand, finally getting the nut secure on the bolt. Her arm was killing her. Shifting to her side to grab the next bolt and it’s accompanying washer and nut, her back protested as well.
She hadn’t really noticed it until the morning she had awoken with Lee, but the collision she’d initiated to get his Viper on board the Galactica had busted up more than the ships. She had bruises that had bruises where her harness had kept her in her seat, and her upper back was still hurting a lot more than she wanted to admit. The only break the doctor had found had been a hairline fracture – and an incomplete one at that – in her collarbone. Initially she hadn’t even felt it through the adrenaline and constant activity that followed, but within a couple of days it had begun to hurt badly enough that she’d braved the Galactica’s sickbay.
She’d had a long wait. While the medical personnel were at least treating injuries that weren’t life threatening now – something that hadn’t been an option in the first day or two after their jump – there was still a wait to be seen. After four hours in the bay, she had finally been seen by a tech, X-rayed, and sent for bone fusion. That particular injury was a little sore, but no longer painful. The same could not be said for the bruises, strains, and sprains that she’d acquired in the crash. Painkillers were at a premium, so she was managing without them, but she truly wished that she could regain the general numbness that she’d felt immediately following the injury.
She had to wonder if Lee was feeling the after-effects, too. He had seemed fine on the night they’d spent together – and in the morning – but she hadn’t been hurting all that much then either, at least not more than she would have attributed to a night spent on a hard floor and non-stop work during the previous three days. Sleep deprivation, it seemed, could serve as quite an anesthetic, but not one she cared to use again. Then again, she might not have a choice.
The night after the one she’d spent with Lee had been a restless one. She had tossed and turned a hell of a lot more than she had slept. After reporting for her next twelve-hour shift, she had tried to sleep once more, and had finally walked down to the pilots’ ready room to curl up on the couch where the movement, activity, and voices had lulled he into at least a light sleep. It hadn’t been much, but it had been better than nothing. She had spent the next night there as well, and then the next. So far, no one had complained. She hoped they would continue to ignore her. Her own squadron quarters felt like a tomb, and she simply couldn’t stand it there.
This morning she had awoken long before her shift had begun and had been disgusted with her failed attempts to stay asleep more than a few minutes at a time, so she had decided to make a quick run through the belongings of those she had known. It had felt almost like stealing from the dead, but in her heart she knew better. The Commander had announced that he was bringing in every pilot that he could get his hands on to be trained to replace those they had lost. Retired, civilian, and even a couple of kids who’d had flying fathers who had taught them a little something back home – all were going to be brought to the Galactica and given a crash course in combat flight. By the end of the week, every bed in quarters would be filled, and it had bothered her that strangers would be riffling through the possessions of her friends.
So she had scrounged up a box, and she had gone from bed to bed, then locker to locker, tucking away anything that had meaning. The items would simply be trash to those who were coming in, but the few trinkets were all she had left of some very good people.
She’d found about a dozen pictures among the belongings. Some were group shots and some individual, some of families and some of trips. Each picture had involved someone that she knew, or someone that they had cared about. Those pictures she had kept. She had also kept most of a new box of cigars that had been in Ripper’s locker, the Academy ring that Copper had been too worried about losing to ever wear, and the earrings that Digger had been given by Jolly for her last birthday. Kara didn’t even have pierced ears, but both Digger and Jolly had been damned good people, and she wanted to remember them.
It had taken her only a couple of hours, but she had finally removed everything that seemed… personal. She didn’t care about the cubits or uniforms, but many of the little touches that had made this a home to her fellow pilots – knick knacks from vacations, a hologram of Caprica, more than one beloved book – these were the things she had stored for herself. The box was now tucked into the bottom of her locker, and if anyone had a problem with her choice they’d have to go through her to take it. She considered it her right as the single surviving member of her squadron. Besides, it was all that she had left.
She had been half an hour late getting to the bay, and she had taken hell from the Crewman she’d relieved. She had already been on edge when the Crewman had started in on her for not watching the clock, and he had effectively pushed her over that edge. She might not be a Captain, but she still outranked an E-3. Her temper had flared, her eyes had blazed, and her actions… well, she couldn’t be responsible for them. She had sent him running with a few choice words and a flying screwdriver. She didn’t think he’d be yelling at her again in the near future.
Then she had gone to work. The Viper she’d been assigned wasn’t her own. They were repairing in reverse order, from the least damaged to the most, in order to get as many planes flight ready as soon as possible. The Viper that had brought both her and Lee back – and that she had claimed as her own - would be among the last to be worked on. But this one needed work now, and she was doing her best. They’d run out of new parts, so each repair now involved disassembling something else that couldn’t be repaired before using the parts they gained to fix something that could. She hoped that as they made their way down the list of ships, her own Viper didn’t become so many spare parts. It had been a good ship. She hated to see it scavenged to save others.
“Starbuck!”
She’d been dreading that voice since she had watched the screwdriver leave her hand an hour before, bounce twice off the metal flight deck, and sail satisfyingly into a wall. She had known that the Crewman wouldn’t take her words or actions lying down. She wished that she had it in her to care.
“If you put me in the brig, this ship won’t get fixed,” she told her CAG without moving from her place beneath the Viper. “Is it really worth it?”
“Out,” he told her. She stayed put. The next thing she knew a large hand had clamped onto her upper arms and she was being dragged from beneath the ship. Given the still-tender condition of her collarbone, it had hurt like hell.
“Let go!” she yelled, sending an upwards kick towards the man that seemed to be pulling her apart just as soon as her legs cleared the Viper. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, as she really wasn’t in a condition for a real fight – he grabbed the leg and redirected it downwards so that the only thing she kicked was air. He used that leg to turn her, pin her to the deck on her side, and keep her there with his knee on hers and his weight pinning her arms.
“Damn-it, Starbuck, hold still before I have to hurt you!”
“Not frakking likely,” she muttered as she struggled fruitlessly beneath his weight. She’d been beneath him before, but not like this. And that thought was what ground her to a halt. Unbidden, images of him rising above her, his body surrounding her, seemed to slip through the haze of red that she’d been looking through. Abruptly, she stopped fighting.
He didn’t let up, but instead continued to hold her firmly. “Are you finished?” he asked her in a very soft voice. Not soft and friendly, but soft and deadly. She had pushed him farther than she’d thought.
“For the moment,” she admitted. She wouldn’t make promises about the future.
“At least I don’t have to ask if you really threw tools at a repairman,” he muttered as he eased his knee’s pressure to her leg. “You’re definitely fighting first and talking later.”
“I’m not talking at all, so if you’re going to bust me, get it done.”
There was a long pause before Lee gave a tired sigh. A good deal of the anger drained from his expression while she watched. “I don’t have the time or patience for this, Kara. If we don’t work together, we can’t get anything done.
“We can’t get it done anyway,” she said in frustration. “We don’t have the parts, the men, or the time.”
“Time, we’ve got,” he said, finally moving off her so that she could roll onto her back and look up at him. Surprisingly, he seemed a lot more tired than angry, now. She knew the feeling. “But you’re right about the rest. Still, throwing things at your help isn’t going to do anything but piss them off.”
“Maybe he pissed me off first,” she grumbled.
“I’m sure he did,” Lee allowed. “But then you’re supposed to do what he did: come to me. I can assign you someone else, or let you work alone if you need to, but we are not going to hospitalize the few remaining qualified people that we have. Got it?”
She didn’t speak, but she nodded. It was all she could manage.
“For the record,” he added, “What did he do to set you off?”
“I was late showing up to work. He started screaming. I would have worked through breaks to make up the time, but he just started yelling. I didn’t want to hear it.”
Lee shook his head, but he smiled. It wasn’t a true smile, but it was close. “Kara, did it once occur to you that maybe he had a point?”
“Nope.”
“Keep your hands off the help,” he told her with a glare. “And your tools, too.”
“Yes, Sir,” she replied, the two syllables enunciated clearly.
Lee reached forward then, and moved the strap of her tank top down her arm, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked. “You look worse than I do,” he muttered.
“It looks worse than it feels,” she told him.
“Did you clear medical?” he asked, referring to the standard procedure of getting checked following any injury that occurred in the line of duty.
“Did you?” she fired back.
He didn’t speak, but he did glare. His silence was louder than most of the screaming lectures she’d endured in the past. “Yes, I did,” she said. “I went up yesterday after things quieted down.”
“Must have been bad if you did,” he reasoned, standing up and reaching down a hand to help her do the same. She didn’t bother arguing, but she did reach out with her opposite arm. She was still smarting from his tugging on her arm a few minutes before.
“Are you fit to work?” he asked.
“I’m here, right?”
Kara?”
She sighed. “Lee, I’m fine. Bumped and bruised, but they took care of the break.”
“Break?”
“Along here,” she said, pointing to the red mark left from the bone fusion procedure. “Probably from the restraints in the Viper. It wasn’t clean through,” she explained. “The tech said I probably would have healed with no trouble on my own if I hadn’t minded waiting.” Kara scoffed. “Believe it or not, I’m not big on pain.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?” he asked her in confusion. “I mean, I wouldn’t have… or we… I mean…” He cleared his throat, looking almost shy, but didn’t continue.
Kara had to laugh at him. He might be really good at having sex, but he couldn’t talk about it to save his life. She couldn’t fault him there. Some things just didn’t have adequate words to describe. “It wasn’t really bugging me then,” she told him, letting him off the hook. “If it had been, I would have said something.”
Reluctantly, if his expression was any indication, he let the subject drop. “Are you… I mean, aside from that, are you okay?”
“Like I said, bumps and bruises,” she told him again.
He nodded, seeming satisfied with her answer. “Actually, I needed to talk to you anyway,” he explained. “The Commander has everyone logging in when they hit the mess hall. It’s part of the rationing. Anyway, if someone misses three meals straight, their direct superior gets a report. In your case, that’s me.”
“Your point?”
“You aren’t eating,” he told her flatly. “But you know that.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said with a shrug that reminded her again that she wasn’t at one hundred percent. And that was the truth. The few bites she’d tried to eat since this whole thing had started had nearly made a return visit in the hours afterwards. She knew it was just nerves, and that she would get past it in time. She didn’t see what his complaint was, anyway. If she wasn’t eating, it left more food for everyone else.
“You have to eat,” he told her. “Otherwise you’re no good to anyone, on the deck or in the air.”
“I’ll eat when I’m hungry,” she told him, getting annoyed. Damn-it, she was sick of having her every move analyzed. Maybe it wasn’t the most responsible thing to show up a little late to duty – not that it changed what she would have gotten done, but she supposed it was a little rude to the previous shift – and maybe she should be forcing down a little more food, but she didn’t need someone critiquing everything she did or didn’t do.
“You’ll eat now,” he corrected. “Otherwise I’ll bump the report up to the next in the chain of command. That would be Colonel Tigh.”
Kara glared at him. “That’s not fair,” she muttered.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “I shouldn’t have to worry about my pilots eating. There aren’t a lot of people left alive, Kara. Those of us who are need to take care of ourselves. I have enough to deal with between the pilots we don’t have, the ones coming in that need training, and the ships that are in pieces all over the deck. Be in the ready room in ten minutes. You’re not the only one on a hunger strike. I have three more people to get and then you’re all sitting down and eating. Got it?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve got work to do,” she argued.
“And you’ll do it – after you eat.”
With no more than that, Lee spun on his heel and took off to find his next hapless victim. Kara supposed she should feel lucky. After all, she deserved more than a verbal reprimand for assaulting a crew member. But it still bothered her that they were being watched so closely that they couldn’t even miss a meal or two before the brass started getting involved. She could take care of herself, and she didn’t need anyone else telling her what to do.
But she was too tired to argue any more, and not willing to go to the brig or to deal with Tigh over this. Hell, Tigh would probably want her to starve to death, the bastard. Kara lay back down on the deck and shimmied back under the Viper to finish what she’d been doing. She wished that she could have found one of the roll boards to use, but there were too many repairs necessary, too many men working, and too few boards to go around.
It took her a few more than ten minutes to get the casing remounted, but she finished the job before reporting to the ready room. Lunch consisted of stale bread stuffed with various meats and vegetables. She selected one that didn’t look too bad, claimed her personal corner on the couch, and ate her lunch like a good little girl. It went down as smoothly as rocks. Even the strong coffee that she drank had little flavor to her.
Lee came in just as she was finishing, and nodded approvingly. He glanced around the room, made sure that everyone who was there got checked off on his little clipboard, and then grabbed a sandwich for himself. From the first bite, he didn’t look like he was enjoying the food any more than she had.
“Are we finished now?” she asked him as she displayed her mostly empty plate, complete with remaining breadcrumbs and a smear of mustard.
“You can get back to work,” he allowed. “Go to dinner at seventeen-thirty,” he told her firmly. “I don’t want to see your name on another report, and I don’t want to hear about you attacking the crew anymore. Clear?”
“As crystal,” she said with a mock bow, and then she headed out of the room.
Following her shift, she did as she was told and grabbed a light dinner. Oddly, eating made her hungry, so dinner had actually been fairly welcome. She supposed that her body had needed the reminder of what was required to survive. Unfortunately, finishing work meant that it was time for another battle with sleep, and she could have done without it. Lords, she hated insomnia. She’d dealt with it in the past by simply ignoring it. She had stayed up, worked on whatever was available, and eventually she had gotten tired enough to pass out. Unfortunately, that usually took several days, and she didn’t have the sixteen or eighteen hours to recoup if she tried that tactic. But rolling around in her bed got old after the first two hours, and once more she grabbed her shirt to cover her bra and slipped her feet into running shoes for the trek down to the ready room. She didn’t sleep well there, but at least she slept some. It had to be enough.
Mid way to the room, she noticed the hatchway that lead towards the port flight pod. It was slightly ajar, which struck her as odd. Granted, there had been some cleanup started in that area, but the maintenance crews were using the main hatchways rather than the repair corridors. She went through the hatch and slipped into the narrow passage that lead to the pod. Once there, she left the hatch wide open to allow as much light from the passage to enter the bay as possible.
Looking around, she wasn’t entirely surprised to see who was sitting there, his back against the wall and his feet crossed before him. Lee looked almost as miserable as he had on the first night they’d met here. She considered leaving him to it, but she just couldn’t do it. Knowing that it was probably a bad idea, she stepped through the hatch into the compartment and walked over to kneel beside him.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she told him with a grin. “Enjoying the scenery?”
He actually smiled back. “I’m hiding,” he explained. “If one more person asks me to do one more thing that I have no clue how to manage, I may hurt someone.”
Kara laughed at that. “Welcome to the wonderful world of CAG,” she told him. “What’s the saying? We’ve done so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing. Sound about right?”
“On the nose,” he admitted. “Have a seat. It’s not comfortable, but it’s quiet.”
She did as he said, sitting cross-legged before him and looking him over. He looked far more than miserable. He looked awful. Maybe it was the dim lighting from the repair corridor, but his eyes looked sunken and the lines around his eyes seemed deeper. He looked like he’d aged ten years in only a few days. “It gets easier with time,” she assured him. “If you need help with some of the pilots, I can manage that. I know most of the ones we have left, even if it’s not very well.”
“Thanks,” he told her, but it seemed monotone. He had the same blank expression that he’d carried in the days after Zak’s death: lost and terribly alone. It wasn’t just the command, she decided. It was the same depression that seemed to be settling over all of them in the wake of their escape.
“Lee?” she asked, coming to her knees before him and looking at him straight on.
He moved his eyes and focused on her, and just that quickly she was lost. She couldn’t offer him much, but what she had to give was his. “It’ll get better,” she promised him. And then she kissed him.
Chapter 4
Lee closed his eyes and let himself relax just for the moment. Kara’s hands were on either side of his face, her lips were on his, and he couldn’t think of a single place that he’d rather be.
He had missed her. They had been together only once, and even that had been a moment out of time, but somehow – body and soul – he had missed her. Having her kiss him now was like coming home, and it was something he couldn’t refuse.
He put his arms around her and pulled her closer. Moving his legs from their crossed position in front of him, he placed them on either side of her legs and tugged her in tight. She was just a little higher than he was, on her knees instead of her butt, but he didn’t mind reaching. She bent his head back just a little, slid her tongue over his lower lip in a clear invitation, and then withdrew so that he would follow.
Once he was inside, she sucked gently on his tongue, her lips still in motion and her hands moving slightly to thread fingers through his short hair. His arms moved from her sides to her back, bringing her down just a bit so that they were lined up eye to eye.
“This is going to get complicated,” she told him as she lifted her head for a much needed breath.
“I think it already is,” he corrected. “Do you care?”
She shook her head, smiled slowly, and then placed her full lips over his again. They kissed for a long time, sometimes deeply and sometimes playfully, but always with tenderness. He hadn’t realized just how much he had missed having someone to trust. He didn’t feel like he had to guard himself with Kara. Whether it was the friendship they shared, the connection of his brother, or just something indefinable he wasn’t sure. But he trusted her, and that made it easy to open up, made it easy to just… feel.
Her kiss was moving off center, now. She trailed beautiful lips along his jaw, nibbling at his left earlobe, and then tracing around the edge of that same ear with her tongue. The sensation was breathtaking, leaving him shaking and breathing more heavily than before. When he gave a slight moan at his body’s response to her play, she laughed in a deep and sexy voice and gently placed her teeth on his ear in a tender bite.
He let his hands leave her back then, trailing down to her waist, and then up under her loose shirt. As before, she wasn’t wearing the regulation undershirts beneath, but only a thin cotton bra. Easily he slid hands beneath it, rubbing her back gently until she groaned, dragging a smile from him. If she was still as sore as he was, that had to feel good. He rubbed her shoulders gently, remembering where she’d shown him the bone repair, and then moved the massage down her back, carefully kneading the muscles and enjoying the way she sighed and molded herself against him.
By the time he got to her lower back, his fingers edging beneath her waistband to rub firm buttocks, she had stopped kissing him and was just resting her head on his shoulder. “Sleepy?” he asked.
“Enjoying,” she replied.
“I’m glad,” he told her, and he was. Who would have thought that just giving someone pleasure – even if it was just a backrub – could feel so good? And how something so simple, and essentially innocent, could be so arousing was beyond him. But it was. Her body, relaxed and lined up with his, had him so hard that he couldn’t see straight. Unable to resist the temptation, he moved his hands inward from where they had been kneading her bottom, to find the heat waiting between her legs. Her relaxed sigh changed to a gasp of surprise, bringing a smile to his lips. “Can I get rid of these?” he asked, referring to the pants that were making his task more difficult than it had to be.
She shook her head and moved back to face him. “You first,” she told him. “I never did get your boots off last time.”
He felt heat start at his chest and move upward in the first true blush he’d had since… hell, he couldn’t even remember when. He wasn’t one who blushed easily or often, but she had a point. The last time he had taken her without even getting all of his clothes off, and then he had slept that way as well. It wasn’t exactly the sign of a man in control of his body. He looked up to meet her eyes, wishing that the light were a little brighter so that he could see her better, and yet grateful that it was probably hiding the blush. “Sorry about that,” he said softly. “You were… distracting.”
“And you were amazing,” she countered. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see the whole package.”
He shook his head and smiled again, not sure whether to be pleased or intimidated by her honesty. It occurred to him that it might be wiser to close the hatch rather than strip before it, but the chances of them being found were minimal. He was sure she’d closed the outer hatch, and what little access lighting was available was worth the obscure chance of discovery. He hoped.
Reluctantly, he withdrew his hands and arms from her pants and she eased away so that he could go to work on his own. Several snug buttons later, he was reaching down to untie his boots so that he’d be able to get the pants all the way off. He felt like blushing again when he looked up to see her watching him, but he didn’t say a word as he lifted his butt and removed his pants. Sitting back down on the flooring, he sucked in a breath. “Damn, that’s cold,” he muttered.
Her deep, throaty laugh sent shivers down his spine. “Tell me about it,” she said with a wink. “I was on the bottom, remember?”
“I didn’t hear any complaints,” he said as he reached for her.
“Yeah, well some things are worth a cold back,” she replied in amusement.
“Let’s find out,” he suggested, and then he kicked his pants and underwear off the rest of the way, reached down and grabbed the tails of his undershirts to tug them over his head, and with gritted teeth he lay back on the cold flooring, tugging her with him as he went.
She laughed as he pulled her down, and then their lips met and the laughing was over. Lords, but she could kiss. Her mouth seemed to be made for kissing, with soft, full, warm lips that were never still. She gave herself entirely to the moment, using tongue and teeth and those gorgeous lips to her full advantage as she pinned his head to the floor and kissed the living daylights out of him. She was right; after a moment, the flooring didn’t feel all that cold. Her mouth was generating too much heat for him to think about anything else.
But whether it was from instinct or desire, he couldn’t just lie there and enjoy. His hands went to her sides, both supporting her and edging under the tails of her work shirt to find warm skin beneath. He moved his hands up her back again, but instead of rubbing there, he eased beneath the back of her bra, moved his hands around to her chest, and shoved the material out of the way. His eager fingers rolled hardened nipples, and he loved the way she sucked in a breath of air and her lips lost their rhythm for just a moment as the sensation hit her. He smoothed his palms over her breasts to feel the hardened nubs and the soft flesh surrounding them, amazed at how well they fit his hands, then captured each nipple between a thumb and index finger to begin torturing her again. Her reaction was the same, both the gasp and the pause in her movement.
But it wasn’t enough. He wanted her against him, and he needed that damned shirt off to make it happen. Leaving the warmth of her skin, he began a battle with stubborn buttons in an effort to get her free of the work shirt. After an eternity he managed it, and then he moved his attention to her pants. He slid his hands beneath the material and shoved the regulation gray workout gear down her smooth legs. He felt her moving around, and it took him a moment to realize that she was just kicking away her shoes so that the pants could come off. And then they did.
Once more, Lee wished for light. He could see her in the dim illumination that the passageway lighting provided, but he couldn’t see her clearly. So he did the only thing he could think of to remedy the situation. He reached out to help her remove the bra that was in his way, and then he “looked” with his hands. Kara didn’t complain.
In fact, she was arching into his movements as though she enjoyed his touch. Her breath was breaking, soft sighs surrounded him, and then she finally pulled herself together to return the favor.
She had him at a disadvantage, in that he was lying on his back and pretty much at her mercy. She didn’t let the fact escape her as she ran her hands over every surface of him that she could reach. Starting with her fingertips and palms, and then followed by lips and tongue, Kara managed to make him forget that the floor was cold, hard, or even there. It was just the two of them, lost in a world of physical sensation, and neither of them eager to find a way out.
Her hands were thorough, her tongue quick and clever, and within moments she had him so close to the edge that he was half afraid he’d already gone over. “Lords, do you have any clue how good that feels?” he muttered as her lips found a particularly sensitive spot inside his right thigh. As an answer, she sucked gently on the skin, making him groan in some combination of anticipation and relief. She just felt so damned good – every touch – and not just the ones to the most eager parts of his anatomy.
She didn’t neglect anyplace; that much was certain. She cupped and caressed, kissed and nipped, rubbed and kneaded. By the time she moved up to straddle his hips, he was an inch away from flipping her over and just getting the relief that his body so desperately craved. But as her heat rubbed over him, slick and wet and so hot that he could barely comprehend it, he was grateful that he’d left her in charge. For the moment.
She didn’t take him inside her, or at least not at first. She rubbed soft folds of flesh over him, her own moisture making the caress unbelievably smooth. He could see her expression faintly, eyes squeezed close and face intent. Her breathing was as erratic as his own, so he didn’t have any doubts that she was enjoying her actions just as much as he was. The position also gave him the opportunity to reach up and caress her, chest and back, nipples and buttocks, legs and arms. He wanted to touch all of her at once, but more than that he wanted to be inside her. Now.
“Kara,” he choked out, his body starting to shake.
“Need something?” she asked, a whisper in his ear just before she gently nibbled at the lobe.
“God, yes,” he said on a broken breath. “You. Now.”
She moved her mouth to his, kissed him with aching thoroughness, and then changed the angle at which her lower body was rubbing over his. More slowly than he could have imagined, she took him inside her. Smooth, wet heat surrounded him, taking his world from beneath him. Everything around him narrowed to her body, holding him and squeezing him with gentle, absolute heat.
She went slowly. Very slowly. He would have thought too slowly, but he could deny neither the pleasure evident on her face or what he was feeling himself. While he wanted to plunge deeply, he instead used his hands on her hips to steady her, help her balance, and he let her set the painfully slow pace. It was worth his patience to see her expression change, watch her swallow convulsively, and then feel her body’s rhythmic contractions as she hit the top. Her hands clutched on his arms where they had gone to support herself, and she didn’t exactly cry out, but she was certainly not quiet. He held his breath, just watching her come apart, awed on more levels than he could really understand that he could give her this, or that she would take it.
As her body went limp over his, he moved his arms up her body to keep her upright and then he moved his hips upward. Hard. Her eyes flew open as he rocked upwards into her, his movements much faster than hers had been, much deeper, and harder. She wasn’t complaining.
She smiled. Wide and generous and just for him, she smiled. It was his undoing. Her body might bring him to the edge of ecstasy, but it was her smile – that sign that she was enjoying this as much as he was – that shoved him over the edge.
He felt the explosion begin, and he pulled her down to him even as his hips bucked up to drive him further within her one more time. And then he couldn’t feel anything beyond the pulses of his own release, pleasure and relief and everything else that he needed all rolled up into one glorious feeling. If he had died right that moment, he wouldn’t have cared. He had everything he could have ever hoped to want or need. He had her, and it was enough.
The next thing he was conscious of was her head on his chest and his arms around her body. She was resting most of her weight on him – and she wasn’t light by any stretch of the imagination – but it felt good. Damned good. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, keeping her close as he kissed the top of her head with a tenderness he couldn’t hold back. She was truly amazing to him. She gave everything; it was a generosity he wasn’t used to.
“I felt that,” she whispered.
“The kiss?” he asked, just a little embarrassed. It was just sex, he reminded himself. It didn’t have to be any more than that.
“That too,” she admitted. “But I meant…” Her hips moved then, and while his body was no longer hard, he was still inside her and he very clearly felt the movement. “I missed it last time,” she admitted.
“How could you miss it?” he asked wryly. To him, it had felt as intense as a nuclear blast.
“You had me distracted,” she told him in a disgusted voice. “But this time, I… felt it. It’s dumb. Forget I said anything.”
“You can say whatever you want,” he said while giving her a gentle squeeze. “I won’t hold it against you.”
“If you try, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
She didn’t sound like she was kidding. That didn’t really bother him; she had a right to keep her pride. What bothered him was that she might think he would consider saying or doing anything to… Aside from the fact that it would have been damned ungrateful, he had never been one to kiss and tell.
“I’m hoping you won’t regret anything,” he said softly. “But you know I wouldn’t ever say anything to…”
“Can we drop this conversation?” she asked.
“If you want.”
“Good. I’m sick of fighting with you all the time.”
“Then quit fighting,” he recommended reasonably.
She sighed, but was quiet for a short while. He continued to hold her, but was reluctant to say anything. He didn’t want to mess this up, and he had the feeling that anything he said would be wrong.
“I need to go,” she said softly.
“Why?”
She raised her head up to glare at him. “You have to ask?”
“I know,” he admitted. “But… stay for a minute. You’re warm.”
She shook her head in apparent disgust, but then she laid her head back down on his chest. He felt like he’d been given a gift – one more moment of peace before he had to go back to the real world. The floor was cold against his back, but she made a warm blanket and for the moment at least his mind wasn’t having to puzzle out schedules, personnel, and supplies. He was simply a man, with a beautiful woman draped over him, and he could just… be.
He knew almost the exact moment when Kara fell asleep. Her body relaxed completely, her breathing deepened slightly, and the hand she had been holding his shoulder with fell limply away. It would have been more comfortable to roll onto his side and snuggle with her, but he didn’t want to take the risk of waking her up. So instead he wrapped her in his arms and closed his own eyes. He didn’t sleep deeply, but he did doze in and out while Kara slept soundly atop him. In all honesty, he had to admit that he actually rested more that way than he would have managed lying in the bunk he’d inherited from the previous CAG. It seemed someone always needed something, and no one was above knocking on his door – day or night – to ask for something he couldn’t provide. It was more comfortable to lie on a hard floor with Kara’s dead weight on his chest than to try to bear the weight of a position he hadn’t been ready for.
Granted, if he’d moved into a normal CAG position he would have had some preparation. He would have had the chance to see what the job entailed, receive an orientation of sorts, and probably even work under the current CAG until he was ready to take it himself. But he’d had neither the orientation nor the luxury of peacetime work requirements. He’d taken the job when the flight decks were a disaster, most of the pilots were dead, and his deck crew was decimated. They didn’t have time to put it all back together, either. They were at war, with no way to get either supplies or assistance, and they were essentially living on borrowed time.
To make matters worse, the last couple of briefings had involved discussion of Cylon spies hidden among the crew. He was to keep a lookout for any behavior that was suspicious, and yet do this without letting anyone else know what was suspected. It was an impossible job, and he was failing at it just as everyone had probably expected he would. It wouldn’t have bothered him nearly so much if it hadn’t been his father who was watching his every failure.
They hadn’t really taken time to mend the family fences since the beginning of the war. He had tried once to speak to his father – to apologize and even ask forgiveness – but his dad had cut him off. At the time he’d been grateful, but since then Lee’s subsequent efforts to get his father alone had proven as unsuccessful as his assuming the responsibilities as CAG. He hadn’t been able to resolve anything, either professionally or personally, and it was beginning to wear on him. Lee wasn’t used to failing at anything, much less at everything, and that was exactly how he felt.
He had even failed his brother. He should have been looking out for Kara, but instead he was taking advantage of her vulnerability to satisfy his own needs. He could only hope that she was getting something out of what had happened between them as well, even if it was only a couple of nights of uninterrupted sleep. Lords knew she deserved that much from him. Hell, she deserved far more. Aside from simply being a family responsibility, she was a good friend. She didn’t take any shit from him, and she kept him on his toes. If she was also a CAG’s worst nightmare, more inclined to fight than to work, and in a minor war with the ship’s XO, well then she was also the finest pilot he’d ever seen – anywhere, anytime, in anything.
But at this moment she wasn’t a pilot. She was just a woman who was tired, lonely, and clearly hurting. He knew the feeling. He just wished he knew if what he was doing with her was making the situation better or worse. The last thing he wanted was to make this time harder on her, and yet she had offered something he couldn’t refuse. Maybe it was weak, and certainly it was inappropriate, but it was the truth. He needed… something. And right now she was providing it without asking for anything in return. He didn’t know how to tell her no, and he didn’t want to learn. He hoped that he wouldn’t ever have to.
Chapter 5
Kara came awake slowly, with a fuzzy feeling of something being both out of place, and completely as it should be. She rubbed her face against its warm, smooth pillow and her eyes few open.
Again.
It had happened again. Memories of the previous night came back to her in force, and she didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or disgusted with herself. Frak, she had even started it this time. She couldn’t blame Lee for taking her up on the offer she’d made. He was a man, after all, and most men weren’t dumb enough to turn down a blatant pass. She had certainly thrown that, and she couldn’t think of a graceful way out of the situation, either.
“Morning,” he said softly.
Oh shit. At the very least he could have been soundly sleeping so that if her escape wasn’t graceful it could at least go unobserved. No such luck, it appeared. She was going to have to face him, even if the morning light wasn’t bright at all.
Only one thought gave her any hope in the situation. She had to be on duty. Pushing abruptly off his chest, she landed an elbow in his ribs and winced at his grunt. She managed to tap the button on the side of her watch, and saw that she had almost an hour before she had to be on the deck. With a sigh of relief, she pushed herself off to the side and started reaching for her clothes.
“Not a good morning?” he asked in an odd voice.
“Gonna be late to work,” she muttered. “That tends to get me into trouble. The CAG will have my ass.”
“Just about the only part I didn’t have,” he remarked, and she could hear the smile in his voice. Oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!
“Yeah, well… um… don’t count on getting a replay,” she remarked as her bottom left the cold metal flooring and she shifted to one knee.
“Kara, is something wrong?” he asked, and he actually sounded worried. Great. Now not only was she a slut, but she was an inconsiderate slut. Was that even worse?
“Nothing’s wrong. We’re consenting adults, and everything we did was legal. I think. Or it would have been if you weren’t my boss, and I wasn’t in enough trouble with the brass on a regular basis to keep me from ever seeing my next promotion. All I need now is a few accusations of sleeping my way up the ranks, and that’ll be it for my career, my wings, and probably my sanity.”
“Kara, slow down,” he said, placing a hand on her arm. She had just enough control not to slap it away. “Last night didn’t have a damn thing to do with anyone except you and me, and maybe getting through the night for a change. It’s not something I’m going to broadcast.”
“Thank the Lords for that,” she muttered. Where the frak were her pants?
“What the hell is wrong?” he asked, and his voice was rising. Good. She’d take him mad over condescending any day of the week.
“Look, I took enough shit over sleeping with a Commander’s son before,” she remarked. “I’m a trouble maker, and people look at that differently. And Zak wasn’t even above me in rank. This would be… don’t you get it? You’re not a commander’s son, you’re the Commander’s son. And you’re CAG on top of it. Just think for one frakking minute about how much trouble I’d be in if anyone found out.”
She heard Lee take a deep breath, and let it out in a controlled stream. Great. He was pissed. At least he would fight her, and maybe this would be the last time he’d let her…
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just insult my brother, and for that matter my friend. I want you to explain what the hell happened between last night and now? When this happened before you didn’t…”
“Panic? Yeah, well there’s a simple reason for that. Once is an accident, Lee. Once is a mistake. But twice is… something else. It’s a pattern. And it’s worse because this time I…”
“You started it,” he said softly.
“Yeah.”
“Kara, I’m a big boy. If I hadn’t wanted it – hell, needed it – I could have said no.”
“Right, like you’d need me,” she muttered as she fumbled with the belt that wouldn’t latch correctly. She had to get out of here. If she didn’t, she was going to come apart. She knew it. And if he didn’t put some clothes on, she wasn’t going to leave. “Your shirt’s over there,” she said with a gesture. Lords, let him take the hint.
Thankfully he did, but she couldn’t read the expression on his face as he did so, and she didn’t know if that was because of the lack of light or if he was just being inscrutable for a change. Normally she could read him pretty easily, but this wasn’t a usual situation.
So they finished dressing in silence, and as she was tying the lace on her second shoe, he sat down next to her wearing everything but his boots. “Kara, slow down,” he requested, and the gentleness in his voice edged into her heart. “I want to talk to you for a minute.”
“I’ll be late to work,” she muttered, and resolutely refused to look at him.
“Kara?” His hand was on her cheek, tilting her face up towards him, and his eyes were… hurt. Oh, god, she’d hurt him. She hadn’t meant that; not really.
She took a deep breath and tried to steady her racing heart and her shaking voice. “Lee, this can’t happen,” she told him softly. “It’s way too complicated, and it’s way too screwed up. There’s too much to lose, and as great as the sex is, it’s just not worth that.”
“What will you lose?” he asked.
“Respect,” she began. “Not just the squadron’s, because sleeping with the CAG is a sure way to prove you’re easy, but also your father’s. He’ll think I’m… I don’t know. But he won’t approve; I’m sure of it. And Tigh already hates me, which I don’t really care about, but he has the power to ground me if he wants, and for some stupid reason your father values his opionion. There isn’t much left in the world for me. I have my job, my plane, and just a few friends. You’re one of them, and this would totally screw up any chance we’d have of staying friends.”
“Why do you say that?” He didn’t sound mad, or even hurt, but rather curious. She answered in kind.
“Because friendships don’t survive sex,” she said. “Trust me, I’ve been there. You sleep with a guy, and then that’s all they want. There’s no talking, no cuddling, no going out to do stuff. Once you sleep with them, the friendship dissolves. That’s just how it is.”
“Was it like that with Zak?” Lee asked.
“I’m not going to answer that,” she told him. “Not because it’s true, or it’s not true, but because he was your brother and that’s information you don’t need either way. If I say yes, you’ll be mad at Zak. If I say no, you’ll probably be mad at me. So just… don’t ask.”
“Okay, I won’t ask. I’ll just assume you’re lumping me in with every other guy you’ve slept with and that I’m an asshole without possibility of redemption. That sound about right?”
Kara pulled away and closed her eyes. “This is what I meant,” she said softly. “You’re pissed. It was bound to happen. Look, I’m sorry if I led you on or anything, but the world is just too messed up for me to be looking for a relationship. You’re a good friend, and I want to stay your friend. Trust me when I say that can’t happen if I’m sleeping with you on the side.”
Lee sighed. “Kara, it was twice,” he told her. “That hardly constitutes a pattern.”
“You’re not thinking,” she snapped. “If I sleep with you, then I’m either putting out for the CAG alone, and I’m too good for anyone else, or else I’m obligated to be fair game for everyone else. Lee, I’ve made it a point not to sleep with anyone I work with. I screwed that up, and this sets a… precedent that can’t be good.”
Lee shook his head, and the hurt look was returning. She had to get out of there. “You were a good friend,” he told her. “That’s all. Maybe it got a little… out of hand. But I’m not sorry. I wish I could be, because this has you so damned upset, but I’m just not. I enjoyed being with you, and I hope you liked it too.”
“What I like – or want – isn’t the issue. On a starship there are certain things that just don’t happen, and this is one of them. Lords, I wasn’t thinking. I was tired, and everything was so muddled, and I just wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, Lee. This isn’t fair to you, and I know you have to be mad, but this just can’t work. It can’t.”
“Kara, I’m not proposing,” he said in exasperation. “I was thanking you for a pretty special night. That’s all. If you don’t want it to happen again, it won’t. If you don’t want anyone to know, then they won’t. Frak, I’m not going to stand on the high-lift and announce to the crew that I’ve slept with the almighty Starbuck. I… care about you too much to do that.”
Kara took a deep, jerky breath. “I appreciate that. Now, if you want to do something, I suggest you start forgetting. This won’t happen again, Lee. It can’t. I won’t let it.”
“I won’t force you,” he said bluntly. “I’m not that desperate.”
He was taking this all wrong. It didn’t surprise her; she was saying this all wrong. “You’d never force anyone,” she granted. “You wouldn’t have to. But Lee, I mean it. This can’t happen again.”
“I’m not entirely sure why it happened the first time,” he muttered. “Or the second. But I’d be lying if I said that I was sorry. Whatever the consequences, I needed you. I really think you needed someone, too. Hell, maybe you didn’t need me, but you needed… someone. I’m not sorry I was in the right place at the right time.”
“I’m not exactly sorry,” she admitted. “But I am scared. Lords, Lee, all I have left is my career. That’s all. This would… do you even realize what this would do to my chances at ever getting beyond lieutenant? Hell, I might even lose my commission over sleeping with a superior officer. I know I’m a troublemaker, but there are some kinds of trouble that even I know to stay away from. This is one of them.”
“Fine,” he said softly. His voice held no emotion, and he wasn’t looking at her. She felt like she’d kicked a puppy or something.
“Lee, this was just sex. Right?”
There was a long pause before he agreed. “Just sex,” he echoed. “And unplanned at that. One of those things. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”
His voice was flat, nearly lifeless. She wanted to know what he was thinking, but she’d just given away all her right to ask. One thing couldn’t be ignored, however. She had to know. “Are we still friends?”
After a long moment, he looked up at her. His eyes were shadowed at this angle, unreadable. “Friends,” he told her in the same flat voice. “We always have been.”
“And always will be?” she pressed, wondering why it was so important for her to hear the words, but needing it just the same.
“For as long as you want,” he said, and she decided that had to be good enough for now.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, although she wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for.
“Why?”
Leave it to Lee to find the chink. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I feel like I’ve screwed something up by trying to fix it. I just don’t know what to do about it.”
Lee finally had his boots tied, so he stood up and reached a hand down to her. As she took his hand and let him pull her up, she couldn’t miss the warm strength there, or the way he held on just a little longer than was strictly necessary to get her upright. “I won’t lie to you,” he said softly, and he was still holding onto her hand. “I don’t understand what the hell you’re so upset about. But you are upset, and I’ll respect that, even without understanding. It’s what friends do, Kara. They give one another time, and space, when it’s needed. But I want you to know something. I won’t stop being your friend just because you’re upset with me. And I won’t stop being your boss, either. I won’t take your wings, or put you on a lousy duty, or any of the other spiteful things that I could probably get away with. It’s not professional, it’s not responsible, and it’s not being a friend.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, because she believed him. She had known that even this wouldn’t turn him against her. She’d been counting on it.
“But don’t get me wrong,” he warned. “I’m not letting go of this. And no, it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with sleeping with you. Sex is good, but friendship is a hell of a lot more important. I’m not going to let you back away from me. If you need something, you have to tell me. If I screw up, you need to let me know. I can’t read your mind. Hell, I can’t even understand your mind at the moment. But I’m doing my best to respect whatever the hell it is that you need.”
She just nodded. What could she say to that?
“You’re on duty in…” He looked at his watch. “Forty-five minutes. I suggest you grab something to eat before you go. I’ll be on the deck, so if you’re a few minutes late, don’t sweat it. I’d rather you eat than be on time.”
“So I get special treatment, now?” she asked, not knowing how to take that.
“You’re the best pilot in the fleet,” he told her with a grin and a squeeze to her hand. “You’ve always had special treatment. Otherwise your bunk would be permanently placed in the brig. Even my dad cuts you breaks when you get out of line, and don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“Your dad is a nice guy,” she said noncommittally.
“I’m hoping you think I am too,” he admitted wryly. “Get something to eat, grab a shower, and then be on the deck ASAP. The rest… hell, I don’t know what to do with the rest, but we’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, and she was more than a little surprised at how near she was to tears.
“You’re welcome,” he said simply.
And Lee was true to his word. Aside from the course of duty, they rarely saw one another and even more rarely spoke. He still gave her orders for what had to get done, and she still reported on what was happening and what her team needed, but beyond that their communication was minimal. It was just what she had requested.
It grated on her nerves, terribly.
But Lee hadn’t said a word, and no one had been insinuating anything. Quarters still wasn’t full, so her absence those couple of nights remained uncontested, and she hadn’t had to answer any questions that were uncomfortable. In general, it was exactly what she had wanted, and far more than she had hoped for.
But it had its downside. Staying clear of Lee meant that she couldn’t go to him with things that were nagging her or joke with him when she needed a break. She had set the rules, and all he was doing was abiding by them… she had to live with the consequences.
And the greatest consequence was that she still couldn’t sleep. She had fought with insomnia more than once at the Academy, and occasionally after Zak’s death, but this had been the longest bout in memory. She might get one or two hours of sleep in a night, but that was a generous estimation. The result was that she was even more snappish than she’d been before, and even the personnel who liked her were staying pretty clear. She saw herself as unreasonable, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Her rationality was suffering, and she was actually grateful that patrols had come down to nothing and she wasn’t in danger of crashing or something due to her inability to concentrate. So far she hadn’t managed any big mistakes, but she knew it was just a matter of time.
And she was miserable. She still talked to Sharon on occasion, and sometimes to one or two of the Specialists, but those who knew her well were gone, and she wasn’t in a race to meet and become reliant on anyone else. She had lost enough; she wasn’t looking to lose any more.
And she was hurting. Kara could recognize depression even if she hadn’t experienced it in the past. She was miserable, she was tired, and she was indifferent to most everything. It didn’t mean that she was suicidal or stupid, but she could tell that she was… off. She stayed clear of the Commander, because he was probably one of the few that would see that something was really wrong, but no one else really knew her well enough to question her withdrawal. She worked, she lay on her bed at night, and she ran every morning to try to exorcise the ghosts that were making her miserable. She ate her meals by rote, she did her work by habit, and she prayed that her distraction wouldn’t get anyone killed. Personally, she hoped that this was all a result of sleep deprivation, but she couldn’t be sure. She had never been this bad before.
But aside from going to her CAG – something she wouldn’t do under any circumstances – she was pretty well stuck. So she kept plodding ahead, one task after another, living by rote, and hoping things would get better. And if some nights she lay staring at the ceiling wishing for strong arms around her and Lee’s weight above her, she tried not to dwell on it. She tried not to, but most nights she still did.
Chapter 6
Lee closed his eyes and did his best not to explode. One more thing – if even one more thing went wrong, he was going to go completely insane. As it was, he was going to get the frakking part from the frakking storage room and with any luck he’d beat the incompetent Crewman over the head with it. The kid couldn’t even follow a simple schematic, and Lee didn’t have time to go checking behind everyone on the team. It wasn’t even his job. It was the Chief’s, wherever the hell he had gone off to.
As Lee reached for the hatch leading to the nearly depleted supply room, he had a strange sensation that he was being watched. Turning to look over his shoulder, he saw one of the Specialists – Cathy, or Carrie, or something like that – coming towards him at a near run. Great. It looked like that one more thing was about to slam into him. He just prayed that he didn’t slam into anyone else because of it.
“What?” he asked without preamble. He was too tired to be polite. He hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since the one spent on the bay floor with Kara. Even then, he hadn’t really slept. But he had rested, and that was more than he’d managed in his own bed for the last week and a half. He was tired, he was hungry, and he was sick of shit going wrong.
“Um… Captain Apollo, sir, I… um…”
He rolled his eyes at the stumbling girl. “Spit it out,” he said on a sigh.
“I just wondered what you were looking for,” she said quickly, gesturing to the room he’d been about to enter. “I mean, I know where stuff is, and I could get it for you if you want.”
“I think I can manage to find a tool box if there’s one left,” he told her with every effort at keeping his irritation out of his voice. She was trying to be helpful. That was nice. It pissed him off, but it was nice.
“Are you sure you don’t…”
“I’m sure,” he confirmed. “Dismissed.”
She looked somewhere between disappointed and wary as she nodded and turned to leave. Kids. Lords, what had he done to inherit such a bunch of rooks?
The hatch wasn’t an easy one to manage. It took both hands and all of his weight behind his shoulder to budge the damn thing. He made a mental note to get someone to oil the frakking thing, and then he came to a grinding halt.
There were a few things that Lee could have lived without in his life. The sight of his Flight Chief’s bare ass was one of them. It didn’t help matters that one of his pilots was equally nude and wrapped around the Chief like… Hell, there wasn’t anything he wanted to compare it to. He stood there for a moment in stunned silence, long enough to register the panic on Valerii’s face and listen to a few choice words from the Chief, and then Lee turned his back and did his best to stop the blush that was creeping up his face.
He hadn’t done a frakking thing wrong! Why was he feeling embarrassed? Probably because he’d seen a lot more than anyone should ever have to of a man that he worked with, but still…
“Tyrol?” he called, still staring at the door he’d thankfully closed behind him as he’d entered the room.
“Sir?”
Lee took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Ten minutes. Meet me in my office, in ten minutes. Understood?”
“Yes, Sir,” the Chief answered.
Lee moved towards the door, oblivious to the fact that he’d come into the room for something. Just before he opened it to make a hasty exit, he called back, “Chief?”
“Sir?”
“Be sure you put some clothes on first,” he requested. Then, in the silence that followed, he stepped back out through the hatch and shut it firmly behind him. He took two deep breaths, then one more for good measure, not sure whether to laugh or scream. As something more to go wrong, this certainly wasn’t what he’d been looking for, but as a distraction it would do.
What he wanted to do was throw the book at both of them. Facing facts, fraternization was an issue even without the fact that the Chief at least was supposed to be on duty. Lee knew that specifically because he had checked the roster when they’d been short on tools in the first place. He’d hoped that Tyrol would be able to locate something that Lee didn’t know about, because if he didn’t they were going to be in serious shit in a hurry. There were too few tools to manage the job in the time they had to do it in.
But by the time Lee had managed to scrounge from one repairman what the other had needed, he was calm enough to realize that the only thing that had really been wrong with the situation was that he had walked in on it. If it came down to it, he had been known to fraternize with those directly beneath him – and recently – and the fact that she had been on top of him at the time wasn’t the issue. While it had been a passing thought before, realizing that his and Kara’s relationship not only broke all conventions but also military law was a sobering thing.
Relationship. Was it even that? Friendship, certainly. He considered her a good friend, and he had even before he’d slept with her. He still did consider her a friend, despite the fact that he’d slept with her. So where did that put him? They weren’t a couple; not at all. Outside those two times when they had desperately needed one another, they’d barely spoke more than a few words in the course of duty. And the last time she’d left him, Kara had been pretty clear regarding the fact that she didn’t plan for it to happen again. If that realization hurt him with an almost physical pain, then he’d just have to deal with it.
But first, he had to deal with the Chief. Technically, he supposed he should go to Valerii because she was the senior ranking of the two, and as such the one who would be at the greatest career risk if what was happening were to become well known. Or maybe it already was. That little Specialist had sure been trying to keep him out of the storage room for some reason, so it was likely that if their situation wasn’t common knowledge it was at least known by some. There were a lot of ways in which Lee was old-fashioned, though, and one of those was that talking to women about sex wasn’t his first choice. So he’d talk to the Chief, and hopefully he’d get something straight.
He just wasn’t sure what. Hell, how could he ask someone else to do what he hadn’t been able to manage – keep his hands in his pockets and his buttons closed? But he’d seen it, and he had to say something. Frak, he really hated this job. He was a pilot; he just wanted to fly.
Lee avoided anyone who looked familiar as he made his way to his office. It was a small cabinet-like space between his bedroom and the main pilots’ quarters, and that meant avoiding several people who would no doubt want something else that he couldn’t provide. For just the moment, he needed to stay focused. He had to figure out the fair thing to do, and barring that he needed to figure out the best thing to do. He hadn’t a clue what either might be.
Moments later he heard a knock on the door. “Come in,” he called out, already distracted by the mountain of paperwork that he had hoped to ignore a little longer.
“Sir?”
Lee looked up to find Chief Galen Tyrol – thankfully wearing a full uniform – waiting in his doorway. “Have a seat,” he told the man, gesturing to the chair across from him.
The Chief had an expression somewhere between nervous and furious, and Lee didn’t have a clue what he was thinking. He decided he needed to find out. “I’d like to explain,” the Chief began. Lee didn’t let him finish.
“Here it is,” Lee said simply. “So far, we have fraternization, failure to report, inappropriate use of a military facility, public display of affection, and probably another fifteen charges that I could come up with if I pulled out the book instead of just rattling it off the top of my head. Correct?”
The Chief’s face was a little pink, but whether from anger or embarrassment Lee couldn’t be sure. “Correct,” he admitted. “But I’d like to…”
“Stop,” Lee told him, and although he didn’t look like he wanted to, Tyrol followed the order. Rubbing his fingers over tired eyes, Lee muttered. “Damn, I really hate being in charge.”
“Sir?”
Lee shook his head and faced the Chief. “The world as we know it has come to an end,” he said quietly. “There is no safety, no certainty, and very little joy in our world. We work, we eat, and we try to sleep just so we can get from one day to the next and pray that at some point it gets easier. And if you find someone who makes that task a little more manageable…” His voice trailed off as he thought of Kara, warm and willing and giving. “If someone can make it more manageable, than you’re a fool to ignore it because of rank or rules or even propriety.”
“Sir?” The Chief was beginning to look more confused than anything else. Lee couldn’t blame him. He was feeling that way himself.
“There are rules that can be overlooked,” he said simply. “But only if they don’t interfere with the course of your duties. While fraternization isn’t exactly a military norm, I’m sure given the circumstances that some of the regulations will be waived in favor of maintaining our race. On the other hand, using duty time to… serve more personal interests, will not be tolerated. So I have two recommendations for you, Chief.”
With a look of relief, Tyrol asked, “What are they?”
“First, you need to arrange to get together off duty. If you’re on opposite shifts, then see me. We’ll work something out.”
“Yes, Sir. And the second?”
Lee looked at the Chief and finally smiled. He just couldn’t be the hard ass that he knew he was supposed to be. “Find a place that’s not so… public. There isn’t even a lock on that storage room.”
“Yes, Sir,” Tyrol said again, and this time the relief was clear in his voice.
“Consider this a verbal reprimand if you like,” Lee told him. “But I’m not going to write anything down on one condition.”
The Chief’s eyebrow raised, and he started to look worried. “What’s that?”
“I want you to relay this discussion to Lieutenant Valerii,” Lee said with every attempt to suppress the smile that seemed to want to slip through. “I really, really don’t want to have this conversation with her.”
Finally, Tyrol smiled. “I’d be happy to,” he admitted. “And… thank you.”
Lee shook his head. “The only thing you did wrong was get caught,” he told the older man softly. “Just don’t let it happen again. There will have to be a formal policy change with regards to fraternization, but until that happens I’d recommend a lot of discretion.”
“I’ll see to that, Sir.”
Lee nodded. “Then if you don’t have any questions, you’re free to go.”
The Chief paused for a long moment, then asked, “About Sharon… I mean, Lieutenant Valerii. Will there be any consequences for her?”
Lee shook his head. “Like I said, all you did wrong was get caught. And actually, she wasn’t on duty, so she’d be in less trouble than you would be. Except that she’s senior ranking, but under the circumstances I don’t think it’s an issue. That doesn’t mean I want to address this again, but so long as it doesn’t affect either of your duties, then what you do on your own time is not my business.”
“Thank you, Sir,” the Chief said, and Lee had to believe that he’d made the right choice. There would have been no point to pressing charges against two perfectly good troops just because they had needed some time alone together. And if that decision had a more personal basis than he liked to admit, then he wouldn’t think about it too strongly.
Twenty minutes after the Chief had left his office, Lee still hadn’t managed to make a dent in the paperwork before him. It was one reason that he’d spent the majority of his time on the deck; he didn’t have to deal with it if he wasn’t here. But having seen it, and the way the pile had grown in recent days, he decided that he had to do something to get it back under control. He wasn’t getting far. He had managed to sort things by priority, but he was only half-way through the second pile of about ten. He would be here all night at this rate.
When his door swung open without a knock, he looked up to see a furious Kara glaring at him over the tallest of the piles. “Can I help you?” he asked dryly.
“Sharon just came into quarters in tears,” Kara told him angrily. “What in hell did you say to her?”
Lee closed his eyes. Not this. Not now. “Not a word,” he said honestly. “I spoke to the Chief, and the situation is under control. That’s all you need to know.”
“Oh no you don’t,” she growled, leaning over his desk and sending a pile of paper fluttering to the floor.
“Damn it, Kara, I don’t have time for this,” he complained, but she wasn’t giving in.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but…”
“I didn’t hear a frakking thing,” he told her, his voice matching hers for both anger and frustration. “I saw her and the Chief in the supply room doing… well, what they were doing I really don’t want to think about at the moment. But neither was wearing a hell of a lot. You can fill in the blanks for yourself.”
Kara’s eyes widened, but she didn’t speak. That was progress; a speechless Kara was a rare and wonderful thing.
“I talked to the Chief, told him to find someplace where no one – especially senior officers – would walk in on them, and not to do their thing while he was on duty. That’s all.”
Kara stared at him. “They were…?”
“I think you can figure it out,” he muttered, resenting the blush that he felt rising. Why in hell did this one woman have the power to embarrass him?
“And you saw?”
“More than I wanted to, believe me,” he told her. “Although at least I got myself turned around in a hurry. They weren’t… um… wasting time.”
“So that’s what Sharon was bawling about,” Kara reasoned. “All I could get out of her was that she was going to lose her commission and the Chief would lose a stripe.”
Lee shook his head. “I can’t afford to lose either a pilot or a crew chief,” he said simply. “Even if I could, there’s no point. They weren’t endangering anyone, and the only thing I could really call them on was that Tyrol was supposed to be on duty.” He shrugged and continued, “I told him to see me about changing shifts so that they could… coordinate things.”
Lee looked up to see that Kara was still watching him with a confused expression. “I don’t understand you,” she said softly. “You don’t just read the rule book, you live it. I’ve never known you to consciously allow any violation of regs in your life.”
He looked at her in disgust. Did she really think that he had no more feelings than a book of regulations? “Maybe some things are more important than the regs,” he told her carefully.
“Like what?”
“Like… having a reason to wake up in the morning,” he said quietly. “Kara, we have little enough to live for now. If the two of them have something that… hell, I’m not going to take it away from them.”
She stared at him as though he had grown a second head. “I don’t understand you.”
He shook his head and laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I didn’t even know what you thought of me,” he told her. “How could you…? Why would you… when you clearly think I’m just an asshole.”
“I don’t know what I think,” Kara admitted. She took the single chair and sat down, resting her elbows on her knees. “I don’t know you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. That… bothers me.”
“What don’t you know?”
She smiled softly. “Whether or not you care if I think you’re an asshole,” she said. “Because there was a time you wouldn’t have. You had your way, and to hell with anyone who had another idea. You didn’t just quote the rulebook, you helped to write it. You couldn’t have bent a rule, much less broken one. And now…”
“Now, I’m human?”
“Well, yeah,” she said with a bigger smile. “Or maybe you’re just willing to admit you’re human.”
“Kara, the rules just don’t apply to anything anymore,” he said with resignation. “Sometimes I wonder if they ever did. It used to be us and them – the military and the civilians – and we were the… elite. We had to be a step above, an example. It was a responsibility. Now there’s not a lot left of either of us. We can’t apply the old standards to a new world; it won’t work. So we’re rewriting the rule book as we go. When we find something that doesn’t work, we have to change it. I’m not exactly sure how to go about doing that, but I know it can’t be done if we hold ourselves to standards that don’t make sense anymore. The world is over; now we just have to find a reason to survive without it.”
“Or make a new one?” she suggest it.
He shrugged. “I don’t know how to do that either. But I’m willing to learn.”
She watched him for a moment longer, and then she asked, “Does this have anything to do with… what we…?”
“Probably,” he admitted. “I can’t ask others to do something I can’t,” he decided with another shrug.
“What can’t you do?”
He watched her for a moment, weighing his words. “Live without a reason,” he finally said. “Everyone needs someone, or something to live for. That includes me.”
“And what do you live for?” she asked softly, her eyes locked on his.
He watched her. He hadn’t had the chance to do that much lately. They had been on opposite shifts as often as he could manage it, if for no other reason than to comply with her wishes and keep him from being tempted. So long as one of them was working, he didn’t have to worry about running into her in a quiet, dark place where no one would watch them. He didn’t have to worry about his asking, and her turning him down. He didn’t have to worry about whether they might have had more than just fast sex in a dark room.
“Do you even know?” she asked.
“Not today,” he admitted. “But maybe I’ll figure it out at some point. How about you? What keeps you waking up every morning?”
She watched in for a long moment, and he thought her eyes looked awfully moist, but she didn’t cry. Still, every drop of life seemed to drain out of her, and when she spoke, her voice was flat and dull. “I don’t sleep,” she said quietly. “If you don’t sleep, then you don’t have to wake up.”
And he had known that. It was there in the bags and bruises beneath her eyes, and in the slump of her posture. He saw now what he hadn’t seen when she’d charged into his office, nor had he seen it when she sat down. But now, she was vulnerable. It was the moment he’d been trying to avoid, and now all he could do was decide how he would handle it.
He stood slowly, and rounded his desk. He knelt down to watch her for a long moment more, giving her every opportunity to back away, to leave, or to tell him to go take a flying leap into space. She did nothing of the sort. She just sat there, exhausted and dazed. “Come with me?” he asked softly.
She was slow to respond, but as he stood and tugged her hand, she followed him past his desk and through the hatchway into the small bedroom that he’d finally managed to clean out a few nights before, when he hadn’t been able to sleep any more than she could. The bed was in a corner, and freshly made. He pulled her in that direction, sat down, and then pulled her after him.
It was harder than he’d thought it would be, because she wasn’t exactly cooperative. She wasn’t resisting, but she was just so out-of-it that she wasn’t helping. He finally managed to get her lying down by getting on the bed himself and pulling her with him, but then he found himself behind her and climbing back over her seemed to be too much effort. Instead, he put an arm around her and tugged her up against him, fully clothed and barely awake.
“Go to sleep,” he told her gently. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She didn’t answer, but she did as he said.
Chapter 7
Kara woke slowly, gently, and with a pervasive feeling that all was right with her world. It was an odd sensation, but she wasn’t going to argue. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so sleepily content in her life. For that matter, she wasn’t entirely sure that she was awake. The safe and secure feeling wasn’t anything that she had experienced in her waking hours.
She felt his arms around her. If she’d been a little more coherent, she might have realized that it was odd to know exactly who was holding her when her eyes were closed. She decided she must indeed be sleeping, and dreaming at that. It was a good dream; warm arms, a solid chest, and the faint snore of a deeply sleeping man. Yes, it was a damned fine dream.
Kara rubbed her face against the arm she was resting her cheek on. Slightly fuzzy, solidly muscled, the arm shouldn’t have been comfortable. But it was. She had both of her own arms wrapped around herself, as though she’d been cold in her sleep. Lee was facing her, his breath warm and moist just above her ear. His snores were soft, and the movement of his chest against her forehead reassuring. Yes, it was a very good dream.
Kara unwrapped her arms from her body and eased them towards the warm chest she was facing. Dreams didn’t mind if you did what was truly in your heart; she would do what felt right. And what felt right was slipping her hands beneath the hem of Lee’s shirts and caressing soft skin stretched taught over solid muscle. Lords, he felt good. Heat seemed to radiate from him, and her movements hadn’t even made the slightest impact on his gentle snoring. He was still deeply asleep, and she intended to play.
The lights in the room were on, so she could see every inch that she revealed as her hands traveled upwards. An absent thought wondered how she could so clearly imagine details she had never seen in decent lighting, but then her imagination had always been a good one. And this had to be imagination, because no body was as perfect as the one she was lying against.
Her hands made sweeping motions from belly to chest and back again, taking in every tactile sensation, every variation and change in texture. Despite her desire to see him, her eyes drifted closed as she became lost in the pure sensory experience… just feeling.
When his body shifted slightly, the breathing above her left ear becoming deeper and less regular, she wasn’t surprised. Even in a dream, a man could only sleep through so much. Testing the honesty of the dream, she let her hands drift downward over military issue pants and settle on a distinctive bulge.
“What are you doing?” he asked her softly. Lee’s voice was low, gravely from sleep, and slightly out of breath.
“Dreaming,” she answered simply.
“Mmm,” he muttered, shifting slightly so that he could nibble on one of her ears. “So was I, but this is better.”
The words washed over and past her, meaningless. This was her dream, and she didn’t have to worry about any details that she didn’t want to. She reached up and ran her hands across his chest again, then followed his shirt up with tiny kisses, gentle licks, and as she neared one nipple a very tentative bite.
“Kara…” Lee said warningly.
“Go back to sleep,” she muttered, her lips never leaving his chest. “I’m not finished yet.”
“I’d rather be awake,” he said on a gasp.
“My dream,” she argued, settling on a tender spot just below his collarbone and sucking gently.
“Dreaming is good,” he said with a sigh.“
“Dreaming is incredible,” she agreed.
“Do I get to dream, too?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” she muttered, now moving her tongue along the line where smooth neck met morning stubble.
Lee pressed forward somehow – Kara never knew where he found the leverage – and pushed her onto her back. While her hands were still at his chest, her mouth was definitely distracted by a kiss that was hot, and hard, and deep. While she regretted the absence of texture from his beard-stubbled jaw, she couldn’t regret the exciting feel of his weight above her and his mouth devouring hers.
She wasn’t sure when she realized that she wasn’t dreaming. Perhaps it was the solid weight of him pressing her into a soft mattress, or maybe it was that he was far more aggressive than he’d been in the past. For that matter, it could have been her own body’s reaction to his heat, and strength, and force. It was no longer a sensory feast, but rather an onslaught, and she didn’t want to get away from it.
She hadn’t wanted this. She had told him that they had to stay clear – that it couldn’t happen again – and yet when faced with a time and place where she must put her foot down to enforce her wishes, she just couldn’t. Frak, he felt so good against her. And if the bulge now located against her right thigh was any indication, he needed this as much as she did. She realized how complicated it made things, and she knew in her heart that it had to be wrong, but she couldn’t – just couldn’t – deny either of them the pleasure of the oblivion that they could provide one another.
She didn’t think Lee was even thinking it over that much. His weight was no longer on her, but he hadn’t gone far. His hands were all over her, from collar to belly to boots. She smiled at him as he tugged on stubborn laces before tossing her work boots onto the floor with a metallic clunk, and then gasped as he reached for her belt and made quick work of a normally stubborn buckle. Her underwear went with the pants as he tugged them away, and Kara was faced with the knowledge that while this wasn’t the first time she had been naked with this man, it was the first time there had been enough light to make the experience embarrassing.
Kara had no illusions about her body. She wasn’t tall or willowy. She was short, solid, and built more for distance than speed. She was a runner, which meant that body fat wasn’t an issue, but neither was all that feminine curvy stuff that men seemed to go for. She didn’t have long, gorgeous hair. She didn’t have large breasts. She didn’t have all the right curves in all the right places. She was just… Kara.
But Lee didn’t seem to mind. His hands had trailed up her bare legs, tickling slightly as he followed the motions with kisses and the occasional soft bite. When he finally reached the place where her legs met, his tongue flicked out and surprised the hell out of her. She glanced down in time to see him face her, smile, and then continue his journey upwards. His hands moved the shirts away just as he had her pants, coaxing her arms above her head to remove them and then trailing them back down to come to a rest at her side.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, rubbing his lips across one nipple, not in a kiss, but more a sweep of sensation.
She blushed at that, and she knew he could see it from her chest up. It was a hazard of fair skin; she blushed brightly, although only for him in recent memory. Normally she kept a much tighter reign on her emotions.
“Do…?” she began, but then had to stop to clear her throat as her words were completely inaudible. He was just looking at her, his glance sweeping from face to toes and back again in a slow rhythm. “Do I get to look, too?” she finally got out.
Lee smiled, then leaned up to kiss her before moving to sit on the edge of the bed to untie his own boots and kick them off. His shirts came next, giving her a wonderful view of a back that was surprisingly broad. His shirts, it appeared, hid a lot of gorgeous territory. Lee stood to undo his buckle and buttons, then shoved both pants and underwear off with one motion before sitting back down on the bed and turning to look at her. She could have sworn that his skin was a little pinker than normal too, although she couldn’t call it a true blush. “Better?” he asked.
And she smiled. She couldn’t help it. She reached out for him, one hand in silent appeal, and he pulled his legs up onto the bed so that he could stretch out and take her in his arms. She was met with the newly familiar sensation of Lee’s body against hers; that perfect fit that she kept thinking she had imagined. But she hadn’t – couldn’t have – because here it was again.
“You always feel so good,” he whispered into her ear. “But you feel even better on a bed.”
She giggled. To her, it sounded childish and silly, but it was the only sound that she could emit. Lee didn’t appear to mind. He smiled, hissed the tip of her nose, and then brought her in close to him once more. She tucked one knee between his as they lay facing one another on their sides, arms wrapped snugly around the other so that they stayed close. She buried her face in the curve of neck and shoulder, inhaling the warm and spicy scent that was just Lee. She wanted to move – to touch and play – but it just felt too damned good to be in his arms. She wasn’t ready to let go, even to increase the wonderful sensations that he was giving her.
They lay that way for so long that she thought he might have drifted back to sleep. His body held the chill of the room at bay, keeping her snug and comfortable.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen again,” he told her softly.
“I know,” she admitted.
“I’m not sorry it did,” he said as he ran a hand up and down her back, spreading warmth in its wake.
“We may be later,” she countered. “There’s so much between us…”
“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” he suggested. “We’re already compatible as friends – we know that – and we work well together. Maybe this is just the next logical step from that.”
“Or maybe we’re both a little desperate,” she argued.
“Thanks,” he said dryly, but his arms didn’t loosen.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said, kissing his neck gently as though to take away the sting of her words. “I just mean that the world is falling apart, and I guess it’s natural to want to hold on to something, or someone, who’s… familiar.”
“And I’ll say it again: that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Familiar, and comfortable, and predictable; they aren’t bad words. They’re necessary for sanity.”
“That would explain a friendship, Lee,” she told him reasonably. “What is this?” She squeezed him around the waist and lifted her leg between his to emphasize her point. His indrawn breath told her more than words could about his understanding. “You’re right; our friendship is necessary, and vital, and pretty damned wonderful. I don’t want that screwed up because we’re…”
“Screwing around?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He seemed to think for a moment, and then his arms loosened from her. She closed her eyes as he gave her what she knew should be, rather than what she wanted and needed so desperately. If she’d kept her eyes open, she might have seen his next move coming, but as it was he caught her off guard.
Lee’s mouth latched firmly onto her right nipple and he sucked gently. Every thought, every reason, and every doubt was replaced by a need so strong that she didn’t know how to fight it. She didn’t even want to fight it. She just wanted more of the sweet sensations that he was driving through her body at lightning speed. He left that nipple, but before she could gather her wits, he’d latched onto its twin, sending her back into a flood of sensation that she couldn’t fight. He just plain didn’t play fair.
She was lost long before his hands found their way down her body, rubbing over her bottom and then moving up her back. His mouth left her breast, trailed a line of kisses to her navel, and then he pulled back to look up at her.
“Is it worth the tiny chance that we may be screwing things up?” he asked her softly, one hand moving between her legs to gently brush across blond curls. “Tell me to stop and I will, but I think it’s worth it. I think we’ve been friends long enough that we can take a little tension if it comes to that. And I think that the world is pretty much gone, and if you have something – anything – that makes living worthwhile, then you need to hold on tight, whatever the risks are.”
Kara was doing her best not to cry. He had a point. He had a really good point. He had a lot of them. None of them touched the fear that was inside her, but any one of them hid it for the moment.
“Kara, I want you,” he said gently. “And right now, maybe I need you. I think you need me too. Why are we worrying about complications that we may never live to see?”
“If you need someone, I can think of half the girls in the squad that would love to be of service,” she said evasively, hating every damned one of them. Frak, why did he have to look at her with those blue eyes that could see everything.
“That’s an exaggeration I’m sure, but it wouldn’t matter if it was true. They’re not you,” he said simply.
“Yeah, well, what’s so special about me?” she muttered, doing her best to edge back away from him. She couldn’t keep her thoughts straight with his hands on her, and his lips…
“Where do you want me to start?” he asked with a grin. “In the air, on the deck, or in the bed?”
“None of the above,” she said, wishing she hadn’t given him the opening.
“In the air you’re amazing. You don’t have a single fear, and you can make a Viper do things it was never designed for. It’s like watching a ballet or something – perfect motion. And when we fly together, you know what I’m thinking before I do.”
Kara watched Lee warily. He wasn’t pursuing her, but instead had tucked one hand beneath his head and propped himself there on his side, every part of him visible to her. It was a distracting sight.
“On the deck you’re a wonder. You know the crews and the planes as well as the chief, and they know it too. They trust you, even though you’re a pilot. The respect you, and that’s something hard to come by. You act tough, Kara, but I’ve seen in a week what you may never understand. These people think you walk on water, and because they believe it more often than not you do. That kind of trust takes time to build, but you’ve done it when others might not have bothered. You should be running this circus, not me.”
“I’m a troublemaker,” she reminded him. “No respect for authority.”
“No tolerance for weakness,” he corrected. “You don’t tolerate it in others, and you won’t accept it in yourself. But we’re all weak sometimes. It’s okay to be weak when the world is coming apart. It’s okay to need one another. And it’s okay to want to just forget it all for a few minutes.”
“You make me forget,” she said, and her voice was accusing.
“Good,” he replied. “Because I’m just getting to the bed.”
“We’ve never been on a bed together before.”
His smile was slow, thorough, and it truly worried her. He was planning something, and she was terribly afraid she was going to like it, and like it far too well. “That’s too bad,” he finally said. “Because if you’re half as good in the bed as you were on the floor, I could definitely get used to this.”
“We can’t get used to this,” she said desperately, edging just a little further away from him and realizing that she was rapidly running out of bed. “You’re my boss! Do you know how much trouble we’d be in?”
He went on as though she hadn’t spoken, his only movement putting out an arm to keep her from rolling backwards off his bed. “In bed, you’re incredible,” he said in a deep, throaty voice. “You fit me perfectly, inside and out. You know just where to touch, just what I need and when I need it, and you make the most incredible sounds when I’m inside you.”
Kara felt the blush rising from her chest, to neck, and then to her face. Having sex was a lot easier than talking about it. “Lee, any woman would be…”
“Not a chance,” he told her, his voice losing it’s coaxing quality and developing a core of steel. “Kara, I’ve been with other women. It’s not a secret. Sex feels good, and I like it, and that’s just how it is.”
“At least we’ve established that,” she muttered, wishing she could just crawl under the bed and hide.
Lee moved closer to her, tugging her back towards him as he did so. She could have fought him, but she just didn’t see the point. She was getting tired of fighting what they both appeared to want. “I’ve been with a lot of women, but not a single frakking one ever made me want to go back for seconds,” he admitted quietly. “I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth. And I can tell you the difference between that and this.”
“There’s a difference?” she asked tentatively.
“Yeah, a big one. To begin with, you fit me. Everything just… goes where it should. It’s not awkward or uncomfortable – physically or emotionally. We fit together like puzzle pieces.”
“You’ve had a lot of practice,” she argued.
“You’re right; enough to know that this isn’t how things usually are, at least not for me. Sex is… recreation, or something close to that. That’s all it’s ever been. And mostly, I could take it or leave it. But when I touch you… it’s more. I don’t understand it, and I can’t explain it, but it’s just… more. It’s worth arguing about, or taking flak, or whatever. To me, it makes the rest worth it, too. I don’t just enjoy you; I need you.”
She was silent for a long time, searching blue eyes for honesty, and finding it. In a way she was relieved to know that the connection appeared to go both ways, but in another way she was frightened of the obligation of being that important to anyone. She wasn’t good at relationships, and never had been. And the one time she’d broken all her rules – had fallen in love – she had lost more of herself than she cared to admit.
“If you still want to go,” he told her, “I understand. Really. But I needed you to know how I felt about it. I can’t tell you I’m in love with you, or that I understand all that’s happening, but I can tell you that we’ve got something special. I’d like to see where that goes.”
Could she argue with that? Did she want to? Lee made it sound like it was worth the risk – any risk – even to her career, her wings, or her commission. And she had to ask herself that if it wasn’t, then what was? She liked Lee – maybe more than liked him. And she needed him, too.
Leaning forward, she left her tenuous position on the edge of his bed and rolled herself closer to him. With one hand behind his head, she pulled him down for a kiss that was hot and wet, and that went on for a very long time. By the time she lifted her lips from his, she had left no doubt what her decision was, and she had no doubt where he stood either. Even if he hadn’t said a word to her before, the feel of his body hardened against her thigh was a dead giveaway.
He didn’t need any more invitation than that. Rolling to his back, and taking her with him in the process, he pulled her up onto his chest as he resumed the endless kisses that she had come to crave from him. His hands caressed her back, and paid particular attention to her bottom, which set up a tingle between her legs that spread upwards. His hands had shifted her until she straddled him, but he didn’t let her sit up. He held her head down to his using a well-placed hand, kissing her constantly His tongue was seeking and finding absolutely every hidden space in her mouth. It appeared that he was finished talking. That was fine with her as well.
Kara rubbed herself over his length, not surprised to find herself slick and ready for him. Every moment that he’d been trying to convince her to give this a chance, he had made her need him a little more. She had wanted him in the first place, and had only been moving away because she thought that for once in her life she should do the right thing. Right or wrong, she was glad that he had changed her mind. And as his body slid into hers, fitting just as he had said – like pieces of a puzzle – her groan of pleasure matched his.
His hands began to move, leaving her head and bottom, then rubbing along her back in a constant rhythm that was anything but soothing. Kara gasped at the pleasure expanding through her, shortening her breath and wringing a moan from her throat. Lee had been right about a lot of things, one of which was that she wasn’t quiet when he was doing this to her. He generated too much emotion for it to be kept silently within her. Some of it had to edge its way out. If she hadn’t trusted him so much, it might have embarrassed her. As it was, it only made her want to wring the same type of sounds from him.
She quickened her pace, tightening internal muscles around him and getting that moan she’d been working for. She smiled in satisfaction – if he could make her crazy, then she could return the favor – and changed her angle slightly to intensify the sensations.
“Not fair,” he grated out, using his weight combined with leverage to tumble her to the side. She wasn’t sure how he managed it without leaving her body, but she found herself beneath him and the pace had quickened substantially. She sucked in a breath, gritting her teeth against a scream of pleasure that she needed to release and yet would not. Moans were one thing, but she’d be damned if she’d sound like some bad actress in a cheap porno vid.
Sound and light and color all seemed to spin around her as Lee drove her higher. Breathing became an impossibility as she waited for the explosion that she knew was just out of reach.
Lee stopped moving. First, she thought it must be some tactic to make her insane – revenge for delaying this. But the tension in his body bespoke more than a playful challenge. His body was coiled as though for battle, and she knew something was desperately wrong.
“You’re on duty, Captain,” a deep voice said, and Kara wanted to die right then and there. “I will meet you in your office in three minutes.”
The hatch swung shut with a soft thud. It was one of the few hatches on the Galactica that didn’t need oil; it was quiet and smooth. Shit.
Lee’s breathing resumed, although his eyes were squeezed shut against the embarrassment or anger of being caught in this position by not only his commanding officer, but his father as well. Kara knew that was what he must be feeling, because it sure as hell what was in her mind at the moment.
“Get dressed,” he told her softly, giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead despite the turmoil she’d seen when his eyes had finally opened. “Stay here until the screaming stops. There’s no reason for both of us to wind up in the brig.”
“He wouldn’t…?” she began, but Lee silenced her with a look. “Just stay,” he said tensely. “Please.”
All she could do was nod and reach for her clothes. Well, Starbuck, she thought. You’ve done it again.
Chapter 8
Lee Adama took a hell of a lot longer than three minutes to find his shirts, pants, and boots. The embarrassment he’d seen on his father’s face had told him that the eldest Adama wouldn’t be likely to stick his head back into the room anytime soon. Still, he did dress quickly, unwilling to press his luck.
Kara looked somewhere between angry and miserable. He knew it went against everything she believed, everything she was, to allow him to handle this for her, but he also felt it was his responsibility. She would have been out of the bed twenty minutes ago if she’d had her way, and only his coaxing had kept her there. What made his own guilt even worse was that this had been exactly what she’d been afraid of, only in the worst possible way.
As for his own emotions, Lee couldn’t hope to sort them out. On the one hand, he was furious that his father had entered without at least knocking. On the other hand, he was CAG and on duty, so he should have been available. Even when he was off duty, someone or another always seemed to be in his office with one problem or another. Going off duty didn’t seem to make a damned bit of difference. Lee was also worried, but not for himself. As senior ranking, he might get a slap on the wrist, or at worst a written reprimand, but Kara had been right about what this could do to her reputation. She had worked hard to build respect with her teams, and sleeping with the boss was a sure way to destroy that respect and replace it with speculation and innuendo. Finally, he was embarrassed. While Zak had been caught in a clinch by their parents more than once, Lee had never managed to get caught. There was something about your parents knowing what you did in the bedroom that seemed just plain wrong, even when he believed that what he had been doing was anything but wrong. Hell, nothing had ever felt so right in his life.
He held on to that last thought as he eased the quiet hatch open and then closed, squeezing himself out so that his father couldn’t see who else was inside. He shouldn’t have worried. His father was standing politely at parade rest facing the opposite door of the room – the door that led to the main squadron quarters.
Lee stood there in silence for a moment, but his father neither turned nor spoke. After a while, it grated on Lee’s nerves. Best to get this over with, he decided. “You wanted to see me?” he asked, keeping his voice level by the power of pure will. Inside, he was shaking.
“Are you aware of the duty roster, Captain?”
So this was how they were going to play it. The Commander and his troop. Lee could live with that. “Yes, Sir. I wrote the duty roster.”
“And is this where you feel your time on duty is to be spent?” the Commander asked.
“As a rule, no,” he admitted. “However, you’ll note that I’ve logged twice as many working hours when I was supposed to be off duty, so if you want to consider it compensation time I’m sure I can find documentation to justify a couple of hours off.”
Abruptly his father turned, and the cross between fury and disappointment was almost more than Lee could stand. He’d always looked up to his father, nearly idolized him, and therefore he had always wanted to please him. Absently he wondered if that had been why he’d taken Zak’s death so badly – if it had been more than anger at his father’s expectations – if it had been his father’s falling from the pedestal Lee had placed him on. In any case, the disappointment he saw in those brown eyes was something he couldn’t face, so he focused his attention on his father’s forehead, unconsciously standing at attention.
“Your mother raised you better than this,” Adama said quietly.
“Better than what?” Lee asked, anger coming to replace the embarrassment he’d begun to feel. “Better than to need someone?”
“Better than to sleep with someone you hardly know,” he said in clear annoyance. “You’ve only been on ship for ten days; there’s not a single person you know well enough to…”
“It’s been a long ten days,” Lee told him quietly.
“Is she under your command?” Adama asked, his voice returning to its professional tone.
He could have lied, but why bother. “Yes, Sir,” Lee admitted.
“So now we have Failure to Report, Conduct Unbecoming an Officer, and Fraternization to go with the PDA.”
“My bedroom is not public,” Lee argued. He didn’t want to touch the rest of the charges.
“It is when you’re in command,” the Commander corrected, his voice rising.
“So I can’t have a life?” Lee yelled back. “I’m supposed to keep skulking around in closed-off corridors if I need to be close to someone?”
“You’re supposed to use some discretion,” his father corrected, loudly.
Lee gritted his jaw, doing his best not to say something that would get him stuck in the brig for insubordination on top of everything else. He watched his father’s angry face turn slightly, saw his expression change to one of surprise, and then go strangely blank. Lee closed his eyes in frustration. He should have known she wouldn’t have stayed put. He wished that damned door weren’t so quiet; he would have liked some warning.
Despite the silence of the hatch behind him, Lee wasn’t surprised when Kara slipped her hand into his and squeezed. He squeezed back because he needed her presence to center him at the moment, but he was furious that she hadn’t listened. He could have kept her out of this.
“Sir, if you’re going to punish one of us, you need to punish both of us,” she said softly. “I’m as much responsible as he is.”
William Adama was at a total loss for words. Lee would have found it funny if the situation hadn’t been so frakking serious. Kara was taking a big chance – putting her rank and reputation on the line – and nothing she said would change the charges that he was facing. Lee didn’t have a clue why Kara thought it was better for both of them to be in trouble rather than just him.
“Are you on duty, Starbuck?” his father finally asked.
“No, Sir. I have mids, so I go on at fifteen hundred,” she answered.
“Then you’re excused,” he said firmly.
“No, Sir,” she repeated.
“Kara,” Lee began, turning to face her.
“No,” she told him with a glare. “I came to you, remember?
“Kara…” he began, but his father didn’t give him a chance to finish.
“Lieutenant Thrace, report to quarters until you report for duty. Now.”
“Sir…” she began.
“That’s an order,” he clarified. His voice held no compromise.
Kara looked at him for a moment, saluted his father, and then turned to Lee. Placing a hand on either side of his face, she kissed his lips gently. He was so stunned that she would do this – under the circumstances and in front of his father – that he didn’t even think to pull away.
“It was worth it,” she told him softly, and then turned to walk past the Commander without another word, and out the main hatchway of the room.
Lee took a deep breath, still reeling from both her words and actions, and totally unprepared for what he saw on his father’s face. Instead of the anger that had been there before, he saw a kind of sadness that he couldn’t begin to understand.
“You’re needed on the flight deck,” his father said in a quiet voice, much different from the one he’d used before, even when he’d been talking to Kara. “That’s why I came in. You’ve never been late to report, and there was concern that you might be ill. As it appears you are… fit for duty, you may as well get down there and do your job.”
“Yes, Sir,” Lee said quietly, feeling just a pang of guilt at losing track of time and shirking his responsibilities. “And… I’m sorry.”
His father had turned to go, but now he turned back to look at his son for a long moment. “I believe you,” he said. “But are you sorry for what you’ve done, or sorry that you got caught?”
Lee thought about that for a moment, and decided to go with honesty. “I’m sorry that my timing was inappropriate,” he finally said.
His father gave him a nod of acknowledgement and then left the room. Lee took a deep breath, and then another, and finally felt steady enough to grab the work shirt from the back of his desk chair and head down to the flight deck to see what emergency had ruined a perfectly good morning.
When Lee made it down to the flight deck, he was surprised to see that despite his father’s concerns, no one seemed to have even noticed his absence. He supposed he shouldn’t be; he was always in his office doing paperwork, assisting with repairs, checking with CIC, or tracking down one person or another at his discretion. As Commander of the Air Group, he pretty much did whatever he thought was necessary and wasn’t questioned. In retrospect, he could see how his father might interpret the situation as him taking advantage of the privilege. That wasn’t it, of course; Lee had just lost track of time. He’d been so involved with Kara, and in feeling just plain human, that he’d not bothered to glance at the clock.
Just the fact that she could take his mind off work was something that was pretty special. Lee hadn’t experienced that before. Yet as the day wore on, routine tasks and minor emergencies in just about equal measure, he found his thoughts drifting to her more often than he liked to admit. He was supposed to have reported for duty at seven, and worked through until nineteen-hundred. Kara would come on duty at fifteen-hundred, and he found himself watching for her as the time neared. He had her on eight-hour shifts because the repairs and general maintenance she did required more than a little concentration. For himself, he was on twelve-hour rotations, leaving him accessible to both early and mid watch. It had been just after nine when his father had come through the door, so Lee planned to work straight through until twenty-two-hundred to make up the time. It wasn’t much, but it would at least appease some of his personal guilt, and if it kept him closer to Kara for two hours more, then he’d just have to live with it.
Frak. How had he gotten himself into this? It was just supposed to be comfort – two friends being there for one another – and then it had blossomed into tension relieving sex. It wasn’t supposed to go beyond that. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking of her all the time, or wondering where she was and what she was doing, or worrying about how much trouble she would be in moreso than the charges he was facing. When had it all gotten so out of hand?
“We have four-nine-three and four-nine-six set and ready for test launch,” the Chief was telling him. “Everything checks out on the deck, but we never know for sure until we space-test them.”
“Makes sense,” Lee said, reaching for the flight roster that was never far from him when he was on the deck. It was the only way he could keep track of who was where, and when they were there.
“Can I make a recommendation, Sir?” Tyrol asked tentatively.
“Certainly,” Lee responded absently, looking over the pilots on his roster.
“I’ve seen Lieutenant Thrace bring in a bird short two engines. If anything does blow out, she’s probably your best bet of getting the ship back on board intact. I don’t know how she does it, but she’s the best we’ve got.”
Lee had to smile, “You don’t have to tell me that,” he muttered.
“No, Sir,” the Chief said, and Lee could have sworn he was blushing.
But that meant putting Kara in a potentially dangerous situation. Lee didn’t like that idea. Yes, she was the best they had, but then shouldn’t they be preserving her for combat? On the other hand, every part was valuable, and a Viper lost in space was something they couldn’t afford. If anyone could get a damaged ship back to the Galactica, it would be Kara. It was the most reasonable choice. It also hurt like hell. In that moment, Lee realized why some regulations existed. It was a decision he shouldn’t have to make, because it was a situation he shouldn’t have put himself in. Taking a deep breath, and looking to that logical part of his mind that ruled most of his actions, he posed himself the question that if his best pilot were not Kara, then what would his decision be? There was no question in his mind.
“Notify Lieutenant Thrace,” he told Tyrol softly. “And be sure we have emergency crews in the landing pods, just in case. If she has to bring one in hot, we’ll need to cool her down in a hurry.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Lee watched the man leave with a sense of foreboding. Was he doing the right thing? How would he live with himself if Kara couldn’t get the ships back to the deck? How could he justify himself if he didn’t let her go? Taking a deep breath, he checked his watch and then his roster. Kara was on duty in hangar four, but she’d have to change into her flight suit to test the Vipers. He headed that direction, hoping he could get her alone for just a moment before she flew out.
As luck would have it, he caught her stripped to her underwear with one hand in her flight locker. He would have smiled if he hadn’t been so nervous. “Hey,” he called softly.
She jerked around at the sound of his voice, and then notably relaxed. But instead of the smile he’d expected, a frown covered her face. She pulled out her flight suit and stepped into its legs before facing him. “You’re not pulling me from this,” she began. “I’m lead pilot, and it’s my responsibility…”
“I assigned you to it,” he cut in, bringing her tirade to a screeching halt.
“Oh.”
“I just wanted to see you before you went out,” he admitted with a shrug. “We didn’t exactly get to say good-bye this morning.”
“Yeah, well, I just wanted to get out of there.”
“Me too,” he admitted with a slight smile. “But about this mission….”
“Lee…”
“Let me finish,” he requested, taking a step closer and backing her into the locker with a thumb on her lips to keep them still and his palm along her cheeck. “Both Vipers are flight-ready to the best of our knowledge, so you shouldn’t have any problems. But I want you in full pressure gear. I know it’s bulky as hell to fly in, but if we lose a seal it’s the only chance you’ll have. I can afford to lose a bird more than I can afford to lose a pilot. Understood?”
Kara bit the tip of his thumb, surprising him, but he took the hint and removed his hand. He did not move back, however. It felt too good to be this close to her, and he gave a silent prayer that it wouldn’t be the last time. “I’ll be fine, Lee. This is what I do. Remember?”
“I remember that you take some pretty unsafe chances, occasionally,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “You’re too important to this crew to let you do it now. You need to come back in one piece.”
“Important to the crew?” she asked softly, not meeting his eyes.
“Important to me,” he added, lifting her chin with one finger so that he could look into eyes that were somewhere between brown and gray. “I… need you too come back. Just be careful.”
Kara nodded, then stood on tiptoe to give him a gentle kiss, followed by one that was a little deeper, but still over quickly. If his bedroom wasn’t safe from intrusion, then the ready room most certainly wasn’t. “Don’t worry so much,” she told him as she thrust her arms into the pressurized top of her flight suit and pulled it in place to zip it up. As she got the zipper up to the top, he reached around her and pulled the pressure buckle onto place, locking it securely. Then he just looked at her, watching for something he couldn’t name. “I need to get ready,” she finally told him. “I can’t do that with you standing in my way.”
He ducked his head in a nod, then took a step back.
“Lee?” she said as she reached the hatch into the locker that held the pressurized space suits.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want you in control,” she said, her back still to him. “I’ll be fine, but if… I don’t want you watching if something happens. I saw Zak’s plane go up, and I still have nightmares about it. I just… I don’t want you watching.”
Lee closed his eyes as a shudder ran through him, but whether it was dread or fear or whatever else he couldn’t decide. He knew that he didn’t like it. “I’ll stay on the deck,” he finally told her, not sure if he was being honest or just humoring her. If it was any other pilot, she knew damned well he’d be in control every minute of the flight. She was asking him for special treatment, even as he was trying to give her just the opposite. “I’ll be there when you get back,” he told her softly.
“Thanks,” she said, and disappeared into the storage closet that held the deep-space survival suits. They were a pain in the ass to fly in – wearing one, she would barely fit into the cockpit – but he’d been right about the necessity. He would have asked it of any pilot taking out a recently refitted bird. He wasn’t out of line asking if of her.
Before she could come back out from the closet, he turned and left the ready room. If he thought too much about it, he’d get worried, and probably do something stupid like pull her off the assignment. Lovers or not, Kara was the one friend he had on this ship, and whether he liked it or didn’t, that did put her in a different place from everyone else. Having been inside her made that connection even stronger.
Lee headed for the deck, though, because she had asked it of him. If they were going to even try to make this work, try to explain it or justify it to his father, then first and foremost they had to keep it from affecting their work. Until that moment, Lee hadn’t realized just how hard it would be.
Chapter 9
Kara finally allowed herself to relax as she brought the second Viper in for a smooth landing. Tyrol knew his birds, and she hadn’t found a single glitch in any system. She was more relieved than she cared to really admit.
On the other hand, if she’d gotten herself killed, she wouldn’t have to go face the Commander with her side of what had happened. She could only imagine what he must be thinking – kill one Adama and then get involved with the other – but it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t. She hadn’t planned to fall for Lee. Hell, she wasn’t even sure that she had fallen for Lee. She just knew that she cared about him, and for now that was enough. They gave one another comfort, and relief, and maybe just a little more than that.
As the magnetic locks engaged and the lift carried her down towards the bay, she let herself lean against the backrest. She was tired, but not as tired as she had been before. Lee had given her a pretty terrific gift the night before – several hours of uninterrupted sleep – and she was using it well. She hoped that he had gotten the same, but she doubted it. If she knew him, he’d probably got her to sleep and then worked through the night. It was just the way he was; a full desk was something he couldn’t handle.
In all, she supposed that Lee was doing a fairly competent job of settling into the CAG position. It was something that Kara truly hadn’t wanted; she just wanted to fly. Lee had a better mind for the organization and paperwork that the job required, and in all he was a fair leader as well. Once the squads got past the fact that he was an outsider, he would be just fine. Well, that and once the emergencies stopped creeping up on them. It seemed for every problem that they solved on the deck, another made itself known. She didn’t know how long it would be until things leveled out, but she hoped it was soon – for all their sakes.
The moment that she felt the lift lock into place, Kara popped the seal on the canopy and slid it forward. Cally was there within ten seconds, reaching in to remove Kara’s helmet and take the collar that held it secure. Everything was going just according to routine, and that was a good thing. She needed the calm to prepare herself for what was to come.
And it had to happen; that was the hell of it. A glance to her right as she climbed down the metal ladder to the deck showed Lee leaning casually against a bulkhead with a clipboard before him. He acknowledged her with no more than a raised eyebrow, but she knew that he’d been worried. She was also pretty sure that he’d kept his word and stayed out of the control room. At least, she hoped so.
Kara headed for the ready room, taking off the pressure and flight suits and hanging them up to dry, and then grabbing a duty uniform to take with her into the showers. She cleaned off the sweat that was inevitable given the material of the suits, put on the more comfortable clothes, and then prepared herself for battle. It was a mental exercise that she had learned years before. She had just never needed to use it against the Commander.
William Adama was a reasonable man. He was tolerant, patient, and he’d been as much of a mentor as a commander to her. He had seen past the run-ins with the security personnel and the drunken brawls that she’d been known for, and he’d believed in the pilot that was underneath the crap. He had told her as much on more than one occasion. And when Zak had asked her to marry him, the eldest Adama had welcomed her to the family with open arms. Even after Zak’s death, he hadn’t withdrawn that acceptance. He had still believed in her.
On the day that she and ZaK would have been married, Kara had gotten up and taken a drink, and she hadn’t put the bottle down until it was empty. She didn’t remember a lot of what went on that day, only the pain and regret and guilt that had seemed to swamp her. When she had finally dried out enough to think, she had found herself on the floor of a military prison with William Adama sitting before her with sad eyes and a patient expression. She had tried then to talk her way out of the situation, but apparently she’d done a lot more talking when she’d been drunk. She had told him about Zak’s test flight, told him that Zak never should have soloed, and she had told him that his son’s death was all her fault. And yet even knowing that, the man that should have been her father-in-law simply took her by the hand, helped her to the head so she could puke for a good ten minutes, then he’d cleaned her up and taken her home. After she’d slept it off, he had still been there. He had told her that the past was over and done, and that he’d already lost one of his children; he didn’t intend to lose a second. And then he had held her while she cried until she didn’t have any tears left.
Her assignment to the Galactica had come the week after that, and she had known that he’d pulled more than a few strings to make it happen. Ready for a change, and grateful for the implied forgiveness, she had accepted the assignment and had done her best to keep out of trouble and do her job to the best of her ability. She had still gotten into a few tight spots over the two years she’d served under him – it was inevitable given her personality – but it hadn’t been anything that seemed to really test him.
This was another matter entirely.
Kara stared at the door before her. It was a standard hatch, and one she had passed through on a dozen occasions. It had never seemed so forbidding as it did at that moment. With a deep breath she knocked on the door, knowing that the late hour made it damned likely that he was there.
“Come,” he commanded. Well, that took care of any possibility of sneaking out of this before he found her.
Kara spun the wheel to release the hatch, then pushed the door open with a loud creak. Damn. If the Commander didn’t oil his hinges, why in hell had Ripper? Setting that thought aside, she moved into the room to face one of the few men that she respected unconditionally. “Sir?”
“Over here, Starbuck,” he said simply. He was standing with his back to her, sorting through something on his desk and apparently not finding what he wanted. He shifted things for a moment more, then appeared to give up his search. With an irritated expression, he turned towards her and gestured her to the chair next to his desk. She took it, perching on it as though she expected to need to make a quick escape. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
She took a deep breath, and then another. She needed to do this, and yet she couldn’t remember anything ever being so difficult. “I need to talk to you about this morning,” she finally admitted.
“No, you don’t,” he told her firmly.
“Yes, I do,” she corrected, and then added a hasty, “Sir.”
He gave her a look that she couldn’t interpret, then finally gestured with his hands and eyes for her to go ahead. His expression seemed to say that whatever she said was of no consequence, but he would allow her do it anyway. “Whatever… discipline that Captain Adama is facing, I think I deserve the same thing.”
“You were neither the senior officer involved, nor were you on duty,” he told her simply.
“No,” she admitted, blushing brightly despite her best efforts. “But he was there for me, so it’s my responsibility too.”
“Starbuck,” he began, and then he stopped for a moment and looked away from her. “Kara,” he corrected with a sigh. “I understand your wanting to protect him; really I do. But this isn’t something within your power to correct. Lee knows his job, and he knows to do it. Now, it’s unlikely that he’ll receive more than a Letter of Reprimand, but failure to report during a wartime situation is not a matter to be taken lightly.”
“And the fraternization, and PDA?”
“I was… surprised,” he admitted. “And angry. I also jumped to conclusions regarding what exactly was happening, and that isn’t my place.”
“What exactly did you think was happening?” she asked in confusion.
It was hard to tell if the Commander was blushing – he had a dark complexion to start with – but Kara thought she saw a darkening to the color on his cheeks. “That’s not important,” he hedged.
“I was there,” she reminded him. “I’d like to know what you thought you saw; what it was that surprised you so much, and made you so angry.” She knew that she was pressing him, and as her commanding officer he had every right to ignore her question, but she hoped that he’d give her the respect of an answer.
“At the Academy,” Adama began. “Lee had a… reputation with women. It was less than appropriate.”
“I was there,” she told him with a smile. “And it was very much exaggerated. Yes, he dated. And I’m not going to tell you that he never got… physically involved with anyone, but he wasn’t by any means inappropriate.”
“I don’t think this is a discussion we need to have,” he told her simply.
“I just want to understand,” she explained. “You were furious with him. I heard the screaming through the hatch, and it was closed. What was he doing that was so wrong? Do you even know what was happening in his room?”
“I saw exactly what was happening in that room,” he muttered, and this time Kara was sure that it was a blush staining his cheeks.
“No, you didn’t,” she said softly. “You saw… a consequence of what was happening there. Lee is one of the good guys, and he’s probably the only thing that’s kept me from going insane since this all started.” Kara ran her hands through her hair, sweeping it out of her face, and then stood to pace slightly in the small room. “There’s nothing left,” she told him softly. “Everything is coming apart, and every time I close my eyes I see bodies, and destruction, and I don’t have a clue how we’re going to get through this. And there aren’t many people who know just how close to the edge I got before Lee realized what was going on and gave me… someplace safe to be.” She finally turned and faced William Adama. “I don’t want to see him punished because he was taking care of me. And whatever you saw – or think you saw – that’s what was happening. Lee was just taking care of me.”
“Kara, I appreciate what you’re saying. But if we don’t maintain some semblance of order in the ranks, there will be no way to hold the military together. If it had been anyone other than me who walked into that room, this discussion would be academic because you’d both be up on formal charges.”
“But it was you,” she implored. “And you know Lee. You know his sense of responsibility, and honor, and all the rest. You know him, whatever the disagreements that you’ve had. Losing track of time is a very human mistake, and that’s all he really did wrong.”
“He was sleeping with someone beneath him in his direct chain of command,” the Commander corrected.
“If the human race is going to survive at all, maybe the first thing that needs to happen is getting rid of this stupid restriction on who can care about who. Because the rules don’t change anything; they just get people in trouble. Even if he’d never touched me, do you think it would change how he feels about me, or the way I feel about him?”
Adama faced her directly, and she found herself captured by eyes that were far more similar to Lee’s than she would have believed, despite their different color and brackets of age around them. “And how is that?” he asked softly.
“I don’t have a clue,” she admitted. “But I know that when I’m with him, it’s just a little bit easier to face the world, or what’s left of it. I don’t want to lose that, and I sure as hell don’t want him court-martialed because of it.”
They stood there facing one another for a long time. Kara didn’t break eye contact with the Commander, and neither did he back down from her. It seemed to be an impasse of sorts, and finally Kara used the only weapon she had remaining.
“If it hadn’t been Lee,” she began, then she shook her head. “If it had been anyone but Lee, would you be this upset?”
“It wasn’t anyone else,” he said softly. “It was my CAG.”
“It was your son,” she said simply. “I know that’s why you’re so upset. If you’d walked in on Ripper and he’d had someone in his bed, you would have backed out and probably never even told him.”
Finally, Adama smiled. “Actually, then we’d be discussing infidelity rather than fraternization. Neither is acceptable under military law.”
Kara shook her head and did her best to smile back. It wasn’t very close. He wasn’t being fair. He was expecting far more from Lee than he would have asked of any other man. Yes, Lee was his son, but he was also young, overwhelmed, and just as distraught as the rest of them. Being the Commander’s son made his situation worse, not better. “At least think about it,” she requested. “And try to be objective. Lee’s allowed to be human sometimes, too.”
“I will take that… under advisement,” he finally said, but his smile was gone. “Kara, he has responsibilities. He has to take them seriously.”
“He does. You know he does.” She ran her hands through her hair again in frustration. “He takes it all too seriously. He agonizes over every schedule, and he’s so damned afraid he’s going to make a mistake that he triple-checks everything and he can’t get through half the work. He’s never done the job before, doesn’t know the crews or the paperwork, and we’re in the middle of a frakking war. If he takes it any more seriously he’ll give himself a stroke.”
“Are you finished?” he asked.
She thought a moment, then shook her head. “No, Sir. There’s one more thing. I realize that he hasn’t been fair to you,” she admitted. “And most of that’s my fault. I should have told him the truth a long time ago. But please don’t hold that against him. Just because he wasn’t fair, that doesn’t mean you can’t be.” She took a deep breath and let it out, finally relaxing her stance. “That’s all.”
“Then you’re dismissed,” he said, almost gently.
“Thank you. And… thank you for listening.”
“I hope he realizes what he has in you,” Adama murmured very quietly.
“He’s got a friend,” she told him. “Friends stand up for one another.”
“So I see. Good night, Starbuck.”
She glanced at her watch and grinned. “Or good morning, as the case may be.”
He nodded, and she opened the hatch to leave. She had one foot out, the other still in, when she heard the claxon. Emergency medical crews were being called to the port launch tubes. Before she could turn back around to seek guidance from her commander – whether to head for the deck or to go back to quarters so she was out of the way – she heard his phone buzz. She waited as he picked up the receiver, said a few terse words, and then headed for the hatch at a run.
“An accident in the port launch tube,” he said on his way out the door.
Kara didn’t wait around for an invitation, but instead she followed him at a dead run. The man could move pretty fast for his for an old man, especially when the situation was urgent.
They were shoved aside in the main corridor by emergency response teams from the Life Station, but that was the only thing that slowed them down. In moments, she was following him out onto the flight deck. Before they were anywhere near the tube, she heard the screaming. She knew Tyrol’s bellow from a distance, but the yelling seemed to be one-sided. The emergency crews were already into the launch tube, and Kara was trying desperately to figure out what the hell was going on.
“What the frak were you thinking?” Tyrol screamed at the top of his lungs.
The voice that responded was painfully calm. If she hadn’t known it so well, she wouldn’t have heard the tension. “Any maintenance worker should know not to go into a hot tube. That’s basic safety.”
“Are you saying I didn’t train my crew?” Tyrol yelled back.
Lee’s voice stayed calm. “I’m saying that communication broke down,” he said simply. “No one should have been in a hot tube, and the tube should have been visually checked before launch. More than one thing went wrong. We need to look at the whole situation to be sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“And how in hell is that going to help Sanders?” the Chief screamed. “Are you going to tell his wife that he’s a smudge on the side of the tube? Damn-it he was only nineteen years old.”
Lee turned his back on Tyrol, and Kara saw that his jaw was so tight that his teeth were grinding. “Do we have a report on the Viper, yet?” he called over to one Specialist.
The crewman asked a few questions on the wireless, then gave a thumbs up. Apparently, the Viper was fine, whatever else had happened. Kara wanted to know what the frak was going on.
Just as the Chief was beginning another rant, this time at Lee’s back, Commander Adama stepped in, physically holding the enlisted man’s arm. “Chief Tyrol,” he commanded. “Report.”
“The CAG sent a man into a hot tube,” Tyrol growled.
“I gave orders for a loose panel to be repaired in the tube,” Lee corrected, his voice still a deadly calm monotone. “I did not send anyone into a hot tube. The tube was clear when I gave the order.”
“The tube was loaded and launch was scheduled,” Tyrol argued.
“Chief,” Adama interrupted. “Give me facts, and facts only. What happened here?”
“Specialist Sanders followed orders to secure that panel. He went into the tube, a Viper was launched, and there isn’t enough left of my crewman to scrape off the wall.”
“What about launch control?” Kara asked, jumping in even when it wasn’t her place. There were dozens of safeguards in place to prevent accidents of this sort from happening. She wanted to know where the chain had broken down.
“I intend to find out,” Lee said calmly.
“Negative,” the Commander said. “I’ll have security start taking statements and we’ll run a formal inquiry. Chief, I need you to get me the information on any remaining family for Specialist…” He waited for Tyrol to supply the name.
“Sanders.”
“Sanders,” he repeated. “If he has family on board, they need to be notified in an appropriate manner. Captain Apollo?” he said, turning to face Lee.
“Yes, Sir?”
“Report to quarters until further notice,” Adama said simply. “Your shift was over at nineteen-hundred.”
Lee looked like he would argue, but at the last moment he ground his teeth more tightly together and nodded. Then as he turned to walk away, he took the clipboard he’d been holding and deliberately slung it into the nearest wall. There was no doubt that it had been intentional, just as there was no doubt that the board – now in about fifty small pieces – was well beyond repair. Kara listened to the staccato beat of his boots on the deck as he stomped away. She gave the Commander one last glance, but he was involved in a quiet conversation with Tyrol. So Kara did what she needed to do – she took off after Lee at a dead run.
Chapter 10
When the board shattered against the bulkhead, Lee truly wished that he could have joined it. He felt as though he was being pulled in a thousand directions, and it would have been easier to manage if he had been in a thousand pieces.
He was caught somewhere between guilt and fury, and he wasn’t entirely sure which way he was going to go. He still wasn’t sure what the frak had happened between the routine order he’d given and the tragedy had resulted, but he knew he didn’t appreciate being kicked off the deck before they had resolved the situation.
As though there could be any resolution; a man was dead. He had given a single order, and a man was dead.
“Lee?”
Kara’s voice rang out behind him, but he kept walking. He was going to lose it, and he really didn’t want anyone around when it happened. Not even her. “Go away,” he said simply, walking slightly faster as he did so.
“Lee, talk to me,” she called, stepping her pace up to a run. He settled for one glance back over his shoulder to see that she was gaining on him, but he’d be damned if he’d run down the corridor to escape her. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know where he was going. He’d been confined to quarters. He was going to his quarters.
“Not now, Kara,” he said carefully. His voice was starting to shake as badly as his hands. It looked like fury was going to win over the guilt, and while Kara could hold her own in a fight – truthfully probably could beat the shit out of him if she put any effort into it – he really didn’t want to be responsible for hurting her.
“Yes, now,” she argued, coming up along side him. “Lee, slow down. Tell me what happened.”
“You heard what happened,” he told her as he reached the door to squadron quarters and entered quickly. Kara was right on his heels.
“I heard Tyrol screaming. I want to know what happened.”
Passing quickly past the bunks along either side of the walkway, he headed for his office at the back of the room. The door was half-open, as it most often was. He stepped through, then reached behind him to pull the hatch closed behind him. Kara was through the doorway before he could block her way but he closed the hatch anyway. “You don’t want to be here,” he told her simply.
“Quit telling me what to do! Lee, what the frak is going on?”
“I don’t know what the frak is going on!” he screamed back. His hands were clenched into fists and he knew that he was about to come apart. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen it happen before, but he hated losing control in front of witnesses. Hell, he hated to lose control at all.
“Tell me what you know,” she pleaded. Her hands were at his arms, her green gaze caught his own, and she looked so damned understanding that he finally went over the edge.
“I killed somebody!” he screamed, pulling himself back away from her to put some distance between them. “Is that what you want to know? Is that what you needed to hear. I screwed up, and a kid died. Happy?”
“Lee, you didn’t kill anyone,” she said, taking a step towards him. He didn’t let her get close.
Lee turned to his desk and grabbed the first thing he could reach – a cup of pencils and pens – and slung it into the wall. Writing implements flew in all directions as the ceramic shattered with a satisfying ring on the metal wall. Next went the neat pile of rosters that he had stacked on the left hand side of his desk. He wasn’t competent to tell people what to do, much less where to be and when to be there. He grabbed the stack and tossed them after the pens and pencils, but the flutter of paper was far less satisfying than the resounding crash of ceramic. He looked for something else solid to throw, but as he reached for the wooden box that held the work he had yet to go through, Kara’s hand descended on his arm.
He could have pulled away. He could have slung her into the wall the way he was feeling. He could have, but he didn’t. “Get out, Kara,” he told her simply. Then he jerked his arm away from her, grabbed the metal chair before the desk, and swung it up and over the desk and into the wall beyond. It clanked and clattered as it fell to the floor, but Kara didn’t back down. Some absent part of his mind registered relief that he hadn’t hit her with the chair, but it wasn’t a conscious thought.
“Lee, stop!” she yelled, putting herself between him and the desk, between him and any other projectiles.
“I can’t do this!” he shouted. “I don’t want this office, I don’t want this job, and I don’t want you in here!”
“Fine!” she yelled back. “Just as soon as you aren’t acting like a maniac, I’ll leave.”
“Get out!” Lee bellowed, taking a menacing step towards her. He should have known that she was made of stronger stuff than that, because instead of stepping back she came towards him.
“If you think it’ll make you feel better, go ahead and hit me,” she told him, clenching her hands into fists. “Or try. I don’t promise not to hit back.”
His arm was halfway back and his intent murderous when sanity crashed down on him. He stared into green eyes that were wide, and angry, and not a damned bit scared. She knew he couldn’t hit her. She knew him. She knew him, and she was still there. She wouldn’t go anywhere until she was frakking ready to do it.
Dropping his hands, he headed towards the hatch at the back of the room. Unlike his open office, his bedroom was kept closed. He actually had his hand on the door before he stopped and placed his head against the closed door. “It’s my fault,” he told her. His voice was shaking, but he thought he sounded rational enough. “I killed him.”
“No, you didn’t,” she responded, and her voice was as calm as his had been, only without the shaking.
He shook his head and finally opened the hatch, stepping into his room. The covers on the bed were still askew from the badly timed visit from his father – Lords, was it just that morning? – and there was barely enough room to stand next to the bed. He didn’t bother pulling the hatch closed behind him; there were no locks, and Kara would just open it back up. He was tired of running from her.
Lee walked to the far wall – a distance of only six feet – and turned around to lean against it. He felt as though every bit of energy was draineing from him. He didn’t want to do this now. He knew Kara wouldn’t wait. “I ordered him into the tube,” Lee said, and again thought he was fairly rational.
She walked forward and stopped within a foot of him. “Why?” she asked simply.
“There was a panel in the tube that was loose. It hadn’t been repaired, so I told Sanders to be sure it was secure before launch. He followed my orders. I didn’t know the tube was hot.”
“Did Sanders check with Launch Control?” she asked him softly, finally reaching out and placing her hands on his chest. The contact was reassuring.
“Apparently not,” Lee said. “They launched while he was still in the tube. If the depressurization didn’t kill him, the impact did.”
“Is it standard procedure to report to Launch before entering a tube, hot or not?” she asked.
“You know it is,” he said with a sigh.
“Is it standard procedure to visually check tubes before a launch?” she asked him, her gaze still steady and calm and locked on his. Her eyes were such a clear green that he couldn’t bring himself to look away.
“Always,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. He took a deep breath before continuing. “He was a rook, Kara. Maybe he forgot the safety procedures. Maybe he was just scared because the CAG gave him an order and he was scrambling to do it. I don’t know why. I don’t know why Launch didn’t notice it. Shit, I don’t know how the pilot didn’t see him. I don’t know what went wrong, but it did, and it’s my responsibility.”
“Did the tube need repair?” she asked him, her voice still solid, almost like a solid, physical thing. He held on to it and concentrated on the sensation of warm hands pressing lightly against his chest; the two sensations were keeping him from flying apart.
“Yes,” he whispered. “If it tore out, it could have destroyed a Viper.”
“So, the tube needed repair and you ordered it repaired.”
He nodded. He couldn’t get any words out past the knot at the base of his throat. He tried to take a deep breath, but his chest hurt.
“It’s not your fault,” she told him again. “You did your job. The mistake wasn’t yours. It was an accident.”
Lee felt his knees start to buckle, so he let himself slide down the wall. “I killed him,” he whispered again, resting his head on his knees just as soon as his butt hit the floor. Kara leaned over him and put her arms around him.
“Did I kill Zak?” she asked him gently. Her arms were warm, and tight, and he felt like he just wanted to stay there forever.
He shook his head. Speech just wasn’t a possibility.
“You told me…” She took a deep breath, and he could hear that her voice was breaking just as his had. “You told me that I had contributed to the circumstances, but the choice had been his. Was that just a load of crap?”
He shook his head again.
“Lee, it’s the same thing,” she whispered. She was kneeling before him, her arms around his shoulders and her face next to his. “Accidents happen. I hate it, but they happen.”
“I can’t do this job,” he said on a gasp, trying to suck a breath in past the pain in his chest. “I can’t do it.”
“You are doing it,” she assured him.
He shook his head, and then he couldn’t even think. Every doubt, every death, every decision, and every fear suddenly seemed to settle on him and he couldn’t deal with it. He couldn’t accept it. He didn’t want to.
His shoulders shook, his breath came out in explosive sobs, and he felt like he couldn’t get enough air back in to stay alive. Kara’s arms tightened around him, and she started rocking with him, back and forth, keeping him from panicking until he could breathe again. He still couldn’t stop the tears, or the wrenching, painful sobs, but at least he could breathe.
Kara was talking to him, whispering something to him as she rocked with him, but the words were neither clear nor important. At some point he became aware that their faces were both wet, but whether it was his tears, hers, or some combination of the two, he was unsure. He just knew that he couldn’t keep it all inside any longer, and for some reason Kara understood. She wasn’t condemning, but instead she was holding on to him as though she could keep him together with no more than the strength of her arms.
They rocked, and cried, for longer than Lee could keep track of. At some point the sobs subsided into quieter crying, but the stream of tears was constant. When he was finally able to breathe without pain, he started talking. He didn’t know why he needed to say it, but for some reason he wanted Kara to know.
“I’m supposed to be a warrior,” he said in a voice that was somewhere between a whisper and a croak. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t protect the Colonies, and I couldn’t even keep what was left of the deck crew alive. I don’t know how to do half of the shit I’m supposed to, and there’s no one left to ask.”
Kara sniffed, but she didn’t move her face from its place beside his. “You’ll learn the job, Lee. You just need time.”
“There isn’t any time. And I don’t know that I can learn it. I can’t even fly worth a damn,” he admitted.
“You fly as well as I do,” she argued.
“Then why can’t I make it back from a battle under my own power?” he asked in disgust. “I’ve been in two Cylon battles, and both times I had to be rescued. I’m more of a hazard than a pilot. How can I train the kids they’re sending me if I can’t even do the job myself? Kara, if it was just the paperwork I could live with it, but I’m not even a competent pilot.”
“You’re a hell of a lot more than competent,” Kara told him. “You took on a Cylon fighter with minimal armament and no electronics suite. You saved the President’s life. Don’t you think that counts for something?”
“Kara, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, knowing that he sounded pathetic but unable to hold in the words. Once he had spoken the first of his doubts aloud, the rest seemed to overwhelm him. “I don’t have any answers for anyone. And when I try to get something done, people die.”
“Lee…” Kara began, but she didn’t continue. Lee couldn’t blame her. She was probably tired of reassuring him. He felt absolutely useless on every level – personal, professional, and even spiritual.
“My father’s barely speaking to me,” Lee said on a whisper when Kara had been silent for a few minutes. “I was awful to him. He probably can’t stand me.”
“Your dad loves you,” she told him firmly, but he didn’t believe it.
Shaking his head, he argued. “He won’t stay in the same room with me for ten seconds,” Lee said. “He won’t even let me apologize. I don’t expect his forgiveness – I don’t deserve it – but I want him to know that I shouldn’t have treated him that way.”
Kara loosened her hold on him, and he knew that now she would leave him. She loved his father – had always defended him. It was no wonder she couldn’t forgive the way he had treated the older man. Lee deserved for her to leave him there. He didn’t deserve her comfort, or her patience, or anything else. But then she surprised him by settling down beside him and putting an arm around his back. At her coaxing, he turned over on his side, his knees still pulled up to his chest, and rested his head on her lap. Kara threaded her fingers through his hair, soothing him without words; petting him gently, and relaxing him despite his efforts to resist the comfort that he felt he was unworthy of.
“You were hurting,” she said gently. “Your dad knows that. Even after I’d told him why Zak was dead, he was never angry – not at you, and not even at me. He didn’t need to be. But you needed the anger; you weren’t ready to accept losing him. I asked your dad once why he didn’t just tell you the truth, and he said that you needed to be mad for a while, and he wanted you mad at him instead of me. He said that if you didn’t have the anger, the hole that Zak had left in you might kill you.”
“I couldn’t save him,” Lee whispered. “I couldn’t save him, or Mom, or anybody else. All the training was useless. All the drills and the preparation for battle – none of it did any good. I couldn’t do anything.”
“None of us could,” she assured him. “None of us could have expected what happened. And we’re all still trying to find our place in what’s left. Lee, it’s okay to be angry, or scared, or hurt. We all feel that way. But you can’t take responsibility for the Cylon Empire. It’s not fair to you, or to anyone else. You couldn’t predict it, and you couldn’t stop it. All you could do was survive it, and you’ve done that. Now you need to hold on and survive just a little longer. It’ll get easier. It has to get easier.”
“Why?” he asked in a pitiful voice. “What’s the point?”
“The point?” she asked thoughtfully. “Well, to start with you’re the most responsible man I know. You take this job seriously, even more than Ripper ever did. You may not know the details, but you know how to get things done.”
“I haven’t done a bang-up job.”
“You’ve done fine. The schedules are fair, the work distribution is even, and you’ve even filled in the wholes left by the pilots we’ve lost. We need you here.” She took a deep breath, then bent over and placed a kiss on his cheek. “I need you here,” she said softly. “Some mornings, when I haven’t had any sleep, the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I’ll see you during the day. When you put your arms around me, the world is right again, even if it’s just for a little while. You help me forget that everything’s in chaos. You care, Lee. It doesn’t’ sound like that big of a deal, but when you haven’t had a lot of people care about you, it is important.”
“You’re important,” he said simply.
“And knowing that you believe that makes me believe it. Lee, I couldn’t make it through the day without you. I’ve tried – trust me – and it doesn’t work. When I thought you were gone, the world really was over. But when I saw your face, I knew we’d be okay. I knew that someone I could trust was going to be running things, and I knew that there was some hope.”
Lee didn’t answer that. He didn’t know how. Instead, he just laid there, his knees tucked tightly against his chest and his arms wrapped around them. Kara continued to stroke his hair, rub his arm, and trail fingers gently over his back. He needed to thank her. He needed to tell her how much this meant to him, how he had needed to let it all out. He needed to tell her how grateful he was for a listening ear, and calm logic, and especially her gentle touch. He needed to, but he didn’t have the strength. So Lee closed his eyes, finally able to breathe without pain, and finally able to relax despite the hundreds of responsibilities that he knew he hadn’t met today. And in the calm and quiet of his room, with Kara holding him, he finally let go of everything and let himself drift… and sleep.
Chapter 11
Kara knew almost the exact moment that Lee surrendered to sleep. His expression relaxed, his body loosened, and the sigh he gave sounded like unbridled relief. She released a breath of her own, leaned her head against the wall behind her, and sent a prayer to the Lords for strength – his, hers, and for the fleet in general. Lee might be the one on the floor this morning, but it would hit them all eventually. She knew that it would.
Kara also knew that she had an ordeal yet to manage. She had seen the Commander come to the door quite some time ago. He had stood in the doorway, listened to them for a moment, and then thankfully he had retreated back into Lee’s office. Kara didn’t think Lee was ready to deal with either his father or the details of the accident just yet. He needed to sleep.
So she sat there with him until her legs were numb and her back was aching. Finally realizing that she would have to get up at some point, and believing that he was far enough out that moving wouldn’t wake him, she began a coaxing, pleading, pushing effort to get him off the floor and onto the bed. It wasn’t a quick procedure, but it worked. It was something that Zak had taught her years before.
Kara smiled at the memory. Lee had been studying for finals, and he’d gone four days straight on strong coffee and pure nerve. He had crammed and studied subjects that he had already known by heart, but he had wanted to do more than pass the tests. He had wanted to ace them – and he had. When he’d come in from his last exam, exhausted but thrilled, Zak had managed to talk him into enjoying a glass of ambrosia with them as a celebration.
As tired as he had been, the alcohol had put Lee out like a light. And while Kara might have been content to leave him sprawled on the dormitory floor, Zak had insisted that Lee with a sore back was not who he wanted to cope with as a roommate. So between the two of them, they had sweet-talked, tugged, nudged, and cajoled him until he had climbed up onto the couch. Zak had taken off his boots, Kara had brought a blanket, and Lee had been out for almost twenty-four hours. When he crashed, he tended to do it right.
And this had been a crash. She wasn’t strong enough to lift him, but after several minutes of coaxing, nudging, tugging, and begging she managed to get him to climb up onto the bed. She got his boots off, then unzipped the orange coveralls he was wearing and tugged them off as well. Leaving him in his underwear, she wrestled the covers from beneath him and tucked him in. She stood there for a moment longer, relieved beyond belief that he was finally resting, and then she leaned down to kiss him gently on the forehead. He was such a strong man, and he’d held her together so many times; how could she have forgotten that anyone who gave so much of himself would eventually run out of strength to share?
With no more to do, and no logical reason besides fatigue to put it off any longer, she quietly left his room and pushed the door closed behind her. She spun the hatch-wheel once for good measure, and then turned to face her commanding officer.
“How is he?” Adama asked, and the expression on his face was pure concern.
“Exhausted,” she admitted. “I slept last night, but I don’t think he did. I’m not sure about the night before that. Between the new job, losing a world, and tonight…” She shrugged. She didn’t have a clue how he’d made it this long.
“Thank you,” William said softly.
She furrowed her brow. “What for?”
“Being here for him,” the Commander said gently. “He… needed someone. I don’t think he could have opened up to me that way.”
“Yeah, well, it’s nothing you haven’t done for me,” she said with a tired smile. “I think he’ll be okay when he wakes up, but I doubt that’ll be anytime soon.”
“He tends to… push himself.”
She didn’t respond to that. It would have been confirming the obvious. “So, are you here to arrest him?”
William Adama shook his head, looking very old and very tired. “It was a very… unfortunate series of mistakes,” he said quietly. “Lee gave the order, and the Specialist relayed it to someone else for Launch notification. The launch crew was never notified because that technician was called to do something else, the loose panel had taken out the camera in that section of the tube so that Specialist Sanders wasn’t seen, and then when he went in, no one had any idea that he was there. It wasn’t until the Viper pilot hit him and reported a problem with launch that they even realized there was a problem.”
“So it wasn’t Lee’s fault,” she concluded.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” the Commander said, rubbing his hands over his face. “Lee was right giving the order, the launch crew was right following the schedule, Sanders was right doing his job, and even the technician was right because the situation that he was pulled for was urgent. Hindsight tells us where the breakdown was, but there is no blame to be placed. There will be a formal inquiry of course, but the facts are pretty clear.”
Kara sat down on the edge of Lee’s desk and surveyed the mess that he’d made. Adama was sitting in the chair that Lee had not thrown, because the one he had was a bent and broken mass of metal still leaning on the far wall of the office. “This is going to take a while,” she muttered absently.
“Were you hurt?”
Kara smiled and shook her head. “I’m pretty spry,” she explained. “The job’s been getting to him for a while. I knew it, but until tonight he was keeping it together. I really think we need to bring in someone else to share the responsibilities until things settle down. It was almost more than Ripper could do, and he wasn’t in a wartime situation.”
“Sounds like a Lead Pilot is in order,” the Commander agreed. “You’re second ranking among pilots; so that means you.”
“Gee, thanks,” she muttered.
“The two of you work well together,” Adama reminded her. “It’ll be a good match. When or if the job becomes more manageable, we’ll reevaluate the situation accordingly.”
“How are you going to get that past Tigh?” she asked dryly.
He winked at her. “I outrank him,” the Commander said simply.
Kara grinned back, but her heart wasn’t in it. She looked around the room once more and sighed. “I need to clean this up,” she said absently. “He doesn’t need any reminders when he wakes up.”
“I’ll bring in another cup and chair, if you’ll clean up the papers,” Adama suggested.
Kara nodded, and didn’t look over as the Commander stood, grabbed the bent and twisted metal that had been a chair, and left the room with it. She was glad that she wasn’t the one carrying it through crew quarters; the questions wouldn’t be ones she was willing to answer. As the Commander, Adama wasn’t likely to be questioned on anything.
Kara slid off the desk and sat down in the middle of the floor. The rosters had gone every direction, but Lee had them marked so clearly that it was not difficult to get them back into a proper order. Once she had, Kara put them back on the left corner of his desk where they belonged. Next she went after the pencils and pens, gathering them into one hand and trashing the few that had broken in their collision with the wall. She set them on his desk while she started on the shattered cup. She got up the big shards first, and then the smaller pieces. She shrugged off her work shirt so that she could use the material as a broom and keep from cutting herself on the smallest pieces. Finally, the job was finished, and the room was in some semblance of order. If she hadn’t watched Lee come apart, she wouldn’t have believed it from a glance at the office.
At the very least, Kara was feeling calmer now. The mundane tasks of cleanup had wiped her mind clear of the morbid and fearful thoughts that Lee had planted there with his deepest concerns. He was right; they were warriors, and yet they were as helpless as the civilians. They were supposed to defend and protect the colonies, and they had not accomplished that goal. Everything they had trained for had finally come to pass, and all they had been able to do was run, fast and far and frightened. It went against everything the Colonial Service believed in, and yet there had been no choice.
Rationally, she knew that no one could have predicted the infiltration of their computer systems; and yet William Adama had – it was why they were still alive. So it wasn’t completely impossible to outthink the machines. And thankfully the one man who had managed the feat so far was running things from here on out. At least, she hoped he would. He didn’t look a hell of a lot better than his son at the moment. That thought brought her back around to Lee, and she walked over to his bedroom hatch and eased it quietly open.
He was still curled up in a ball, much as he had been on her lap, but at the very least his features were calm and he was sleeping. She crept over to him, gently running a finger down the side of his face, just watching him. He was so strong; so independent. And yet, under it all, he was no less human than the rest of them. He had his limits, and this morning he had slammed into them in no uncertain terms. She hadn’t realized just how overwhelmed he had been. Lee never argued about responsibilities, he simply did what he was supposed to. She wondered absently how much longer he would have held together if a tragedy hadn’t triggered this explosion. Somehow, she didn’t think he would have made it very long.
A sound behind her pulled her attention to the doorway, and William Adama’s concerned face. She gave him a quick thumbs-up, then ran her finger along Lee’s face one last time for good measure. Turning, she left his room, pushing the door shut so that their talking wouldn’t wake him.
“Still asleep?” the Commander asked.
She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off a sudden chill. She supposed it was the adrenaline drop following the emotional scene she’d just been through. She glanced down at the clock on Lee’s desk, grateful that it hadn’t followed the pencils into the wall, and noted that it was nearly seven. She had four hours until she was on duty. Lee was supposed to be going on duty now.
“I’ve already arranged to have his shift covered,” William told her. She jerked her glance to him and smiled. He always had been a mind reader. “And yours as well. You’ve been up as long as he has.”
She nodded at that. She was too damned tired to argue. “Thank you.”
The Commander nodded and gave her a smile. “Go on in,” he said, gesturing towards Lee’s bedroom. “I don’t think you want him waking up alone.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide and startled. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? Was he giving permission for the very thing he had been going to discipline Lee for? Was he giving his consent or even his blessing to… whatever relationship they had? “Sir?”
“Do I need to make that an order, Starbuck?” he asked with a wink.
She shook her head. “No, Sir, but…”
“Kara, you were right,” he told her softly. “Everyone needs somebody, especially with the world coming apart around us. We need our CAG in one piece, so… take care of him. And let him take care of you, too. Something tells me that the Lead Pilot job won’t be much easier than CAG, and you’ll need some rest if you’re going to get it done.”
Kara smiled at him. “Thank you,” she told him. Then, after a moment, “And that’s from both of us, I think.”
The Commander smiled, and then leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re a very special woman, Kara Thrace,” he told her gently. “My boys have good taste.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just stood there and blushed while the Commander turned and left the office, shutting the door as he did so. She stood a moment longer, replaying his words and their implications, and then she turned and walked towards the bedroom. She eased inside, grateful for the well-oiled hinges. She walked silently towards Lee, and watched him for a long moment. He seemed so peaceful that she didn’t really want to disturb him. But she was tired, and she knew that if she went out to her own bunk she wouldn’t sleep at all. Here next to him, she had half a chance.
The bed was backed up against the wall, so she had to climb over Lee to get in. This was going to be fun. She unfastened her work pants, took off her boots, and in simple military issue underwear she carefully climbed over Lee and wiggled her way under the covers. She was surprised at how warm it was there, and Lee’s heat was almost magnetic. She inched closer to him, half-afraid of waking him, even though she knew it wasn’t a likely possibility. If she could get him from the floor into the bed asleep, simply putting her arm around him shouldn’t wake him. Should it? Taking a chance, she snuggled up to his back, curved her body around his, and put her arm across his body. He murmured slightly, grabbed her hand and tucked it up near his chin, and held on as he slept. With tears in her eyes, Kara closed her eyes, kissed the middle of Lee’s back, and snuggled in to sleep.
Kara had no clue how long she’d been lying next to Lee – half on top of him – when she heard the buzz of the phone. She hadn’t bothered with anything as mundane as checking her watch or looking at the clock. She was just enjoying the rare feeling of being warm, and held, and rested.
She wasn’t entirely sure how she had wound up on top of him in the night. She had curled up behind him, and when she’d awoken he’d turned on his back and was holding her close. She had one knee in between his, her head on his chest, and she couldn’t imagine a single position she would have enjoyed more.
Lee looked worlds better. The shadows beneath his eyes had faded, and he almost looked like himself. Almost, because he never looked like “Lee” without his eyes open. There was something intense about the startling dark blue that just made him who he was, gave him life, and made her feel so safe. It was dumb. There was an old Caprican poem said that the eyes were windows to a person’s soul, and she didn’t know about that. But she did know that Lee’s eyes could tell her everything from whether or not he was really mad to whether or not the joke was on her. His eyes hid nothing, at least not from her. With his eyes closed, he was just a little bit guarded, but it was worth it. He had needed the sleep. They both had.
She was still contemplating the mysteries of ocular expression when she heard the buzz of the phone again. She decided that whoever was calling must surely die, but she reached over Lee and grabbed for the receiver that was installed in the wall. Her only thought was to silence the buzz before it woke him – it never occurred to her that she was answering the phone by his bed while he was sleeping there.
“What?” she growled into the mouthpiece.
“Well, good morning,” came the amused response. “What did I interrupt this time?”
Kara blushed blood red, despite the fact that the Commander couldn’t see her face. “Just trying to keep him asleep a little longer,” she said in just over a whisper. “Is there a problem?”
“I just wanted to know if the two of you are up for duty today, or if I need to keep you on the sick roster?”
Kara glanced down at Lee. His eyes were fluttering, his body shifting slightly. No matter how quiet she stayed, she wasn’t going to be able to keep him asleep indefinitely. Still, he needed some time to wake up, to process all that had happened, and if he chose to go back to sleep that should be an option as well. “One more day would be good,” she told him.
“You’ve got it,” he agreed. “Lee had the rosters set for the next two weeks, so it isn’t hard to make adjustments. I have Tyrol assigned to quarters as well. It’s time we all slow down, take a step back, and re-evaluate our situation. Otherwise, we’ll lose more than one man to exhaustion or fatigue-induced mistakes.”
Lee’s eyes were finally open – blue and clear and damned confused. “That’s for sure,” Kara told the Commander. “When should we report?”
“Tomorrow, oh-seven-hundred,” he answered. “Both of you. Today if you’re up to it, start delineating the Lead Pilot responsibilities. Get them divided reasonably, and we’ll decide whether the two of you will need parallel shifts or opposites.”
“Sounds great,” she said honestly. Lee was wide awake now, and he was watching her. Suddenly she didn’t want to be talking to his father; she needed to be talking to him.
“Then I’ll see the two of you in the morning,” Adama concluded.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Enjoy, Starbuck,” he concluded, and she had to smile at the laughter in his voice. She shook her head as she braced a hand on Lee’s chest to reach over and return the phone to its holder.
“Hi,” he said once she had returned to her previous position mostly next to him, her leg still tangled between his.
“How do you feel?” she asked without preamble.
He was quiet for a moment, most likely taking a personal inventory. “Tired,” he admitted. Then, with a smile, “Like I’ve been hit by a tanker.”
She grinned back. “Yeah, well you’ve had better days.”
“Are you okay?” he asked her, and she almost laughed at the serious expression on his face. She felt better than she had in days. “I’m good,” she told him with a wide smile. “I slept pretty well.”
“I don’t have to ask who was on the phone, do I?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “I can count the people you call ‘sir’ on one hand, and most of them are dead.”
“It was your dad,” she confirmed.
“When’s the inquiry?” he asked. The dread in his voice was clear.
“Not sure,” she admitted. “Mostly it’s a formality. No blame is being placed, and most likely we’ll just have a revamp of the safety procedures to be sure it doesn’t happen again.”
He absorbed that for a minute, his arms tightening around her body, but otherwise not indicating that he had heard her. “You answered my phone,” he commented.
“I was trying to get it before it woke you up.”
“Does my dad know you’re answering my phone at…” he looked at his watch. “Eight in the morning?”
“He knew I’d be here,” she said simply. “He said you had good taste.”
“This makes two days in a row that I’ve been late to work,” he muttered. “With any luck they’ll buck me down to Lieutenant and give my job to you.”
“Actually, it’s the third,” she corrected. “There was that first morning when your dad showed up, and yesterday morning you’d just got to sleep when you were scheduled to go on, and this morning too.”
“How long did I sleep?” he asked in confusion.
“A little over twenty-five hours,” she told him. “You had it coming.”
“It explains a lot,” he said with a small groan. “I hurt all over.”
She looked at him sideways for a minute, then moved off him. “Turn over,” she told him firmly.
“What?”
“Turn over,” she ordered with a shove. “On your stomach. Now.”
With a glance that held something between confusion and irritation, he complied with her order. Once he’d put his hands beneath his chin, she began tugging up his undershirts.
“Hey!”
“Shut up,” she muttered, pushing the material up and out of the way. Thankfully he did. She got the material shoved away, and then straddled his hips to start rubbing his shoulders and back. As she’d expected, it was like kneading rocks. Between the tension of the previous weeks and the physical exertion of tearing apart his office, his back was a mess. She started in methodically, working from his neck to his shoulders, and then down his spine. He grunted each time she hit a new knot, but otherwise he didn’t comment. Gradually, as her hands started to cramp, she began to find fewer sore spots and his back was no longer so tight. His eyes had closed, his expression was calm, and his arguing was at least delayed.
She stopped for a moment, stretched out her hands, then eased down his legs. She slipped her thumbs beneath his underwear, moving further down his spine, and enjoying the fine texture of the hair on his lower back. He wasn’t an overly hairy man, but there was enough to give his body a masculine feel. Kara wasn’t above enjoying him. The massage was mostly for him, but the fringe benefits were notable. He was a joy to touch.
When she’d gone as far as she could without stripping him, she moved her attention to his arms. She rubbed and kneaded and stroked until she had lost all track of time. She was actually so involved in what she was doing, and how much she liked doing it, that he startled her when he rolled over beneath her and nearly unseated her in the process. Only quick reflexes kept her upright and on his legs as he wound up on his back. His arms came up to stabilize her, and the smile on his face took away the irritation she’d felt at losing both her comfortable seat and her freedom with his body.
“If you wanted me to stop, you could have said so,” she muttered, reaching up to grab the hem of his shirts and pull them down. His hands covered hers as she did so, pinning them flat on his chest.
“I didn’t say I wanted you to stop,” he said softly.
“Good,” she replied with a wicked grin. “I get to do the front, too?”
“How much trouble do you want to be in?” he asked carefully.
“I’m not in trouble,” she said. “And neither are you.”
“Not that I’m not… enjoying the attention, but an explanation might help. Last I checked, I was up on charges of failure to report, fraternization, and PDA, as well as confined to quarters pending an investigation regarding the death of a crewman. Now you’re in my bed – with my father’s approval, apparently – and all is well with the world. I know I slept a long time, but nothing’s making any sense.”
“You father admitted he might have overreacted to the other morning,” she said simply. “He was surprised, and he thought you were in bed with someone you didn’t even know. I don’t see how that makes any difference but he’s a father so that’s how he thinks. Anyway, he admitted that under the circumstances, the crew was going to have to learn to take care of one another. That includes the command level, and you and me as well. He also agreed that the CAG position was too much for one person in a wartime environment, so he assigned you some help – a Lead Pilot. His last order to me was to come in here, be here when you woke up, and take care of you. Does that clear it all up?”
“Clear as mud,” he admitted. “But it’s probably my mind more than your explanation. Everything still seems kind of muddled.”
“You’re allowed. That was the bottom line with your dad. We’re human – all of us. We need to be treated like people instead of machines, otherwise we’re no better than the Cylons. There’s no point to survival if we tear one another apart in the process, or if we get so tired that we start making mistakes. For now, there’s no sign of Cylon pursuit, so we’re going to slow down, adjust some shifts to allow for more rest and more down-time, and chances are damned high that productivity on the deck will increase even though less time is spent there. Or that’s the way I understand it.”
“So when are we on duty?” he asked, his brow furrowing again, and his blue eyes locking with hers. The man had beautiful eyes – they shouldn’t be legal.
“Well, today we’re supposed to start dividing CAG duties and come up with a formal job description for Lead Pilot,” she told him.
He smirked. “Who gets that position? I don’t think anyone in squadron would put up with me.”
“Yeah, well I’m exceptionally patient,” she muttered.
“You?” His eyebrows went up in surprise, and she could swear the expression on his face was a smile.
“So it seems. Anyway…”
“Wait a minute,” Lee said, grabbing her hands, which had unconsciously been petting him once more. She hadn’t been trying to divert him, but he was just so damned touchable. “My dad assigned the two of us to work together – like partners?”
“I said that,” she murmured, not at all sure where the joke was. He looked like a cat who had swallowed a bird. “Now, are you going to let me finish?”
“By all means,” he invited, beginning to rub the hands he’d been holding. Damn, but the man could be distracting without even trying.
“So you and I divide up the duties, and then we’ll look at how best to serve the shifts. For now I’m thinking one seven to fifteen, and a fifteen to twenty-three, but I’m sure you’ll have your own ideas. Maybe you could handle the paperwork and I could handle maintenance assignments? I don’t know. We’ll pull out the OIs for CAG, and start dividing. Then as of tomorrow, oh-seven-hundred, you have help.”
“So, I’m stuck with you?” he asked, and she couldn’t read his expression at all. The smile had faded, but he didn’t look upset, or angry, or even as though he was considering it. He just looked… odd.
“Well, if you can’t stand working with me, we can look at another person for the position. I got hung with it because I have the most time in grade for the Lieutenants, but it’s not written in stone. The bottom line is that you need help; the job is to much for one person in a wartime environment.”
“And who told the Commander that?” he asked softly.
She took a deep breath and prepared for the explosion she was sure would come. “I did,” she admitted. “But he agreed. In fact, I think there are a lot of assignments he’s going to be reviewing. We lost a lot of people, and with the increase in duties we just don’t have enough men to take up the slack. So the Commander will look at the job assignments, make sure that hours are reasonable, and probably initiate some kind of mandatory fitness program or something to make people take care of themselves and burn off some of the stress. At least, that’s the impression I got. He didn’t say all that in so many words, but the implication was there.”
“You’ve been talking a lot,” Lee said, and this time his eyes were not on hers. They were on the wall, the ceiling, the light; anywhere but on her.
“We both care about you,” she said on a sigh. “And we both worry. You’ve been doing too much – or trying to – and neither one of us wants to see you burn out.”
He still wasn’t looking at her, and it bugged her. She hadn’t stepped in to upset him, but rather to make his life more manageable. He had done so much for her, and she really just wanted to give a little back.
“I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped or anything,” she told him softly.
“No,” he corrected, squeezing her hands gently and shaking his head. “It’s just… I didn’t expect it. You’re full of surprises.”
She smiled at that. “I always have been.”
“Yeah, you have. So, today we just do paperwork, correct?”
“Yup. Divide up the job, set the schedule, that kind of thing. You dad has the duties covered until tomorrow. Oh, and get some rest,” she added. “It may be a long time before we get another break.”
Lee’s smile was slow and sure, reaching his eyes for the first time in memory. Kara just goggled at the sight. She’d forgotten about the cute dimple he had, or how his eyes crinkled when his smile was big enough. “Rest?” he asked, and she could have sworn his eyes were twinkling.
“Yeah,” she said warily. She wasn’t sure what to think of this Lee.
The next thing she knew, she was on her back, looking up, and Lee had neither released her hands nor lost his smile. If it had been anyone else, she would have been frightened by the unpredictable maneuver, but it was Lee. She could never be afraid of Lee. “What are the chances of my dad coming down here?” he asked smoothly.
“Um… not high,” she admitted.
He leaned down then, and he kissed her. Hard. Perfect. A long time later, when his personal inventory appeared to be finished and she was fairly sure he knew that she’d lost her tonsils when she was six years old, he lifted his head. “You realize, we’re going to be together a lot,” he told her. “Planning, scheduling, and even if we work opposite shifts we’ll probably be off at least one stretch a day together.”
“Yeah,” she admitted warily. “Is that a bad thing?”
He smiled again. “It could get out of hand,” he told her, and his expression was no less than tentative. He was worried. How she answered him was important, and for some reason he wasn’t sure which way she would go.
She leaned up and kissed his chin, quick and gentle. “I hope so,” she told him quietly.
His smile returned, his eyes sparked, and as he descended to kiss her again. Kara had a feeling that it would be a while before the rosters got checked or the duties divided, but she couldn’t find it in her to care. Lee needed this even more than he needed a helper on the job, and if she was honest she knew that she needed it too. And whether or not it was out of hand, it felt good, and it felt right, and they could analyze the rest of it when they were damned good and ready.
The End J