Seven Sins: "Part 3: On Lust"

Pairings: Starbuck/Apollo

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I don't own Battlestar Galactica or any of the characters. This is a work of fiction, just for fun. Any resemblance to people real (but not imagined) is unintentional.

Idea: Series of (possibly before I die) seven vignettes following Starbuck through the series.


That night on New Caprica, I want to say I don't remember leaving Sam at the party. I want to say that when I woke up naked next to Lee on the land where Sam and I had planned to build our home, I have no memory of how I got there.

But I remember every word. Every movement. Every touch.

I want to say it was just sex. The heat of too much ambrosia and the needs of our bodies.

Lee's lips press against mine. The feeling shocks me, like the last time, when he thought I'd come back from the dead. His hands slide under my shirt; mine run over his shoulders and push his jacket to the ground. We're falling together, but it's not falling, falling is too passive for this thing between us. I rip his pants open. Yank them off. Run my lips gently, too gently, up his thighs.

What the frak are you doing, Kara?

I told him before, there's nothing in here. Nothing but a worthless frak up even her own mother didn't love.

I'm on top of him. He thrusts up into me. His palms cup my breasts; his thumbnails run the underside of my nipples. My hair is so long it tickles my back and neck. It falls over my face, sweat damp and diffuse. I want him. This. This moment where the future and past disappear and everything focuses.

I tell myself it's the ambrosia that puts this feeling in me. Nothing else. There can't be. The last Adama I felt something for died, and it was my fault.

When I climax, Lee's name hovers on my lips.

Sweat soaked in the chill wind, I roll to his side. "Well, this makes things…more complicated."

He touches my face with his fingers. When he looks at me, I see my faults in his eyes. He loves me not in spite of them, but through them. My best friend. My lover?

He leaps to his feet, spreads his naked arms and shouts, "I love Kara Thrace."

He screams it again. And again. He won't shut up until I say it too.

More than anything, I want to skip this part. I want to tell him I don't love him. There's nothing here. But I can't lie. I love him. I love him so hard, it hurts me to look at him. It rips me open to say the words out loud.

Only this once, because we're naked together in this darkness. Only because of the alcohol buzzing beneath my skin.

"I…"

Start again. "I…"

Lee stares at me. He wants so much. I want to give it to him.

The third time, I scream, "I love Lee Adama!"

I can love him, if I don't think about what that means.

Morning comes. First touch of dawn on the horizon. I wake, my head on his chest. A stone digs into my hip. I have to pee. The ambrosia has passed, and with it my excuses.

Fear constricts like hard vacuum. I run my fingers over across the scar on Lee's chest where I shot him. In the light of day, the webbed pattern reads like a map of our future. I remember his blood on my hands. The betrayal on his face.

I remember Zach.

I lift myself from his side. Gather my clothes. Hope against hope he'll stay asleep.

It was the alcohol, I tell myself. Just sex. There's nothing here.

Nothing.

I am still running.