Title: she ain’t the gentle kind
remix author:
olaf47Summary: Lee doesn’t know if it’s a memory or a dream.
Characters: Kara, Lee
Pairings: Kara/Lee, mention of Kara/Zak
Rating: Soft R
Warnings: Mentions of spoilers through Unfinished Business
Beta Thanks: Thank you to
shah_of_blah for her time and help.
Title, Author and URL of original story: “I’ll Fly Away (Like A Pigeon)”,
lotus79, found
hereAuthor’s Note: Title from Jackie Greene’s “Judgment Day”: Now that girl of mine, she ain’t the gentle kind/All she do is fuss, cuss and moan
Lee's boots are always shined, uniform never wrinkled.
But Kara knows he can't resist joining her side in a bar fight.
When they were at the academy, he used to slip away before the MPs broke up fights and hauled people to hack. Everyone knew not to rat him out; Starbuck punched harder for her friends than she did for herself.
--
Sometimes it's about honor, but usually someone just says something that pisses her off, and she throws the first punch. No matter what starts it, Lee's always swinging before it ends.
And he’s always the one to sign her out of the brig. Half the time his lecture is serious, eyes wide and sad, mouth stretched thin. The other half those eyes are twinkling, that mouth doing a poor job hiding a smirk.
--
One night on Galactica, he doesn’t get away in time, gets locked in the cell next to her instead.
He shakes his head. "Are you ever going to learn to control yourself?"
"I thought I had some great control of my left jab there, sir," she grins.
He rolls his eyes. Apparently this is one of the serious lectures.
--
She wants to remind him of the last time they were in hack together. She can only assume he doesn’t remember; he’d have to cede some of that moral high ground if he did.
--
His last night at the Academy, he let her take him out to celebrate. As long as she’d known him she had joked about the stick up his ass, and he was determined to prove her wrong. No more finals, nothing to do but walk at graduation the next day, and that wasn’t until the afternoon-he could sleep off the hangover all morning. What was the worst that could happen?
The booze made him lose track of time and narrowed his range of vision to nothing but her, the curve of her lips and the swell of her breasts. But then there was another cadet, a foot taller than him at least, saying something to Kara, and suddenly, it was a brawl.
Lee could only assume the guy hit on her, and that made his blood boil for reasons he was too drunk to think about. Instead, he started swinging.
The other cadet had height on him, but Lee had been in enough fights with Kara (sometimes on her side, sometimes not) to know how to throw a punch. He was pretty sure he broke the guy’s nose before someone pulled him off.
When he realized he was about to get hauled to the brig for the first time, all he could think about was how his father would hear about it the next day at graduation.
Oh, he was going to kill Starbuck.
But the MPs made sure he kept his fists to himself as they headed to the brig, and anyway, his knuckles hurt.
When she was locked in the cell across from him, he still wanted to add his mark to her slowly bruising face. He fell asleep without talking to her, without looking at her and that smirking grin and a contraband cigar he did not want to know how she had smuggled in.
--
That much Lee’s sure of. After that, not so much. He can’t figure out if it’s a memory or a dream.
--
A hand over his mouth. A giggle. The sudden weight of her body and taste of her tongue.
Then it’s all out of order: the way she breathes his name when she comes, her tight heat, nipping at her breast in retaliation for something he can’t remember, how wet she is when his fingers dip into her.
--
That’s how the dreams usually go. He wonders if it’s all just a chronic fantasy, if maybe he dreamt it all that night and keeps dreaming it now.
She had her jacket on that next morning and wore her dress greys all day, so he never got the chance to see if he’d marked her. (Though he saw the cadet who started the whole thing, and Lee’d certainly marked him.)
Kara hugged him hard goodbye and wouldn’t quite look at him. His heart ached.
--
She wrote him letters at War College, snarky updates about Major Dickhead and the first years. When Zak became a recurring theme (“a bit more than a notch in the bedpost”), he forgot about the night for his little brother’s sake, and tried to ignore the fact that she still signed the letters, “Yours.”
--
And now he’s in hack with her again. The number of fights she’s gotten him in, he’s almost proud that this is only the second time he got caught.
But all he can actually think about is the words of the religion he doesn’t believe in.
All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.
He was drinking with Starbuck, a guy hit on her and she swung at him; when Lee’s fist connected with the guy’s nose a few seconds later, there was a gratifying amount of blood; and now she’s in a cell across from him, eyes dancing, smuggled stogie caught in her grin. It is all a little too familiar.
He shakes his head. It was just a dream. This is just déjà vu from a recurring fantasy. She’s not going to slink into his cell when he’s asleep and climb into his lap.
He grits his teeth, half-hard, and starts doing push-ups. She just laughs.
--
The next morning his head hurts and his biceps ache, but he has no new half-memories, and he’s fairly certain that’s a good thing.
--
Lee’s never really sure what’s real with Kara and what’s not. She’s all innuendo and a smirk, teasing flirtation that doesn’t always seem so innocent. But he’s lost enough hands of triad to know she can bluff.
--
He always thought they’d get their someday, maybe even a happily ever after. There are times he still thinks it’s possible-when he catches her looking at him and it makes her smile gently, cheeks twinged red. Times when he thinks maybe it’s real.
It feels real, the push-pull of their relationship, the gravity of her smile. Lee can never resist a happy Kara. His heart swells when he makes her laugh and he thinks, maybe.
--
Even with Gaius Baltar and Sam Anders and whatever the hell happened to her on Caprica, he thinks, maybe.
He might remember it or he might just be imagining it, but he knows how her skin feels under his, and it’s enough to keep him hopeful.
--
On New Caprica, he knows her. He knows her better than Sam does, drunk under the table. And he knows her body, the curves and swells, the places that make her gasp.
It makes him realize that night was real.
Everything was real.
He’d lived for her from the moment he met her, but he doesn’t realize it until she yells to the world that she loves him. Maybe she’s been living for him too.
--
She sneaks away the next morning with futile hopes that he’ll forget this time, too.
--
When he wakes up alone, he still thinks, someday.