She wasn't sure how it had happened. One minute, Lee was lying on her bed, teasing her, while she sat at the end trying to fix a tear she had ripped into her dress uniform. The next minute, he was sound asleep, and she had forgotten all about the rip.
He was unquestionably the only real friend she had left in this world and was almost as wonderfully frakked up as her. Almost.
He still wasn't speaking to his father, and no matter what he said, she still blamed herself for that. She had told him that the responsibility for Zak's death should not be shouldered by William Adama alone. He had seemed to believe her. Her confession should have fixed everything. But it didn't. He still avoided his father. Why couldn't he realize how stupid he was being?
Actually, he avoided most people on Galactica. He had so much anger balled up in him. She didn't know where it came from. When they went through flight school together, he was serious about his studies, but he knew when to cut loose and have fun. There had been many a night when they both ended up in hack, trying to figure out which one of them was to blame.
The Lee Adama that was sleeping so peacefully in front of her wouldn't end up in hack. He no longer was the type of guy to deviate from what was expected. She knew that it would get him killed one day when he was up in the sky, flying his Viper, with no logical options to take in order to make it home safe.
She couldn't help but feel partially responsible. She was the one who had lied to him when Zak died. He had come to her and asked her what she knew about how Zak got sanctioned to fly in the first place. It was maybe the third time she had ever seen him angry in all the years she had known him. Which was why she found herself telling him that she didn't know much. And hadn't William Adama been right there on the edge of Lee's mind to step in to steer the blame far away from her? Very convenient way to avoid the pain. Like all her life, she took the easiest way to keep her own life easy.
Her thoughts of that day only haunted her every other day now. She couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if she only thought of Lee before herself that day and admitted to him what she had done. Then maybe he wouldn't be so screwed up.
Kara set her uniform to the side and slid her body out along the bed so that she lay face to face with him. It was slightly disconcerting to be looking at him and not see those piercing blue eyes staring back at her. Though now that she thought about it, he had never really been one to stare at her. At least, not that she noticed.
Crossing her arms on the pillow in front of her and resting her head down, she continued to stare.
He had been the most attractive man she knew since the moment she met him. She had never told him that, though. In her mind, it would just be odd to let him know that she thought of him that way. Plus he really wasn't that physical of a person.
Thinking about her words, she smiled. Well, maybe he was a physical person. You would have to be to have the body to fit the call sign of a god. He just never dwelled on the fact that he was the man all the girls on the ship giggled at and fantasized about.
There were plenty of times that she had been questioned as to whether she was involved with Apollo. Everyone was just intent upon turning her relationship with Lee into something other than what it seemed.
She paused and thought that over for a minute. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe what it seemed like wasn't what it actually was. She had to admit that her behavior had changed since he got "stranded" on her ship. There was her morning runs, usually her lone, solitary moment in her day. They had been a routine she picked up from Lee in the Academy. It only made sense to her that he would start going on them, too, now that they were in the same place. But no one else knew that.
And the other day, Boomer had said she seemed to smile more and punch less when Lee was around. According to the ship, Lee had her in some agreement that if she behaved, he would give her sexual favors. She smirked at the thought of it. If Lee was going to hand out stuff like that, she would be the first in line. But it was never going to happen. He hadn't even dated since she met him. His life was too busy, he said.
She reached out lightly and ran her finger along his jaw line. He stirred lightly but didn't wake up. She had always wanted to do that. It was nice knowing that he would be too exhausted to wake up and question why she was doing it.
Her fingers roamed over his cheek, down the bridge of his nose, lightly grazed his lips, working down until they rest easily on the dip in his neck from a moment before sliding up to rub his temple. She grinned when he let out a soft moan of comfort. He always did get massive headaches when he was tired.
She remembered the way his temples used to tighten ever so slightly as he gritted his teeth when he was excited. He used to go on and on about his dreams of one day being in charge of his own ship with pilots under his command. He had the most ridiculously, ordinary dreams wrapped up in something so extraordinary. He wanted to be the first pilot to save the world during the next apocalypse. He wanted to make the tough call that no one else would in order to do what needed to be done. He wanted to be a hero.
He had been so innocently naïve back then. Now he was so jaded.
She knew that she could fix that. If she just would tell him how much she needed him, she could change the way he was.
Her hand drew back from his face. She was too scared to do something as foolish as let him know how much she depended on him. There was no easy way to tell him how scared she was that they wouldn't be able to keep the Cylons from tracking them down. That she wasn't sure she had what it would take to get the job done. She could never admit her failure to him. That would be opening herself up to be hurt.
She rolled over onto her back, lying shoulder to shoulder with him and staring up at the ceiling. It was hard not to be tempted into blaming him for the turmoil in her life. It would be so simple to dwell on how long she's been dealing with both sides of the father-son argument. Too long, that was for sure.
It was slowly driving her insane especially now that Lee knew the truth. He knew the truth and yet nothing had changed between him and his father. She was running out of options to get the two to reconnect, but she still felt obligated to keep trying. It was all her fault, anyway. She had to be the one to fix it.
She knew blaming him would be the easy way out. In truth, her life was the way it was because she let it slip to that level. She let herself close off and forget what she wanted from her life. Like Lee, she wanted to make the tough call, but she didn't want to be recognized as a hero. She just wanted to be in the air, making decisions. It was something that she needed to survive.
He flexed his hands instinctively in his sleep, and she stared. It was a movement she recognized. The slight hand twitch that occurred right before the Viper touched down to the flight deck.
Maybe Lee's dreams had changed when she wasn't watching. Maybe he had come to need flying just as much as she did. He had been grounded because of a twisted ankle causing him to miss one patrol he was scheduled for. Instead of getting some much needed rest, he had been down in the hanger bay, annoying her to no extent to try to teach him a little more about the mechanics of a Viper. He had mentioned something about not being able to sit still when he should be in the air. She could relate to that.
It seemed that she spent every free moment with him since he had showed up alive on the Galactica when she had thought he had been killed by a Cylon Raider. It was almost as if she was trying to make up for the opportunities she thought she had lost.
And now here they were, lying side by side in her bunk. Spending even the hours they slept together.
She felt herself reach out to touch his face again but pulled her hand back at the last second. Sometimes, she was afraid that her touching him would break him. Almost like the physical contact between them would be too much. She knew he noticed her odd behavior when he went to offer her a hand or slip his arm around her. Her reaction was always to pull back almost as if she had been burned. He was too polite to comment on it, though.
No matter what changed, he was still the same old polite Lee when it came to her.
She rubbed her eyes as she felt them begin to pool. It wasn't that the tears were going to fall. No, she hadn't cried since the day Zak died. It was the itch of the tears being in her eyes but not falling that got to her. She couldn't get that damn itch to leave once it started.
This wasn't the first time that her thoughts on Lee had brought the itch to her eyes, either. She would have thought she'd be used to it by now. She had worried about him on and off for two straight years when they hadn't spoken a word to one another. It was easier to not communicate after Zak's death. Easier to try to forget the pain they both felt if they didn't have to see one another. But it was also one of the hardest things she had ever done.
Again, she felt her hand reach out. This time she didn't stop herself. There wouldn't be another opportunity like this ever. She could feel the warmth of his face as she ran her fingers just above the surface, holding herself back from actually making contact.
"What the frak are you doing, Kara?" Lee asked, not opening his eyes.
It threw her for a moment. Had he been awake the whole time? "Annoying you," she finally answered in her normal, confident voice.
He opened his eyes and turned his head to look over at her. "Do you know what I was dreaming about?"
"Me?" she said with a laugh.
"Yeah, I was." He smiled at her. Yeah, he had definitely been sleeping. The look he was giving her was one she hadn't seen in years. There were no boundaries or barriers in his face, warning her that she needed to keep her distance. There was nothing telling her that she shouldn't be so close to him right now. There was really nothing standing between him.
When he realized she wasn't going to respond, he went on. "I was remembering that silly game we had during our first year at the Academy. The one that started when you were convinced that you could do anything I could do even though you were a girl."
"I remember it starting with you insisting that I couldn't run as far as you could because I was a girl."
"I just said that to get your attention."
Her eyes lit up. "Really! That is a new little bit of information, Lee. You wanted to get my attention?"
"You and I were grouped together as the best pilots in the program within months of being there. But we had no classes, no flight simulations together. I had never met you and yet you were my main competition. I had to know if the rumors were true. I had to know if there was actually a girl who could fly better than me." He bumped her lightly with his shoulder. "So, I did the only thing that I could think of. I appealed to your competitive nature."
"You are making all this up, Lee," she scolded.
He laughed lightly. "No, I'm not."
"That's why our whole relationship started. Because you had to see if you're better than me?" She shook her head. "We really are pathetic."
"It's like watching a ship wreck. Huge disaster."
His words called her back to what she had been thinking about while he slept. Their relationship really was a jumbled mess. Beautiful though it may be to watch, it truly was a disaster. Shaking that terrifying thought off, she looked over at Lee and smirked. "Who ever won that little competition?"
"I don't think we ever decided." He paused before sliding over her body and out of the bunk. "What say we go for a run and find out?" He held his hand out for her to take.
She found herself staring into his eyes for maybe the first time ever when he was actually staring right back. It suddenly occurred to her that maybe she couldn't save him. Maybe it wasn't up to her to turn him back into the naïve, serious Lee she had learned to fly with. Maybe she didn't want to play the hero anymore either.
But the least she could to is try to make it hurt a little less.