A/N: my thanks to all my wonderful reviewers. I'm glad you're enjoying this, your feedback is a great motivation. This is the 2nd last chapter of this act of Contraventions; chapters 1-6 were Act One, and chapter 12, which I should have up within a week, will conclude Act Two. The story will continue in Act Three, but not until the new year. Readers need not worry, though; each act is self-contained so there won't be any longstanding cliffhangers over the holiday period.
I must also give my profound thanks to the lovely Claira, who is starslikedust on LiveJournal, and an amazing writer of BSG and L/K fic, for her assistance and inspiration. Large chunks of the second section, in Kara's voice, are entirely due to her.
Disclaimers: not mine, of course. I do this entirely for love (of feedback, and pilots).
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Lee reached over in the dimness, moved his hand the few inches intervening and found her hip; neither of them had moved since she slipped - the freshly showered sweet-soap fragrance of her skin already tinged with new sweat - sideways off his body. He wasn't sure he could find the coherency to do more, despite the temptation; right now, still trying to get his breath back, he thought it was even beyond him to actually get into the bed, rather than sprawl across it the way they were.
He could turn his head though, and did: she was face-down, her feet across one side of the bed, one arm dangling on the other, hair a swaying curtain on her cheek and curled dark and damp against the skin of her neck. He thought about grabbing one of the pillows from his other side and tucking it underneath her cheek, but... moving, and all that. "Gods," she muttered into the blankets. "Maybe it's a good thing you're posted off-planet?"
Lee found air enough to chuckle with. "Is that an admission of defeat, lieutenant?"
Her chin snapped up, and she looked at him with an expression just short of challenge. "I'll be on deck again before you will, sir." A pointed look at his groin and a half raised eyebrow, and Lee rather thought he'd be at flight status much more quickly than she anticipated. Then she laughed, and he couldn't help but share in it. "But considering we're both supposed to be on deck, for actual flight, in..." Kara squinted at the glowing dial of an alarm clock, "seven and a half hours..."
The pilot in him groaned. "Frak. It's past oh-two-hundred?" Turning to look for himself seemed like a completely unnecessary effort, under the circumstances, but he hauled himself up on an elbow to do so and then ran a hand along her arm. "You'll hate me if you sleep like that, Kara. Come on."
"Might hate you anyway," she muttered, her tone more tired than serious, but they managed to right themselves in the bed, settled back against the flat pillows they were both well used to, the sheet the only thing either of them could bear touching bare skin... except skin. "I'm gonna be limping to the raptor at this rate."
Lee twisted onto his chest, wrapped an arm around her ribs and closed his eyes. "At least you won't be cramped into a Viper like I will."
"I could deal with that, though."
"I'll bet." He was comfortably sleepy, and he knew she was tired, too, but the body under his arm was ... tense. Not hugely so, but given the workout they'd given each other, he couldn't quite wrap his head around a reason. His own limbs felt pleasantly slack and the block of tension he'd had building at the back of his neck - the one that had begun when he was told he'd have to go to Galactica - was gone, and not even thinking about his old man was going to bring it back tonight. But Kara was moving a little, restlessly, and that made Lee's eyes click open.
"Did..." he started, paused when she started at the sound, began again. "Do you want me to take the couch?"
"No!" Kara shifted, lifted a hand to her face and then turned to look at his. "No. Lee... I don't do this, that's all. I don't want you to leave, but I'm not used to it, you know? I'll be fine. Go to sleep."
"When you do," he told her, tightened the arm he had around her slightly. "I don't blame you. None of this has gone ... well, I didn't plan for -"
"Yeah."
Her skin was very pale in the moonlight and her eyes very dark, and tired. "Talk to me, then," he suggested softly. "Back in the sims, you said something about tests when I said that the console had faster responses than a real bird. What did you mean?"
Kara's mouth turned up at the uppermost corner. "Tests show that Mark VII vipers and the sims console have reaction speeds within a milisecond of each other. Too small to notice, even to the best of pilots. The sim might have felt faster, but actually, you were slower."
He instinctively rejected having his reflexes questioned. "I was not!"
She laughed, softly. "It's not a physical thing, flyboy. Relax. But think about what it's like to do the real thing. Think about the lead in, the preparation, the moment when sealing yourself into that cockpit hits you low in the belly and adrenaline starts pumping. You know how that feels."
It was true, he did. Everything from twenty-five minutes before flight contributed to that instant of realisation: getting into the flight suit, the necessary evils of catheters and the welcome friction of the thermal inner layer against space-vulnerable skin. Having your crew spec or assistant LSO check your connections over, check the seals on your boots and gloves. Inspecting your helmet, clearance on the o-vents and the rebreather intake, checking the collar seal. And then the walk, the one that was always a mix of elation and a frisson of fear, no matter how much you loved flying, not matter how many times you'd made that walk before: across the hangar deck, up the ladder, and into the bird. The punch-thrust of launch, and then space.
He felt himself nodding, slowly. "Truth is," Kara went on, "we can make a sim as realistic as anything for actual flight. They're working on direct interface now, where you get an input implant that can override your senses: two steps way past insane, in my opinion, but you know the boys in R&D. But the one thing we can't duplicate is how it feels to make that choice, to put yourself in that situation. No sim console in the universe can fool you that you're climbing into a real bird when you're not."
"So I got in the sim and the ship felt faster because I wasn't in the same headspace?"
She nodded, hair brushing the pillow. "That's what the shrinks say. And you're a pilot. You know how to assess your own reflexes."
"I knew it wasn't real, so there wasn't the same... sharpness. You're right."
Lee pondered that while he looked at her, the way her body was curving into the pillows and mattress, and felt an uncomfortable tightness in his throat. He realised, then, why his first time with her, and this second, painfully wonderful night, felt so different. The first time wasn't supposed to be real. He'd gone looking for anyone, and it so happened that he found her. But this night, this time he'd gone looking for Kara. The thought of what that might mean sent a thrill of something enormous through him; realization of what he actually wanted out of this... thing, where exactly it might take him... and how that would affect everything else he wanted to do. The tension between two possible futures suddenly had him in its grip, claws in and tugging.
Kara, a tiny crease between her brows, stared at him and he realised that her sleepiness had fallen away. "Lee?"
And so had his. "Just thinking," he hedged.
Her face, cheekbones highlighted, eyes in shadow, smoothed into something masklike. "About the sims?"
"Kind of," he answered. It was true, as far as that went.
Her face went even more unreadable. "We can make sims that will help good pilots become better ones," she offered, her voice low and scratchy. "But we can't -"
Distracted by the change in her, by the sudden war of possibilities in his head, Lee waited two seconds for her to finish her sentence before he realised she wasn't going to, and why. Potential tomorrows crystalised, fractured and scattered through him, his own voice grating with the pieces. "So you know about that, do you?" He needed to move, tired or not; he rolled, sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her and the sudden, unwelcome reminder. "You know about Zak."
She exhaled, the sound pained. "Yeah, I knew about it. He was almost one of my nuggets - surname's an A, you wind up in Blue squadron for basic flight. But I was in hack the week that Blue mustered in, and they assigned Strut Carruthers, instead of me. I took Green."
"It's not the instructor's fault." His tones were clipped. "He shouldn't have been there."
"Maybe not," Kara agreed. "But it's hard to tell, in Basic - at least, it's hard to tell before we get them into daily sims, pound the ego out of them. And with some people, it's easy to mistake." He felt her weight shift as she stood up; the moon was sinking, and the light that had streamed into the window was shifting, casting up silhouettes, turning her into a conglomeration of shadow and glow when she moved over to stand by the glass. "Some of them have everything you want a pilot to have, you know? The desire, the drive, the knowledge. Your brother did. I subbed for a couple of his theoretical classes, and he could have frakkin' taught that class. But you put him in the sim, and -"
"And he couldn't do it. I know. I've read the files." Lee looked up at her, her face darkened but her body outlined in a halo: female shape made streamlined by light and hard usage. Beautiful. "But everything he was good at, he learned. You can train your mind. But you can't train your body to do things the right way and do it every time, if that's just not the way yours works."
"Yeah."
It grated, still. Lee had had to cram that theory stuff, still had to, at times. Avionics and physics were not his forte, though practise and dedication had given him a good understanding. Science he had learned to love, but he'd never surpass those R&D fellows who could design a way to completely fool your brain. On the other hand, he was a good soldier - if the term wasn't one he liked to have applied - with a mind that understood tactics and methods, with a grasp of logistics and organization that was intuitive. And he'd had the one thing his brother hadn't: the synchronicity of body and mind, thought to action to motion without pause, that made a good pilot a great one. And it was a gift he'd never learned to value until the day he'd been allowed to fly a real Viper.
That was the one stumbling-block in his life's ambition. Though he had everything planned, right down to drafts of his letter of resignation from the Colonial Fleet, he had always stumbled over the idea of never flying Vipers again. He could hear his own words as he tossed his captain's bars on his father's desk, could almost taste the satisfaction of throwing his achievements in the old man's face, but he had never been able to imagine resigning his wings. It was something he knew would have to happen, like death at some point in the future, distant and nebulous, and he tried not to think about that.
And the woman in front of him? another stumbling block, one now tied inorexably to the fleet and Zak and the potential for something he hadn't anticipated, a future that didn't fit with the one he had planned. He sat there, balancing Zak and his planned reckoning and the freedom of walking away against a future of flying, flying with Kara, being with Kara, and it froze him, indecision locking his limbs and anger his father, at Zak, even Kara, grinding his teeth. He didn't realise Kara'd moved until he felt the bed shift again, felt her hands slide over his shoulders from behind, felt her lips press against the nape of his neck.
"Don't think about it," she whispered, her words stirring the short, crisp hairs and sending shivers cascading down his skin, her hands following after. "We don't have time to think, Apollo."
His callsign on her lips held no double meanings. It was just who he was, with her. Oblivion beckoned; Lee turned and buried himself in it, pressing his face between her high, round breasts. "Starbuck," he breathed, and let her pull him down to the bed, let the pilot instinct take over.
The rest could wait.
---
Kara opened her eyes to the strange sensation of company in her bed, blinked reluctantly in the bright morning light which promised yet another humid Spartan day. Her limbs protested stretching, but she ignored the tug of tired thigh muscles and the dull lazy ache of the internal variety, turned her body a little to look at Lee Adama's sleeping face. Unguarded and untroubled, he looked younger, the handsome features carrying an almost angelic caste; when his eyes were opened, he looked much more like a predator, like the bird of prey he was at a viper's controls. In sleep, that dangerous slant of his eyebrows relaxed; the lines of his jaw softer as the muscles lay slack; he could look even younger smiling.
He hadn't quite been smiling when he'd fallen asleep at long last, a few hours before, but at least the sharp, predator's expression had lapsed. She'd worked hard for that moment, coaxed his anger into a more pleasant channel, then teased him, tormented him into a release that expended both temper and desire. She'd be paying for it, Kara acknowledged: there were probably bruises on bruises on hips and thighs, and between them, but it was the least she could do for having been such an idiot and referring to his brother.
Lee was still deeply asleep, his hand still wound through her hair in unconcious possession. Moving away would wake him, but as she glanced past him at the accusing display on her alarm clock, she realised that it wouldn't matter. Lack of sleep wouldn't be remedied by dozing off again if they had to sprint through their pre-flights to make launch on schedule, but an unhurried shower, coffee and a good breakfast could do a lot to lessen the impact of fatigue. Kara turned her head further, let her lips brush against the wrist which had pillowed her cheek ever since he'd rolled off her, exhausted, in the night. She arched against him, stretched her limbs - sore thighs and all - and let her movements wake him.
Lee came alert all of a sudden, his blue eyes open and instantly aware, the corner of his mouth turning up in a slight grin, but then he groaned. "Gods, you're insane. How can you possibly be awake?"
"Tired, flyboy?" she taunted, sitting up and looking down at him, the sheet held up appropriately with her free hand. "And here I thought you were inexhaustible."
"Must have me mistaken for somebody else," Lee grumbled, and sighed. "Are we late?"
"No. Two hours, Captain. If I let you go back to sleep, you'll feel ten times worse when the LSO comes to kick you out of my bunk." The thought made her wince. Kara couldn't stand Captain Mossman, who was a sanctimonious holier-than-though nightmare, who, in the squadron's considered opinion, had probably never had sex in her entire, miserable, so-rulebound-you-probably-could-bounce-cubits-on-her-bed, regulation adherent life. The idea of the long-faced LSO and her regulation two marine escort busting down Kara's door in order to roust her out, and finding Captain Adama in her bed was mildly entertaining for the woman's predictable reaction, but the offended modesty of Mossman's aftermath certainly wouldn't be.
Lee shrugged, and that made him groan; Kara realised she wasn't the only one hurting. "Wouldn't be so bad. It's not like we're breaking regs, Lieutenant."
"Not yet, we're not. But if we stay in bed, we will be," she promised, and he grinned again. "Come on, sir; go get a hot shower. I'll grab you a fresh towel."
He mumbled what she could do with the towel, then sighed and sat up. For a moment, they looked at each other, slight awkwardness of this unfamiliar territory making Kara wish she'd had enough sense to get a little more distance between them. His eyes went dark, and suddenly, 'inexhaustible' seemed like it might not have been far off the mark as a descriptor of Lee Adama. Kara swallowed. "Hi," she whispered.
"Hi," he agreed, leaned in, let a hand come up again to twine in the hair that brushed her neck. Their faces tilted together, foreheads touching. "I'd kiss you," he said, grinning, "but I forgot to clean my teeth last night. Got... sidetracked."
Kara laughed, not entirely ungrateful for his hygiene priorities. "And it's happening again," she told him. "Go on, shower. There's a new toothbrush in the top drawer." Watching him roll away and get up, watching him stretch and move across the room, gave her ample time to ogle his muscled physique; when he glanced over a shoulder at her and caught her staring, she smiled wide, unashamed. She didn't move until she heard the squeal of reluctant plumbing, finally hauling her protesting body out of the bed to inspect the damage: yep, she had bruises, clear fingermarks on her flanks, a wine-coloured hickey at the top of an aching inner thigh, and what looked like stubble rash to go with the carpet burns from earlier in the evening. It was going to be a very long flight.
Getting moving and staying moving helped; she shrugged yesterday's tanks and a pair of shorts over her battle scars, ducked out into the growing heat of day to grab Lee's duffel from the car, then put it and a clean towel inside the bathroom door. Her refrigerator yielded up some eggs and half a dozen frozen bacon rashers, and there were three kinds of instant coffee on the shelf. By the time Lee came out of the bathroom - wearing the towel rather than his flight suit, she noted with mixed emotions - she had the bacon thawed and the frypan heating and was halfway through her first mug of Tauren Roast.
"Any more of that?" he looked at the coffee longingly, propped himself against her narrow kitchen counter.
"Depends. Did you leave me any hot water?" His look was indignant. Kara laughed. "Just made it. Help yourself."
"I will." Lee made a beeline for the coffeepot. "Your turn in the head, lieutenant."
"But -"
"I'll watch the eggs." He took her wrist, tugging her gently away from the stove, and placed a kiss in her tingling palm before shoving her gently towards the door. But when she came back, fresh tanks and a pair of shorts doing temporary duty rather than putting on the too-warm flight suit just yet, he hadn't moved. The pan was smoking and Lee was staring out the kitchen window at a squad of jogging nuggets, their young faces already shining with sweat.
"Frak," she said, shouldered him out of the way and moved the pan off the heat. "You awake?"
"Yeah." The tone of his voice was distracted. "Sorry, I was just --"
"No problem." A flush of guilt added to the warmth of the stove: his brother again? She was frakking stupid to have gone there. It hadn't been intentional, but when she'd noticed his abstraction, she'd let her stupid mouth run away with her. "How'd you like your eggs?" Lee was looking at her, now, she could tell; his itching gaze was on the nape of her neck. Silence stretched, and she turned, egg in one hand, to repeat the question. "How'd you --"
"I'm getting out in seven months," he interrupted, his eyes intent. "I want to know if you'll be here."
Her fingers closed convulsively on the eggshell, and she turned, let the broken contents run through her fingers and into the frying pan. "Scrambled," she muttered, reached for the next. Where the frak did he think she'd be? And why the hell would be be thinking about seven months from now? "Seven months?"
"My term is up then. I've got a lead in on a test job with Promethian Aerospace, here or Caprica; I can choose my post."
Kara's hands suddenly wouldn't move; the plastic eggslice in her fingers seemed to be frozen in place over the pan. She tried for flippancy, twisted her mouth into a grin. "It's always who you know."
"Kara," he shook his head, "I can't be here now. Not yet. But I'll be back, and I want you to be here when I am."
She knew he wasn't just referring to Sparta. "You couldn't be here in the last five months either, Lee."
He swallowed, nodded. "I have reasons. I know it's sudden --"
Sudden? She could laugh. "Sudden like a frakking FTL jump! Gods, Lee... I don't even frakking know you. What do you think this is? We got together and it was great, and we played by the rules. Then you say you'll call me soon, and five months and one night later, you --"
"I know, and I'm sorry. But believe me, I wanted to call you every godsdamned day. I nearly did; three days after we... after, I actually picked up the phone in that hotel room and was dialling when I got a priority blip calling me back to Orion. And every day since, it's been haunting me. I stuck your card up in my bunk, for frak's sake. But I didn't call because if I did, I wasn't going to make it to my next leave. If I spoke to you and you wanted to see me, I think I would have gone insane, because I couldn't be here."
Oh.
Kara stared unseeing at the pan in front of her, dizzy with the onslaught of desire and fear and shock; her hands moving mechanically, independent of her mind. Finally she made her mouth work. "I have plenty of leave time," she said, suddenly glad she'd been so recalcitrant about taking it in times past. "Plenty of time to--"
"You can't take leave to a battlestar. And I don't have any time, Kara, I need to keep my mind on the job. But that doesn't mean I am going to walk away from this."
"And what exactly is this?" Her tone was accusing.
"I don't think you need me to tell you that." Lee's voice was low and rough, and he took the spatula out of her grip, forced her to turn and look at him. "What this is, is something I've never had before. Maybe we don't know each other so well yet, but I know when something just works. I know potential when I see it, and so do you, and we do not want to waste it."
She yanked at his grip, but he didn't let go. "How do you know what I want?" It was meant to be a snarl, but between the way her heart was battering at her ribs, a caged bird in panic, and her struggle to free her hands, it came out sounding more like a sob. She struggled harder.
Lee's face was full of confusion and tension; he shook his head, shook her slightly until their gazes clashed. "One question, Kara, and I'll let go." He waited, and when she nodded, his grip loosened but didn't break. "Do you want to see me again?"
The furious rejection her pride demanded died in her throat, choking her, when she saw the desperation in his eyes. Again, movement without volition: she nodded, her chin jerking, her eyes dropping so she wouldn't have to see his triumph.
Her wrists were freed, but only because his hands had come up to gently frame her throat, thumbs brushing the line of her jaw, fingers resting on racing pulse-points. Lee leaned in slowly, kissed her, mouth incongrously frantic: no triumph, just pure relief. She grabbed on and clung to his body, bare skin under her hands, tasting coffee and toothpaste. When he pulled back, he wasn't smiling, but his eyes were dark and deep. "Then you will."
They stood there, trembling slightly against each other, and then he looked over at the stove. "You burned the eggs."
Kara pulled herself together, went to salvage breakfast. "Frak. It's your fault, you know." She didn't really want to let this, whatever this was that he just made happen, slide, but it was easier than trying to discuss it.
Lee grinned uncomfortably. "Maybe you're just a lousy cook."
"And you are clearly so much better?" At least the banter felt familiar.
"Hey, everyone has a skill."
Kara shook her head, scraped the unburnt eggs onto a plate and the remnant into the trash to make room for the bacon. Lee put his arms around her waist, leaned his chin on her shoulder, and between the feel of his body against her back and the sound of his breathing in her ear, she couldn't concentrate enough to think about anything else. He was an effective distraction and he kept it up while they ate, twining his fingers through her free hand, twining their calves under the kitchen table. It was a slow, titillating meal, and when their time was almost up, Lee tugged her out of her chair, wrapped his arms around her.
"I'll miss you," he told her quietly, and then he kissed her again. Then he disappeared into the bedroom to dress, and when he came back, he was a pilot. Kara resolutely pushed everything else aside, pushed her protesting limbs into her flight suit, and went to join him in his preparations to fly.
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