Author: Me again. After so many co-productions something a little weird ;)
Summary: "I didn't mean for it to happen. Really, I didn't. But then she nearly got herself killed, along with some of my other pilots and I snapped." - Kara and Lee, one-shot, somewhat of an AU, spoilers up to "Torn"
Category: Romance... kinda.
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica along with Kara, Lee and anyone else mentioned belong to Ronald D. Moore and everyone who's officially making money with them, as well as "It's all coming back to me" belongs to Celine Dion and everyone who's oficially making money with it. Which I don't. Honestly.
A/N: You know, every time I write BSG it's about an episode I haven't seen yet. Don't ask why, but this time I read everything about "Torn" I could and suddenly listend to "It's all coming back to me" and something got triggered. So here it is. I hope it's at least marginally in-character.

Plus: Please forgive any lapses in spelling, punctuation or grammar. I'm still a non-native-speaker, and it's half past two in the morning here. And of course don't forget:

Feedback will earn you a cookie, flames will roast our marsh-mellows.


When I touch you like this

"But when you touch me like this
And you hold me like that
I just have to admit
That it's all coming back to me
When I touch you like this
And I hold you like that
It's so hard to believe but
It's all coming back to me."

Celine Dion, "It's all coming back to me"

I didn't mean for it to happen. Really, I didn't. But then she nearly got herself killed, along with some of my other pilots and I snapped. Yelled at her that if she wanted to kill herself she could throw herself out of an airlock, that I didn't want to have her in a Viper anymore. And then I grounded her.

I knew it had been the right thing to do, but that strange incredible amount of rage I had inside of me… no, that wasn't right. Told myself I didn't know where it came from, but that's a lie. I knew very well where it came from. Because it felt exactly like that back on the day after Colonial Day, the day after I saw leaving her with that… there isn't even a word for how I think of Gaius Baltar. When I'd felt nearly overwhelmed with feelings of betrayal and jealousy. When I desperately needed to work of some steam with punching just someone. And I felt exactly like that after grounding Starbuck today.

I tried to tell myself to calm down, went to the quarters I share with Dee, thinking that talking to her – and maybe doing something more than talk – would help me get off this whole train, but the moment I got in our quarters and saw her sitting there I realized that for some strange reason Dee was one of the last persons I wanted to be with in that moment. I didn't say anything, got my work-out clothes and made my way to the work-out room. Didn't fail to see the slightly disturbed and then dismayed look on her face, but I really didn't care about. Maybe because I'd seen it far too often now to bother with it.

When I'd arrived at the work-out room I'd hoped to be alone in there but it turned out that someone else had had the same idea to use the work-out room to blow off some steam. And what had been worse: It had been Starbuck of all people, beating the dummy to pulp. I didn't have neither strength nor was I in the mood to be even near her, so I just said: "Get out."

She didn't stop, just grunted and said: "Make me."

I know I should have let it lie, should have just ignored her, but out of some strange impulse I went right up to her, grabbed her by her shoulder and spun her around. The look in her eyes when they met mine was downright frightening. And I don't mean the usual Starbuck-I'm-the-flight-instructor-
my-word-is-scripture-frightening. What I mean is a deep and primal kind of frightening I'd never seen in her eyes before.

She growled, and her body went all stiff, like a predator poised for the deadly jump, but I just couldn't get my hand off her shoulder. Then she said: "Take. That. Off. Never ever again touch me."

Some frakking demon must have been riding me in that moment because I didn't comply with that but said: "Marriage made you soft, oh mighty Starbuck?" A moment later I suddenly sat on my backside, my left eye hurting, with a nice shiner already forming around it, Starbuck towering over me.

"I cold ask you the same, Fat Boy.", she said, her features still unreadable. Then she just turned back to the dummy, attempting another go at it. It was the moment I finally snapped. Not because she'd punched me or because she'd managed to get the better of me so easily. No, for some reason her addressing me with that stupid nickname was the thing that pushed me over the edge.

But instead of directly hitting her back I just stood up, in that terrible calm that always intimidated anyone else but Starbuck and went for the hatch I'd come through. In a few minutes I'd closed and locked it. Starbuck just went on taking her anger out on the dummy, and that irked me to no end. Anyone else would have stopped by now, getting suspicious and/or frightened, but she just… ignored me.

Turning back I said: "Anders must have turned you into a whimp when everything you can do is go against some dummy." She stopped.

Without turning around, she said: "You have no idea who turned me into what. And didn't Dee tell you to keep your hands off other women?" She'd said my wife's name like it belonged to something you'd find in the sewers. It made me want to beat her into submission even more.

"Absolutely. She was talking about women, yes." Back in the days, when we'd been friends and everything had been right, I'd often done it. Teasing her about how unwomanly she was behaving, how no guy could find her attractive with that… The truth was: I always thought she'd be one of the best-looking women I'd ever met. And I had been attracted to her. But then she left for New Caprica and Anders, and Dee came into my life, and it ended. Or so I thought.

By then I'd reached her, but she still stood with her back to me, silently heaving breath after breath. She was only wearing a sports bra and some hot pants and the sweat had been glistening in the harsh light of the work-out room… Lords, how I tried to stop that train of thought.

After a few more moments of heated silence she finally said: "I bet it wasn't necessary that she told you. After all, what competition would she have with a man like you? With all that extra Lee hanging off you…" And that had been it. I'd grabbed her shoulder, spun her around and aimed a fist directly at her face.

I hadn't counted on the fact that she'd had passed a year in the New Caprica Resistance, though and was caught off-guard when she sidestepped the blow and took the outstretched arm to whirl me around and throw me on the ground. Faster than I could react, she was sitting on my, straddling me, pinning me effectively to the ground.

She brought her face so near to mine that we were only centimeters apart and hissed: "When I said "Never touch me again.", I frakking meant that. Stay the hell away from me, Major."

She'd wanted to get up after that but she never got to make it. Because the moment she finished speaking somehow our lips landed on each others. For a moment I really thought she'd gut me alive, but then every coherent thought left my head when her hands cupped my head and she started kissing me back.

It was nothing like kissing Dee, because she was doing it pure Starbuck style. Raw, fierce, honest, nerve-rattling. And I wanted more of that. So much more. When we came apart for air, my concious mind kept yelling at me how frakking wrong this all was, but my more basic instincts made sure that the rational part of my mind shut up as soon as we started kissing again. By then I'd encircled her tightly with my arms and rolled her on her back. Lords, did she feel good.

At some point my lips had left hers and made their way down south while my hands fumbled with getting that bra out of my way. When they couldn't get it to open by itself, they ripped it from her. It earned me a smirk and a slightly breathless "That was my favorite bra, mister."

I only responded with panting heavily and dragging out: "Frak the bra. Frak me." Somewhere deep down I knew I was betraying my wife in maybe the worst way I ever could, but at that point the concept of fidelity totally slipped me. All that mattered was the woman beneath me. That and the all-consuming urge to be inside her, to feel her all over me. Everything from before New Caprica was back. The want, the need, the lust.

In less than five minutes we were both completely undressed and roaming all over each other, rolling on the floor of the work-out room, frantically trying to get as much as possible from the other. And then… it happened. I was inside of her, and the world exploded. Lights, colors, sounds… I was one with her, in some strange sense.

Slowly, I drifted back into the reality where we weren't one by far… where I was supposed to be one with someone else. But I didn't want to think about that. In fact, I wanted to do anything but think about that. I was still inside of her, and it scared the frakking daylights out of me how much I still wanted to stay there. But then reality came fully crashing down on me when she said: "Well, good thing I'm not a woman, huh?"

This was just so frakking Starbuck. Ruinig a perfect moment with just the right comment at the wrong time. And the worst was: I couldn't bring myself to just get up, and leave after making clear that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime situation and we would keep this between ourselves and never speak of it again. Instead I bent down and kissed the crook of her neck, murmuring: "Yeah, good thing."

"Lee…" Kissing her shoulder then, very slowly, very tenderly. "Lee… don't…" I knew she wanted to tell me to stop – because regardless of what others say, Starbuck… Kara is not a heartless ruthless man-eating monster – but I couldn't. I wanted to do slowly and very, very tenderly what we'd first done so rushed and heatedly. So I went on with my trail of kisses, but suddenly I found myself on the floor beside her.

"Lee, I mean it. Gods, you just… I just… I need to get out of here. Lords know how much I need to get out of here." She scrambled up, and suddenly she didn't look like the Kara I'd seen coming back from New Caprica, challenging me on the deck, wiping the floor with me… no, this was a Kara that was confused, feeling guilty, being… horrified.

I was still sitting on the floor, dumbfounded, when she was nearly frantically dressing and putting her things together and saying: "Look, this was a one-time thing, okay? I'm so sorry. I should have… let's never talk about that, okay? I'll keep silent, and you'll keep silent and everything will be okay. Everything will be… okay." And with that she unlocked the hatch and is out of the room. Leaving me behind, hurt, confused and… naked. I scrambled up again, dressing as fast as I could.

And well, here I am now, having my own go at the dummy. If someone asked me to describe my mind right now, I'd say that it was a dark maelstrom, with thousands of thoughts and feelings incoherently swirling around. And I don't even know why. According to Kara, everything is clear. It was a once-only thing, born of rage and hurt and a thousand other things, never to repeated or spoken of again. She would keep quiet, and I would keep quiet, and no one would be bothered with it again.

Except it bothers me. It bothers me because technically I should feel deep remorse at doing this to my wife and my marriage, but all I feel is a deep satisfaction inside of me. And the nearly insane need to do this again. With Kara. Not with my wife.

Sex with Dee… sex with Dee was okay, nice, playful, passionate, too. But there was one thing it could never be: Sex with Kara. Sex with Kara was… it was like finding my match. We fit together in ways I could only ever dream about up to now. I would never have taken Dee the way I took Kara, and Lords did that feel good. It was like a whole new world opened up in front of me.

I punch the dummy harder. I do feel sorry and guilty. But because I feel like I lied to Dee, all the past months. I lied to her when we went on our first date, I lied to her when we slept with each other, I lied to her when I proposed, I lied to her when I married her. All the while I tried to convince myself that Kara and I were over, that in fact we had never been anything but over. That Dee was so much better for me.

And in a sense she was. She didn't take crap from me, but she didn't antagonize me the way Kara did. When I was with her, I never had to fear she'd physically assault me. When I was with her I didn't end up fighting with her everytime we saw each other, feeling compelled to taunt and tease and push her at any given moment. Dee evened me out, calmed me down, relaxed me. By the time I'd realized I didn't want to be evened out, calmed down, relaxed, I'd put on several pounds of extra weight and found myself in a marriage I never wanted to be in, in the first place.

The first cracks showed when Dee wanted to talk about children and I simply didn't. She tried several times, but every time she did I felt more unease at the thought of having some. Took me another few months to realize I didn't want to have them with her, but I never found the guts to tell her. So she may have suspected it but never said anything. Instead she started getting snappy, pouty, throwing me these disapproving looks. But only when we are among ourselves, never in public.

Around that time we stopped sleeping with each other almost altogether. And when we did sleep with each other, it was because of some feeling of obligation, sometimes to try and makeup with my body when I didn't find the words for it. And it was around that time I started thinking of Kara on the few occasions we slept with each other. Or when I was on the bridge, listening to pilot chatter. Or in the mess when seeing the pilots sitting there. Or on the flight deck when I found some excuse to be there. And I started missing to fly… missing to fly with Kara.

I also missed the way we would joke around with each other. And the way we could push each other to our limits. Even the way we fought with each other. And then, when she suddenly was there again, and that git Anders hadn't been at her side again…

I pause. Maybe… maybe the reason I was so angry with her at ruining that maneuver hadn't only been because she actually did, but also because I still felt betrayed, and because her sudden reappearance made me finally and fully realize the lie I'd been living for over a year. Because it may have been a lie, but it was a comfortable one. One that left you comfortably numb after a while. And for a while all I wanted to be was numb. But now Kara's back, and I feel so… alive. She always made me feel so alive.

The dummy receives a final punch in the gut when I see that I maybe have ruined the one chance to start over with her because I'd been thinking with the wrong head. As I finally start packing my things and walking back to my… the quarters I share with Dee, a plan starts to formulate. Maybe… just maybe there's still a possibility to make things right with Kara, and with Dee. But for that I need to be honest, just for once, even if it's gonna hurt at least one woman that means much to me.

Standing in front of the hatch of our quarters, I take a deep breath. As I open it, I see her. Now or never, Adama. I take another deep breath. "You know… I think we have to do some talking. A lot of talking."