Because this is way better than taking reading notes.
He walks out of the room loudly denying anything and everything. (His smile, though, is a murderous traitor. She knows.)
An hour later he's kicking off his boots and wishing he didn't have to be here. He pulls back the blanket on his cold, impersonal rack (are prison ships always this depressing?) and runs a hand through his hair.
"Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer..."
(Not that he's a very religious man. In fact, in light of recent events, his faith has probably been weakened a great deal. But he figures that praying is actually just a really sincere wish voiced aloud, so what would wishing hurt?)
He pauses. What do you say to deities you don't really believe in?
(The truth, of course.)
"Look, you know I'm not as religious as some people are. I guess... Well, mostly, I'm worried about Kara. And this whole thing with the President. And my dad. Mostly Kara. She's special. She's..." (Pause... heartbeatheartbeatheartbeat.) "I love her." (Pause... heartbeat.) "For real. And I know she's religious and stuff, so I guess I just wanna know if you guys'll listen to her when she talks? I would, but she's not really in the mood to talk lately. I'm not too sure about much of anything anymore. So... Okay, let me re-do this the right way. Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer. Watch over Kara, please. I LOVE her and I just... I can't lose her again. Please. I'm begging you. So say we all."
"So say we all."
He jumps. (Since when did theshadows that lurkin dark corners speak?)
"You love me." And when it comes from her mouth it sounds almost like a challenge. (He doesn't like her tone very much.)
"Stop sneaking up on me like that. You've been scaring the frack out of me today." (It's true.)
She scoffs at him. "You suck at praying, by the way."
"Bite me."
"Maybe I will." (He still doesn't like her tone.)
What can he say to that? (Nothing.) So he chucks his jacket on the floor with his boots and crawls into the monochromatic rack. She stands there and looks at him. After about five minutes, he can't take it anymore. "Maybe you should get some sleep too, Kara."
Her brow furrows. She's nervous, but he doesn't know why. She twirls Zak's ring on her thumb and bites at her lip. Real nervous. Finally, "Promise not to ask me what happened on Caprica?" She's all soft and wispy and feminine and weak and very non-Kara at the moment.
"Uh huh." His mouth quirks into a frown. (He doesn't like her when she's vulnerable. It makes him a little sick inside.) "Promise."
"Okay."
She sits on the end of his bed and unties the laces of her boots, ripping the elastic from her hair at the same time. She shakes her head, running her fingers through the dirty blond mop.
He smiles a little.
(Only a little.)
She frowns, biting her lip again. "Can I..."
He scoots over and opens his arms, pulling back the thin blanket. "Come here."
(And it's not quite a suggestion but it's not quite an order, either.)
"Okay."
She shucks off her jacket (leaving nothing but a bra, he is quick to note) and closes her eyes, exhaling long and labored.
His frown matches hers now.
"Kara, come here." (But he whines it, softly, so it sounds like "Com-MERE.")
Secretly he marvels on the inside at just how soft and smooth she is. And at how big the two new scars on her abdomen are. And at how she's clinging to him all of a sudden, twining her fingers in the hem of his tanks and burying her face in his neck. She glances up and raises an eyebrow. "Don't ask."
(He doesn't like her tone again. It's different from before; this one is almost a warning.)
"Okay."
He traces the curved one on her side. Long and shaped like a C, it's got bruising all around the edges. The other, just below her stomach, is a precise V. (He gets a bad feeling from it.)
He can't help it. "Where did you get these?"
His hands go back to the C. "That one," she breathes, "was a bullet. Hurt like a mother." She waits, hoping he's going to be quiet. After a few seconds she relaxes.
(He's not satisfied.)
But he learns the C first, every curve and arch. Eventually he goes back to the one that is screaming, 'I'm bad news!'
"Where did you get these, Kara?"
"I told you, I got shot."
"This one's not a bullet hole."
"I thought you promised no questions." She looks at him like maybe if she wasn't so tired she'd punch him.
His lips compress themselves into a tight line. The more he strokes the scar the more he feels like he wants to retch.
"I'm taking it back. I need to know where you got this." And his voice is hard, like maybe if whoever gave her that scar (he thinks it was a whoever) was in the room, they'd be dead by now.
"Lee..."
(The calloused pads of his fingertips are too much for her.)
He glances down right as she glances up. (Is that a tear on her cheek? Never...)
"Lee, I told you I don't wanna talk about it yet. Come on." Her lip trembles almost imperceptibly; she bites it. It bleeds a little.
(That IS a tear on her cheek. He doesn't like it.)
He pulls a hand up, reaching out with a thumb and brushing the tear quickly away. (Maybe if he pretends it wasn't there in the first place, it'll go away.) Another follows down the same path. He flicks it off.
"I do love you."
Now she is shaking slightly against him. "I know." Her voice cracks.
(He's not liking where this is going.)
"Please don't cry, Kara."
He's not sure who starts it. All he knows is that he has never experienced a kiss like that. (She hasn't, either.) It is the sort of thing that makes the hair on his arm stand out, electrified; it is the sort of thing that makes him want to gasp her into him. (Not that she would mind if he did.)
It goes on for a few minutes, slow and gentle but fiery and passionate all at the same time. Her tears on his face feel like rain drops from a balmy Caprican spring.
When they surface for air, she cups two hands around one of his ears. "The Cylons are harvesting human women to make more Cylons. They're hooking us up to tubes and wires and machines and raping us." (Pause... heartbeatheartbeatheartbeatheartbeatheartbeat.) One of her hands finds one of his and drags it down to the cold V on her stomach. "I barely made it out. That was from the preliminary surgery."
(His breaths sound like sobs, and maybe they are.)
She's lost her tenseness. No longer nervous, she leans into him, wishing he would envelope her in every way possible.
After a long moment:
"Frack, I wish you didn't tell me that."
She rolls her eyes. "I told you not to ask."
(Well, she did.)
"I love you," he says for the fifth time today.
(Pause... heartbeatheartbeat.)
"Me too."
The next morning they go to Kobol.