Kara bounced the pyramid ball off of the metal sheet surrounding one of the goals. She couldn't believe these idiots had actually taken the time to build a regulation pyramid court when they should have been dreaming up a way to get off of this gods-forsaken planet. Another reason why they should ignore whatever advice the lead moron had to offer them.
She gripped the ball in her hand and found herself suddenly very pissed off at Lee. How could he go to sleep in the bunk they had been offered at a time like this? They needed to be working to get off this planet. Together, the two of them should be able to come up with something that would achieve their goal without getting anyone killed.
Sleep had evaded her as the idea of never returning to Galactica kept slowly creeping into her mind every time her eyes shut. She had sat up with a groan every few minutes in order to check to see if Lee was awake. It would have been nice to know she wasn't the only one scared right now. But every time she forced herself to stop tossing and turning, she could clearly hear the sounds of his slow breath as he got the sweet relief from his nagging thoughts that eluded her.
The least that bastard could have done was stayed awake long enough to play a few rounds of pyramid with her until she was too tired to stay awake. Letting out a gut-wrenching yell, she threw the pyramid ball at the goal opposite her and heard it enter with a satisfying crash.
"Nice shot."
She turned to glare as Anders walked over to her. He had such a cocky grin on his face that she found herself suddenly wishing she had the ball back in her hand just so that she could send it sailing at his head.
"I've played my share of pyramid games. I know what I'm doing."
"How does a pilot of the Colonial Fleet find time to play pyramid?"
"I haven't actually played in years. Not enough time when you're in the sky saving the world, you know?"
"Right."
"I was going to be drafted into the pros before I entered flight school. My knee got fraked up so it wasn't an option. Otherwise, you'd probably be kissing my ass seeing as how I would have been your captain. Maybe the C-Bucks would actually have been good then."
"Starbuck of the C-Bucks? I don't think so," Anders said pulling the ball out of the goal and tossing it around in the air a few times. "You might have been good once, but I'm sure that you lost the skill. As you said, you haven't played in years. Anyone can make an unopposed shot at the goal, little girl."
"Give me the ball," she hissed holding out her hand. She was surprised when he tossed it to her immediately.
"If you can score a goal on me, I'll admit I was wrong. But only if you score a goal."
"Get ready. Because I could score at least half a dozen goals on you without even trying. Like I said, the C-Bucks aren't that good."
Kara set herself down low as she prepared to make the first pass at the goal. The adrenaline had started pumping through her veins, and she knew that finally she might get some relief.
The next fifteen minutes was the most fun Kara had had in a long time. Probably since that night on Cloud Nine and the events that followed. But that hadn't quite satisfied the physical longing that pyramid did. She always felt so damn repressed when she spent time with Lee. When it came down to it, being with Lee was as exhausting as playing pyramid.
Playing with Anders was actually semi-challenging, too. She had been right to think that he would be good but not that good. The man was the Captain of a pyramid team that hadn't won the championship in over five years. Sure, he scored a few goals on her, but she scored twice as many on him.
She would have kept going, too, if the game hadn't shifted into a territory she wasn't sure she wanted to go. Ander's tackles started becoming more physical, and his hands were starting to rest on her thighs as she squared herself to spin and take her shot. His touch lingered on her body even when they were taking a few rare seconds apart to breathe. Not to mention, he had started sending these sexy little smirks and grunts her way as the game got serious.
As her last shot sang through the air and hit its targets, she realized why she found his method of playing so strange yet so familiar. It was like foreplay. The touching. The teasing. The taunting.
Anders picked up on the sly grin she knew must have run across her face at the thought. "Enjoying this?"
"I just realized that your Pyramid playing reminded me of my friend inside." Anders raised his eyebrows to indicate he was intrigued so she continued. "He flies the exact same way you play pyramid."
"Like a god?"
She had to hold in her laugh at his words. The fact that he would be cocky enough to compare himself to a god was ridiculous. The fact that he had somehow picked up that she was talking about Apollo and not Helo was absurd. "Not exactly."
"Then how?"
She thought it over and decided she really didn't want to have to explain the specifics of how she referred to flying with Lee as her wingman. The words 'foreplay of the sky' weren't something that rolled off her tongue easily.
"I'm done," she said, walking off the pyramid court.
Anders reached down to pick up a towel off of the ground and fling it her way. "What brings you out here in the first place? I would have thought you'd be in bed with your fellow pilots by now, Starbuck."
Kara paused in wiping the sweat off her face to raise her eyebrows at him in surprise. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Oh nothing," Anders said, innocently smiling at her. "I just thought that you obviously must be a little tense if you're not already sleeping in the quarters we gave you. Figured you might have asked one of your friends to help relieve that tension. And I'm not talking about on the pyramid court."
She gave him a glare before chucking the towel on the ground and setting off down the hall.
"Scratched a nerve?" he asked as he ran after her. "I didn't realize that was a sore subject."
"You don't know me well enough to know I'm exhibiting a massive amount of self-restraint in not laying you out on your ass right now."
"Tough words. I doubt you could land a punch though." Just as he had expected, Kara immediately lashed out with a right hook. He grabbed her arm and, using her own momentum, spun her so that her back slammed in against the wall. He pinned her hands to the walls and grinned. "Nice try."
"Let go of my hands," she hissed. Her breath was becoming slightly ragged. She desperately tried to blame it on the fact that he had taken her by surprise and not that fact that his leg was shifting itself firmly between her own two legs.
"Or you'll what?"
"Or I'll forget how useful my friends think you might be."
"You don't think I'm useful?"
"No."
Anders smirked and leaned in to whisper in her ear, "Not even to help you relieve that tension?"
Kara stiffened as she realized what he was offering. That had been what this whole damn thing was all about. He had challenged her to get her all riled up so then he could try to maneuver her into sleeping with him.
She knew it would be quite easy to just give in and let herself have a little fling while they were getting their downtime. But there was a lot riding on her right now and she couldn't be distracted. "You're not my type, pyramid boy."
"Really?" he said as he pulled her hands over her head. He gripped both wrists in one hand as he used the other to trace where her dogtags were lying on her chest. "Because I don't think you have a type, Starbuck."
She bit back a moan as his hands trailed their way down her stomach and paused at the waistline of her pants. It had been a long time since she had some release. And she wasn't getting it from the passed out pilot in her room, that's for sure.
"And I think you're the kind of girl that thrives on doing the things she knows she shouldn't." She arched an eyebrow at him which he took as an invitation to carry on. "Don't try to pretend like you don't want this, either. You're just dying to let a man push your buttons."
She still didn't give him an answer, but she didn't struggle as he undid the button on her combat pants and slid his hand in under the waistband. His fingers trailed the edge of her underwear before he pushed himself low enough to cup her heat. He wasn't surprised to feel her already moist. "See? Your body can't lie."
He was right. Kara's body was at war with her mind. She knew that this was not what she should be doing, but she couldn't deny that it didn't feel as wrong as she thought it would. As Anders gave up waiting for her to answer him back and simply slid a finger deep inside of her, she tried her best to forget all the reasons why she shouldn't be doing this. Feeling his touch turn to teasing as she continued to bit her lip, the image of Lee kept popping into her head. She couldn't push it away so she simply shut her eyes and tried to think of nothing but what this pyramid player's hands were doing as his efforts increased feverously. Lee's face faded away, but she couldn't rid her mind of the idea that this could easily be his hands causing her so much pleasure.
Since Kara's eyes were shut and Anders was firmly focused on watching her face as she tried to hold back, neither noticed the figure standing at the end of the hall, watching them.
Lee stood frozen in disbelief. He had woken up and immediately become concerned that Kara was not sleeping in the bed beside him. She had been agitated and antsy before he had fallen asleep, but he hadn't thought it was that bad. Suddenly worried, he had stepped outside the room without bothering to throw on the rest of his clothes and started searching.
He had found her playing pyramid with that Anders guy and for some reason, he hung back, unwilling to interrupt. She looked happy out there on the court. It took him a few seconds to put together why it seemed so familiar. She had the same grin on her face that she wore when he was flying with her. The idea that she could be like that with another man besides him hurt him in ways he didn't even begin to understand. He was about to turn and go back to the room they had been given when Kara glared at Anders and stalked away.
Again, a sort of sympathy arouse in Lee for the poor fool who was on the receiving end of one of Kara's glares. He set off to try to keep Anders from following her and getting himself hurt in some irreparable way. Because if he wasn't careful, Kara would chew him up and spit him out.
By the time Lee caught up with them, Anders had Kara pinned to the wall and she didn't look like she was struggling. He watched in horror as she let this stranger unbutton her pants and sink his hand deep inside. All he needed to see was the look on her face to know what Anders was doing down there.
Lee tried to tear his eyes away from the emotional train wreck that was in front of him, but he found he couldn't. This was like a punishment from the gods, forcing him to watch this. He felt like he had deserved it. It could have been him, driving Kara to madness with his hands, if only he had taken the time to let her know that's what he wanted more than anything else in the world. He wanted to be the one with his fingers buried deep inside her, making her moan.
With a start, he realized that the moaning wasn't solely in his mind. She had begun to do it in real life. He watched in horror as she started to buck against Ander's hand. She was now biting her lip almost to the point of drawing blood.
Lee turned to leave her to what she so obviously wanted when he heard her moans suddenly take form of a word. His eyes widened as his feet stumbled slightly. He wouldn't have believed his own ears if she hadn't done it immediately again, only this time a little louder. He could hear the dam breaking inside of her as the other man brought her to the edge and let her fall over.
He knew that witnessing her being so intimate with another man should be hurting him in so many unexplained ways. But in her own way, Kara had explained to him everything that she was feeling. With one small moan of a word so familiar to him, she had told him that he still had a chance.
Smiling, Lee shook his head as he made his way back to bed. He must be in love if he could see the positive in what just happened.
Meanwhile, Kara was hastily buttoning up her own pants as Anders leaned against the wall and stared at her. "What?" she hissed after a moment.
"So who's this Lee guy?" Anders asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, when you came, you moaned his name. Repeatedly. And with increasing enthusiasm. I was just wondering who he was."
Her hands froze in the middle of fixing her shirt as she suddenly realized what she had done. Somewhere in the middle of what Anders had been doing, reality and fiction had merged. She had seen Lee's face and imagined his hands on her.
"Come on. I think we're close enough now that you can tell me," Anders goaded her.
Kara didn't hit him was because she knew how much his ego must be hurting at having her moan another man's name. That was the only reason why she just sent him a glare and walked off in another direction. He didn't follow her. She didn't think, he would.
Decidedly exhausted after all that had gone on in the past hour, Kara made her way to the room the resistance fighters had given her and Lee. She pushed the door open to see Lee, lying wide awake on the bed.
"Hi," he said with a smile as she shut the door behind her.
Kara's eyes caught on where the Arrow had been carelessly flung on the dresser before looking over at where he lay on the bed. "Couldn't sleep?"
"You left me without saying you were going. It kind of threw off the whole idea of relaxing and not having to worry for a few hours."
"You were worried? I'm touched, Lee."
He rolled his eyes and threw back the covers on the other side of the bed. "Get in. I know you must be tired."
She gave him a funny look. Considering she probably looked rather jittery at the moment, she had no idea how Lee could realize that she was also completely exhausted in every sense of the word. She ignored the urge to ask him how he knew and instead settled on a safer topic. "You know, with all the room in this abandoned school, you think they could have given me a separate room from you like Helo got."
"Maybe that Anders guy thought we were lovers," Apollo said, shutting his eyes and turning to face away from her.
"And what would have given him that idea?"
"I don't know. Maybe all the unresolved sexual tension we radiate."
"Don't be an ass," she said, finally slipping into bed beside him.
He turned over to face her without saying a word. She stared at him silently for a moment before the fatigue began to set in and her eyes started to droop. Shaking her head quickly, she willed them to open back up. She got the inclination that there was something Lee wanted to say to her.
"Go to sleep, Kara. There's nothing to be worried about."
"Isn't there?"
He smiled and pulled her shoulder down so that her head rested against his chest. "Not from me. There's nothing to worry about from me."
She yawned softly before accepting what he said and nodding off to sleep.
Lee continued to stare up at the ceiling and marveled in the idea that once again there was another man out there who wanted to sleep with this woman in his arms. But once again she had ended up in his bed instead.
This was starting to be a pattern.
"Maybe someday I'll get the chance to be both of those men." He let himself drift to sleep with the idea that one day she might end up in his bed because she wanted to be there and not because she wanted to hide from her mistakes.
