Six Swans (2/3): A Frakked-Up Fairy Tale
Title: Six Swans (2/3)
Author: innibis
Rating: R
Word Count: 6,857
Pairing: Kara/Lee, Karl/Sharon
Genre: Completely AU
Disclaimer: I am not RDM. Nor am I a brother of the Grimms.
A/N: For my beta, workerbee73, a good egg.
Part I
It was two weeks before Lee felt that it was safe enough to go back to the beach without arousing suspicion. He had walked into a firestorm of thinly veiled accusations, but in the end there was no proof of his involvement in the disappearance of the Cylon prisoner. Still, Lee bided his time. He collected blankets and pillows and clothes and paint and thread and anything he could think of that could be easily transported on Viper. He moved into Karl's estate, ostensibly to provide a royal presence near a lightly guarded border, but mainly to keep out of Laura's line of sight and be as close as possible to his cousin in case of an emergency. Most importantly, he ensured that his court allies were in place and ready to pass him information on the daily council meetings he would no longer be attending.
Slinging his bags onto Viper's back and riding out of Karl's stables toward the coast, Lee felt the trepidation rising in him. He had been so busy trying to get everything in order so that he could get back that he had hardly thought about what he'd find when he got there. He knew that all three of the people he had left behind were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but it didn’t stop him from worrying about them. About Karl and Sharon's loss and how they were surviving in a cave by the sea. And about Sharon's silent sister with her wicked passata-sotto, guarded eyes and disarming smile.
He dismounted when he reached the rocks at the border and took of his boots and wiggled his toes in the sand. Lee sighed and tipped his head back to feel the sun on his face and led Viper down toward the water. He was startled by the sound of pounding feet and had just enough time to pull the sword from his back to meet Kara's wild swing. He laughed loudly, delighted to see her, and slid the blades so that they were pressed together vertically between them, bodies close.
"This seems familiar," he said with a smile, his awareness narrowed to the beautiful woman in front of him.
The grin on her face widened at his focused gaze and she stepped back to give his weapon a playful tap with hers before dropping it to the ground and holding both hands out to Viper. He sniffed her, soft black nose snuffling at her palms. Kara looked enchanted, leaning in to rest her cheek on the horse's and Lee found himself a little enchanted by the picture they made. She was something alright. Lee resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the blonde strands of hair caught in Viper's sleek, black fur. Instead, he slid his hand along his horse's neck and reached for his full saddle bags. "Is my cousin around here anywhere? I come bearing gifts." He showed a paint brush to Kara. "I couldn’t get any canvases this time, but maybe you can spruce up your cave." Kara smiled at him as she ran her hands up and down Viper's neck the big animal practically purring at the attention.
"Oh God," Sharon's voice floated down to him. "You brought my sister a horse. You'll never see him again."
Lee walked around Viper. "Over my dead body," he said and pulled his friend into a hug.
"She just swung a sword at you. Again. I think that can be arranged," Sharon laughed.
"I thought that meant she liked me," Lee smirked as he released Sharon. He slid his hands down her arms and grasped her fingers. "How are you doing?" he asked quietly.
Sharon squeezed his hands. "I'm okay."
He nodded and then found himself gasping for air as tree trunk arms encircled him from behind. "Where the frak have you been?" Karl demanded, jiggling Lee up and down a little. There was real worry in his voice so even as Lee squeaked in protest he patted his cousin's arms. It was nice to have someone who worried about him, even if he showed it by trying to squeeze the life out of him. Karl spun Lee around and let him go. "Gods, Lee! There was no way to know if anything had happened to you."
"Everything's fine," Lee said, but his straightforward pleasure of a few moments ago was marred as the reality of the situation closed in around him. "I can't stay, but I brought you some things."
"Can't stay?"
"I can't draw attention to you through my absence-"
"Frak that!" Karl swore. "You'll at least stay for dinner before you ride back."
"Fine," Lee held up his hands in capitulation, "That way I can let you know what's going on back home and you can tell me how living with the in-laws is." He felt a sharp flick to the back of his neck and turned to see Kara with his bags over her shoulders. He reached out to take one from her, but she ignored him and started walking, she jerked her head toward the cave and Lee found his eyes glued to her backside as he followed her.
"Speaking of my in-law. . ."
"Shut up, Karl."
* * *
Lee sat in silence in the soft sand, waiting for Kara. He knew she wouldn’t spend the night in Karl and Sharon's more comfortable surroundings and knew of nowhere else she would be so late at night. It had taken a few months and several visits with supplies from Lee, and all of their hard labor, but Sharon and Karl finally had their small cottage. It was built further inland, closer to the river.
It had been hours before he had been able to slip out of the stables tonight. He was being followed more and more closely and he was desperately worried that his self-indulgence in seeing his cousin-seeing her-as often as he did was going to cost them all.
He closed his eyes and let the chill of the breeze wash over him as he breathed in the sharp salt air. It was the only place left for him, this beach. The part of Lee that had laughed with Zak had been shriveling up to nothing but duty and honor and cold, empty platitudes until he had met her on this shore and had learned how to laugh again. Not the ironic snorts at his own idiocy or the dutiful chuckles at court dinners, but head back, mouth wide, expression of sheer joy kind of laughter. It was a gift he hadn’t even known he wanted, a comfort he had professed not needing, but it was there, given to him by the mere presence of the quiet Cylon royal.
Gods, but she was something. Something warm and sad and mysterious and familiar all in the same breath, and he wanted her instinctively. No thought involved, no second guessing that particular fact. Lee knew damn well that it was a beyond insane, not to mention doomed-this little fantasy of his, to live in a cave by the sea with the blonde woman who had somehow twisted him around her finger in these past months without saying a word. He had to stop coming to her, stop leading the danger to her doorstep. He had to let Kara and Karl and Sharon live without more threat than they already faced.
He sat in the dark, gathering the courage to leave. To not come back. To keep them safe.
* * *
Kara made her way down the path from her sister's newly built cottage to her cave. It was nice to finally have company after years of nobody, and even better to have her sister back. It kept Kara focused on family, on why she was keeping silent and not breaking down and just blurting out everything to the frakking Prince of Galactica, owner of the stubborn jaw and unhappy eyes. He wasn't fooling anyone.
No matter how Lee glossed over the particulars of his life, that resigned misery of his shone through and Kara couldn’t help but respond to it. She suspected that he didn’t share even a quarter of what was going on back in Galactica. Didn't want to even speak of it for fear that Karl, who was constantly worried about his cousin as it was, would tie him up and not let him leave.
Kara shivered in the chilly night air as she drew near her cave. The days were getting shorter and she was going to have to go hunt down more starwort for the mind numbing project of sewing shirts for birds, something that, despite D'Anna's assurances, was still not something she did well. Or quickly. She still saw them every now and then, but as time had gone by, her siblings had been forced to fly to more hospitable habitats for swans. She missed them.
Kara came to a halt when she saw Viper wandering about near the mouth of her cave. She looked around until she could barely make out whom she assumed to be Lee sitting in the sand several yards away, staring out onto the dark sea. She made her careful way toward him, pausing to give Viper a kiss. She knew he heard her coming but he didn't move, and she wondered for a moment if it was because he knew it was her or just didn’t really care who was approaching him.
She sat down next to him, bumping her shoulder into his. "Hi," Lee said, looking briefly at her. His voice was devoid of emotion. "I brought a ton of thread and needles and a big rug and put them in your cave. I like the painting on your walls. Very colorful." Kara nodded her thanks and then gestured toward the cave. She was cold, even if Lee wasn't, and wanted to get inside and start a fire.
He followed her, watching silently as she lit some of the lanterns he had brought her a month before. Kara waved him toward the pit she had dug and lined with colorful pillows, the only decently comfortable place to sit other than her bed.
"I can’t stay," he said softly. Kara stopped poking at her fire and put her hands on her hips. "I've been here awhile and need to get back-I have to leave for the capital first thing in the morning."
Kara, ignored him and turned her attention back to the fire. After stoking the embers into a nice blaze, she walked over to lounge in her pile of pillows, crooking her finger at Lee who sighed but obediently sat. "How are Karl and Sharon doing?" Kara gave a thumbs up and a grin accompanied by an eye roll. "Good," Lee said. "Do they need anything? Do you?" Kara did not like the tone of his voice nor the conversation. She shook her head slowly.
"Okay," Lee said. He paused for a long time before speaking slowly. "I want to run something by you." Kara nodded cautiously. "I think it's best if I don’t-if I don't come back here again." Kara felt her heart clench and began shaking her head. "Please-" Lee said. She threw a pillow at him. "Stop it, Kara." She threw another. He scooted closer and grasped both of her hands. "Stop! This is too dangerous. Laura has me followed all the time. Everything I do and say, everywhere I go-it’s is getting harder and harder to get away. I shouldn’t put you in danger like that."
Kara flipped her hands over, gripped Lee's and stared into his bleak eyes. No Lee to spar with on the beach or to smile at when he tried, unsuccessfully, to catch fish in the river. No Lee to just be with. She knew that Karl would go slowly crazy until he ran over the border to rescue his cousin. And she would miss him. The thought made her heart clench.
"Damn it, Kara! I thought that you of all people would understand. You who say nothing, reveal nothing, show nothing." Kara stared as Lee wrenched his hands free and scrambled angrily to his feet, watching actual emotion playing over his angular face. "You know. You know that there are things that have to be done, things that people like us can do, will do, things that others can't."
Kara surged to her feet. The helplessness filled her, made her angry and she put both hands on Lee's shoulders and glared as hard as she could. She shook him, then turned him around and pointed at her walls, swirled with color and then stabbed at his chest with her finger. It's what he needed, it's what he had brought her, a swirl of color on an empty stone wall. "I'll figure out how to keep you in paint," Lee said with irritation and Kara brought both hands up to her face and pressed hard in frustration, a silent scream.
She dropped her hands and glared before pushing him hard. He tripped over a pillow and onto his back and Kara promptly straddled him. He looked up at her and she sharply inhaled at the amazement and longing and goddamned resignation she saw in his blue eyes. There was no way to say it. No way to express her concern for him, no way to articulate the desire to just keep him in her cave forever where she could keep an eye on him and make him smile.
His hands moved up hesitantly to rest on her hips and he smiled a faltering but genuine smile. "Does that mean that you’d miss me?" He asked. Kara leaned down close, eyes searching, hands on either side of his face, and lightly head butted his forehead with hers. She pulled back and rolled off him. "I'd miss you too," he said quietly. "It doesn’t change the fact that this is a stupid risk to take."
He rose and smiled sadly. "If I were strong, I'd say good-bye and wish you a happy life." Kara stood more slowly. He was too strong, and too blind. Unwilling or unable to see what his absence would do to Karl-to her. That's why he might leave tonight and never come back. "See you around, Kara," he said, walking backwards as if to memorize her face before turning and striding out of the cave.
Kara found herself panicking a little, needing reassurance that it was truly a see you later instead of a farewell. She stepped quickly after him, taking Lee by the wrist and spinning him to face her. She put both hands on his shoulders and stared hard into his eyes. She slid her hands up his shoulders until they cupped the back of his neck and pulled lightly so that he rested his cheek against her own. For a brief, unexpected moment their eyes closed and a wave of heady weightlessness of shared burden washed over her. She felt his hands settle lightly on the sides of her face and the ocean breeze flutter her hair, and God, this man was so essential somehow.
Lee pulled away and Kara looked at him questioningly. "I'll be back," he promised. Kara nodded and touched his cheek lightly as a last attempt to fortify him.
She watched him efficiently saddle and mount Viper and disappear into the night. Kara turned her face up to the clear moon and prayed for the souls of the living and the dead, for her little lost niece, Hera, her parents and siblings, her brother-in-law and especially for the soul of Lee.
* * *
"Kara!" Lee called as he walked out onto the shore. She appeared in the mouth of her cave and waved. She looked tired, but Lee was too glad to see her to care. He was still sweating, breathing hard from his fast hike to the border, but he paid no attention to that as he jogged right up to her and pulled her into a hard hug. He felt her freeze at the unexpected embrace even as the tension melted from his body to have her so near, but then she relaxed and brought her arms around him, smoothing a hand down his spine and he felt some of his franticness ease. He pulled his head back so he could see her, drinking her in.
His visits were coming fewer and farther between because he was spending more and more time at the capital, trying to block Laura's witch hunt as unobtrusively and as often as possible. She had started imprisoning suspected Cylon collaborators based on her so-called religious visions. This morning, Lee had gotten word that two of the people loyal to him in the government had been thrown into the dungeon. He also had received confirmation from a very reliable source of a rumor he had caught wind of a couple weeks prior. Sharon and Karl's baby, Hera, was alive. Laura had fostered her out for reasons completely unknown by anyone Lee has spoken with, but she was alive and Lee was determined to find her.
Kara was frowning at him in concern. She drew a finger down his neck, causing Lee's breath to catch, and showed him his sweat with a questioning eyebrow raise. "I can’t ride Viper here anymore," Lee explained. "They're watching the stables now." Kara closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder briefly before stepping back. Lee reluctantly let her go. "We need to see Karl and Sharon. Now."
She nodded and turned on her heel to the path leading up and over the ridge of rocks toward the river and his cousin. Lee followed.
* * *
Kara held Sharon's hand very tightly. Hera. Alive. A year later. The thought was so astonishing and heart breaking at the same time. Karl and Lee were ignoring the dazed women and engaged in a shouting match, or at least Karl was shouting at Lee.
"I am going after my daughter!"
"They will arrest you in a second if they see you. I will take care of it," Lee spoke with that controlled anger, that reasonable tone that always got Kara's hackles up faster than if he had hit her.
"I don't see that it is your decision to make."
"And I don't see how you would consider risking your life when I can just-"
"Oh-You-Ugh!-" Karl was actually sputtering now, "Where the hell do you get off lecturing anybody about risking lives when you live in the shadow of your hallucinating, manipulative, psychopath of a stepmother?!"
"I don’t think that she's actually psychopathic-" Lee began.
"Don’t even start!" Karl roared. To his very great credit, in Kara's estimation, Lee shut up. "Lee," Karl said in a quieter, pleading tone of voice. "Lee, I have to do this. You get it. I know you do. If you didn't then Sharon and I would have been dead ten times over by now. There are things that you do for family that you don’t do for anyone else." Karl put his hands on Lee's shoulders and Lee grasped Karl's elbows. "She's my daughter. You don’t let me take care of you, even though I-you know I promised Zak I would. But I am going to take care of her."
Kara was shocked to see tears in Lee's eyes matching Karl's. He nodded, looking firmly at the ground and Karl pulled him into a tight, quick hug. "I don’t know much of anything," Lee said, stepping out from Karl's embrace. "Just rumors and snippets of supposed sightings. Hera has practically turned into a full-scale urban legend."
"Then we follow the clues," Sharon said, letting Kara's hand drop and standing next to her husband. Karl pulled her in front of him and locked his arms around her middle, resting his chin on her head. A wave of loneliness washed over Kara as she watched the three of them, so united in purpose and shared tragedy. She couldn’t share her secret with anyone, not even her sister who, if the world was fair, would have been able to share the burden.
Lee noticed her though. Lee always noticed. He held out a hand to her in invitation. Kara stood up and walked toward him, hesitantly reaching out, and he hauled her in close. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and Sharon grabbed her hand and, for the first time in a long, long while, Kara felt like she belonged.
* * *
He was soaked through. Cold and shaking as he scrambled and slid his way down the shore line in the dark, over rocks and severed branches. All he could think about, even when he felt something slice deeply into his left calf, was her. Kara and her don't-frak-with-me snarl and haunted eyes and wild grin. Kara who could undoubtedly take care of herself better than he could, but damned if he wasn't going to try anyhow because Karl and Sharon were still in Galactica looking for their daughter. He wasn't a knight in shining armor, simply was not decent enough for the title, but Lee would be damned if he left her to the mercy of a storm in a little cave on the sea.
He skidded around the corner and into the cave, water thigh high and swirling around him. "Kara!" he shouted. "Kara!" And there was desperation in his voice, even though she could not, would not, answer him. "Godsdamnit Kara, where are you?" A rock hit the cave wall near his head and he turned in the direction it had been thrown from. "Kara," he choked, and waded through the water to her, flinging aside some floating pillows.
She was holding a candle, shielding it from the onslaught of the splashing, rising tide. Her eyes were wide and searching and she groped around under the water.
"What are you still doing in here?" Lee asked, tugging on her arm, "The water is rising. We have to go!" She pulled some sodden fabric off her shoulder and shook it at him. "What?" Lee tried to grab it from her hand, but she wouldn’t let go. Kara shook it wildly again and then held up two fingers. "There are two more of those . . . things and you need to find them?" he ventured a guess and Kara practically sagged in relief. "Okay. You get out of here, I'll look." Kara's face took on a mulish tinge in the light of the candle. "Can't you just let me help you? For once? Let me do something for you!"
Lee hadn't realized he had been shouting until Kara's cold, pruney fingers slid over his mouth and she stepped in close. She grabbed him by the chin and held his head still while she looked straight into his eyes, the determination clear in her face. Lee clenched his jaw and nodded tightly, and she pinched his chin before handing him her candle. She crouched down in the now waist deep water and felt around, and then she was brandishing a handful of dripping material in each hand raised high over her head in triumph. "Now can we go?" Lee asked. Kara rolled her eyes at him, but she let him take her wrist and pull her back out into the storm.
* * *
Kara still could not believe that she had left those stupid swan shirts in the cave. When she had seen the tide coming in, the rain pouring down, she had grabbed as many of her things that she could carry and had scurried up to Karl and Sharon's place. When she had gotten the fire started and had settled comfortably in a chair, she had been hit with the realization that she had left her three year's labor-her entire frakking reason for being silent-back in a cave that would shortly be flooded. She had run out without a coat or even her shoes. Thankfully, God had been looking out for her and she had managed to recover the two finished shirts as well as the mostly finished one. Her starwort supply was a loss, but she would get more in the spring-she still had three years left and even as disinterested and unskilled a seamstress as she was, she was sure she could manage to finish by then.
She stumbled slightly over a rock on the steep incline, wincing at the pain in her bare feet, but Lee's hand kept her up, kept her moving in the wind and the torrent of rain. He had come out into the night, braved the storm, apparently run here without a frakking horse-and all for her. The warmth rose in her chest. He knew that Karl and Sharon were gone and he had come for her anyway. He knew that there was shelter to be had, but he had come to check. She was so, so tired of not being able to talk to him, to thank him, to just express some goddamn emotion that couldn’t be encompassed by shrugs and eye rolls. Something that was all about them, Kara and Lee, and nothing about family and duty and honor to country and frakking siblings turned into big, noisy water fowl.
They got to the top of the incline and were racing through the trees and Kara was done. She came to a complete standstill, pulling Lee to a stop with her. "What are you doing?" He shouted over the wind and the pounding of the surf, the rattle of rain on leaves, the crashing of thunder. He put his mouth right next to her ear and spoke with exasperated affection. "Kara-I don’t know if you've noticed but it's raining out here." And she turned her head and kissed him.
Lee responded instantly, opening his mouth to hers and filling his hands with her ass. She leaned against him as his tongue slid inside, before he abruptly pulled back to look at her, shock juxtaposed with want in his expression. He carefully pushed the dripping strands from her face, smoothing it back until her view was no longer obstructed, just filled with Lee and Lee's eyes and his mouth and-she leaned in again but was stopped by his hands on either side of her head.
"I can’t do this if you don’t mean it," Lee said, and Kara smiled at him, shaking her head a little at his utter cluelessness before leaning in and kissing his nose. "We shouldn’t do this anyway. Don’t you know that bright shiny futures aren’t for people like us?" She kissed his cheek, his temple, his forehead, eyes, chin, along that jaw line, until he pulled her in tight and ducked his head to bite into her shoulder. "Frak it," he muttered. "I don't care what the right thing is anymore." He backed her up against a nearby tree and positively devoured her mouth as she let her head fall back.
This was so insane. Her hair was caught in the tree trunk, the cold rain was relentless and Lee had her shirt pulled up over her breasts, licking long slow strokes over her nipples and driving her absolutely mad with his hot tongue on her chilled skin. She bit her lip hard because she could not, would not, say his name. Would not ruin three years work, no matter how good it felt to finally have Lee's mouth on her.
Her hands moved all over him, his chest, his shoulders, back and thighs until she was shaking and so was he. She reached for the front of his pants, fingers clumsy and a little numb from the cold. God, she was freezing to death and burning up all at the same time. She got her hands in and squeezed his length. "Shit! Your hand's cold," he gasped, bringing his head up to kiss her and laughing into her mouth. He tried to slide the sodden pants off her hips, but they clung so much that she pushed him away to totally strip them off herself, throwing her sibling's shirts to the ground from where they had still been wetly plastered to her shoulder.
Lee stopped breathing. She could see the air leave his body in a whoosh as he looked at her with nothing on her but a strip of shirt caught up under her arms, leaning against a tree with the water dripping down her body, streaming through her hair. She smiled at him. Only his pants were undone, but the material just clung to the angles of him. She crooked a finger at him. He surged forward, taking just enough time to pull her shirt down to protect her back from the rough tree before pushing her up off her feet and against the trunk. Her legs and arms wrapped around him and she locked her eyes with his as they remained suspended in the moment. He was beautiful. Beautiful and entirely hers because she knew his secrets, knew his pain and his temper and loved him anyway.
She made fists of her hands and pounded them three times on his shoulders. Now. Now. Now. And he slid into her with one long stroke. The sky continued to fall around her, rain muffling their gasps and his muttered endearments. The wind flung sticks and leaves and water at their bodies but it didn’t matter at all. Kara arched back, her hair snagging on bark, face to the sky as Lee moved, welcoming the rain as her body welcomed him. She let go completely, an almost painful release, crashing and wild and freezing and completely, irreversibly taken with the man surrounding her, the man she was surrounding. Lee shuddered against her and she tightened her arms and thighs. Brought her face down to watch the final edges of need and want sliding into contented peace on his face, stark with his hair slicked back.
They stared at each other before she brought her mouth to his, kissing him gently. He took a shuddering breath. "Kara," he whispered and she smiled as the storm raged around them.
* * *
In the end, he had just thrown her over his shoulder and carried her the remaining distance to Sharon and Karl's home. It was deluging and they had given up on getting her pants back on and, for the first time, he had noticed that she wasn't even wearing shoes. So he had slung her over, her fists pounding weakly at his back. He could feel her body shaking to hold in her laughter which he assumed was the reason he wasn't being beaten to a pulp. He kissed the bare, wriggling hip by his ear, gratified to feel her abrupt inhale, so he kissed it again before opening the door and stepping gratefully into the fire warmed room.
He slid her deliberately down his body, reluctant to let go for fear that she would be shortly coming to her senses. Kara grimaced at the sensation of her nearly naked body pressed to cold wet clothes, but she pressed a quick kiss to his lips before breaking free. He took the time to hang the cloth that had been hung over his other shoulder over wooden chairs; her pants and underwear and the three whatevers Kara had risked her life for. He shook them out to reveal misshapen shirts made from flowers and lots of thread. He laid them carefully on the table and frowned, contemplating them until his attention was caught by a completely nude Kara walking toward him, toweling her hair.
He stared at her lines and curves, where tan skin met cream, at muscles built from years of hard labor. She was way too good to be true, and certainly much more than he deserved. She stood before him and pulled the towel off her head, gesturing to his soaking wet clothes still uncomfortably clinging to him. When he made no move to strip, she draped the towel around her neck and began unbuttoning his shirt for him.
Lee put his hand over hers to still them, wanting her to think about what she was doing, what they were doing, but she just raised it to her lips and brushed a kiss over his knuckles, making his heart flutter, and continued on with single-minded intensity. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and he heard it land with a squelch behind him before his attention was entirely caught by her handing him the towel and reaching for his pants. "Kara." She looked at him, a faint smile on her face and her head tilted. "You don’t have to do this, I can take care of myself." His voice had been more pointed than he had intended, and her mouth was suddenly on his, rough and punishing.
She pulled back, looking defiant and angry and-hurt, he realized, and she proceeded to strip the pants off him before turning away. He followed her, putting his hands on her shoulders and pulling her back into his body so he could wrap his arms fully around her. He slid his face next to hers. "I'm just not used to being-looked after." She remained rigid against him, but she turned her head a little so that their cheeks brushed. "Please, Kara," he said, pressing kisses down the line of her shoulder, feeling her relax into him. "Don't let me ruin it. I'm really, really good at breaking things."
She deliberately stepped away from him, and he let his fingers linger on the smooth skin of her hips. She took another towel from a nearby chair and rubbed it efficiently over his body before pushing him toward the armchair in front of the fire-a triumph of Karl's foraging in the nearby Cylon village. He collapsed heavily and she climbed onto his lap, squirming until she got comfortable, with her legs dangling over the arm of the chair and arms wrapped firmly around his neck. She pressed her face into his throat and her bare breasts, still chilled, against his bare chest. Lee folded himself around her as much as possible, trying to get them both warm. Her damp hair was spread cold against his neck and chest, and he bundled the length of it up in his hands, twisting it into a single long rope and tying it in a loose knot on her head so that it was off her back and his skin. He kissed her temple. The last of the tension melted from her body and the sporadic shivers stopped altogether. She was asleep. Lee stared into the fire, listening to the storm howl around them, moving his fingers to her neck to feel Kara's pulse, heart beating in slow, measured time, trying to match his own rhythms to hers.
* * *
Kara drifted slowly awake. She was warm and held secure against Lee's chest. A faint snore made her smile. She lifted her head from his neck, moving slowly so as not to wake him. Judging from the state of the fire, she had only been a sleep for a couple of hours and, as appealing as Lee was, he and the chair were proving to be too hard to sleep on top of. When she tried to extract herself, he just held on tighter, so she kissed his slack mouth. She nipped at it, tugging on his bottom lip with her teeth until he sleepily responded, sighing happily into her. She pulled back to see his eyes, hooded and blinking and damnably blue. He smiled unreservedly at her and Kara slid her fingers over his lips to feel such an open expression.
She pulled gently out of his arms and stood up to stretch, enjoying his eyes on her even as she took in the elegant sprawl of him. She covered her mouth with her hand to fight down the laugh as a certain part of his body took a noted interest. She raised both eyebrows, and he shrugged but flushed a little, not meeting her eyes. Kara grabbed a hand and hauled him up to press against her before deliberately arching her hips into him.
"You are killing me," he groaned and she pulled him towards the bed, climbing under the blankets and drawing him in with her. Lee rolled half on top of her, propping himself up with one arm as she traced his skin with her fingers. "Are you sure I'm what you want?" he asked seriously.
Kara stilled at the uncertainty in his voice, the resignation creeping back into his expression. She brought her hands up to either side of his face and kissed him as softly as she could with their eyes open.
* * *
After he had left her drowsy-eyed and warmly bundled in the cabin with lingering kisses and promises to return soon, after he had walked into the still raging storm in the impossibly small hours of the morning to get back to the estate before dawn, the next time Lee saw Kara was a week and a half later, sewing on the crisp, sunny beach next to Sharon, who appeared to be doing much of the same. The relief at seeing his friend safe collided with the sharp pull in his body at seeing Kara.
"Good morning," Lee called out, and was gratified to see big smiles on both of their faces.
Sharon scrambled up and jogged lightly forward to throw her arms around him. "It's so good to see you," she whispered in his ear.
"Any luck?" He asked.
"Just a lot of rumors."
"Before I leave, tell me all of them," Lee said drawing back to look into her face. "We will find her, Sharon." Sharon nodded and let out a startled yelp as she was pushed out of the way by Kara who promptly kissed Lee full on the mouth, looping her fingers into the front of his pants and tugging him tight against her. "I take it that this is not a secret then?" he asked with amusement as he wrapped his arms around her.
Sharon laughed, "About time you made a move, Kara."
Lee mock glared at her. "Why do you think it was Kara who made the first move?"
"Oh, please," Sharon said in concert with Kara rolling her eyes.
"Where's Karl?"
"Feeling outnumbered?" Sharon asked. "He's back in the cabin, letting Kara and I do sisterly bonding or something like that." Lee was torn. He really did want to see his cousin, but he still had an armful of Kara and he hadn't seen her in days. Fortunately, Sharon took pity on him. "I have to go do some things around the house-we were gone for awhile. How about you two wander up for lunch in a couple of hours?"
Lee couldn’t remember if he had called out an affirmative before he kissed Kara again, but he waved the concern away as he was tackled onto the ground and surrounded by waves of blonde hair.
* * *
Some time later, Kara lay flat on her back in the sand. She had pulled her pants back on in deference to the temperature, but was enjoying the feeling of Lee tracing the lines of the tattoo on her arm too much to put her shirt back on.
"Did you lose a lot when your cave flooded?" Kara shook her head lazily. It really had been astonishing how much had still been in there. It had taken a few days to dry, but she was still pretty set. "Let me know if you need anything, okay?" She opened an eye and raised an eyebrow suggestively. "Give me a minute. Gods, woman, you’re insatiable." She grinned widely and pulled Lee down into a slow, warm kiss.
He pulled back and sat up. "We should probably get dressed and head for the cottage." Kara nodded but didn't move. His rough palm slid down the center of her body, between her breasts to rest heavily on her navel. She opened her eyes and found him staring so hard at her, like she might disappear if he stopped, and she felt the shiver start in the base of her spine until her skin erupted in goose bumps from the sheer force of the need on his face. He frowned at her chilled skin and reached for her shirt and handed it to her.
She sat up and pulled the shirt over her head and gave an exaggerated pout when he fastened his pants to make him smile, although it was really a shame to cover up that body. He grabbed hold of her hips and kissed her soundly on the side of her neck. "Let's go," he said, stooping to pick up his shirt and pulling it on as they began walking. He laced his fingers through hers and, for a moment, Kara felt decidedly normal.
Part III
Author: innibis
Rating: R
Word Count: 6,857
Pairing: Kara/Lee, Karl/Sharon
Genre: Completely AU
Disclaimer: I am not RDM. Nor am I a brother of the Grimms.
A/N: For my beta, workerbee73, a good egg.
Part I
It was two weeks before Lee felt that it was safe enough to go back to the beach without arousing suspicion. He had walked into a firestorm of thinly veiled accusations, but in the end there was no proof of his involvement in the disappearance of the Cylon prisoner. Still, Lee bided his time. He collected blankets and pillows and clothes and paint and thread and anything he could think of that could be easily transported on Viper. He moved into Karl's estate, ostensibly to provide a royal presence near a lightly guarded border, but mainly to keep out of Laura's line of sight and be as close as possible to his cousin in case of an emergency. Most importantly, he ensured that his court allies were in place and ready to pass him information on the daily council meetings he would no longer be attending.
Slinging his bags onto Viper's back and riding out of Karl's stables toward the coast, Lee felt the trepidation rising in him. He had been so busy trying to get everything in order so that he could get back that he had hardly thought about what he'd find when he got there. He knew that all three of the people he had left behind were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but it didn’t stop him from worrying about them. About Karl and Sharon's loss and how they were surviving in a cave by the sea. And about Sharon's silent sister with her wicked passata-sotto, guarded eyes and disarming smile.
He dismounted when he reached the rocks at the border and took of his boots and wiggled his toes in the sand. Lee sighed and tipped his head back to feel the sun on his face and led Viper down toward the water. He was startled by the sound of pounding feet and had just enough time to pull the sword from his back to meet Kara's wild swing. He laughed loudly, delighted to see her, and slid the blades so that they were pressed together vertically between them, bodies close.
"This seems familiar," he said with a smile, his awareness narrowed to the beautiful woman in front of him.
The grin on her face widened at his focused gaze and she stepped back to give his weapon a playful tap with hers before dropping it to the ground and holding both hands out to Viper. He sniffed her, soft black nose snuffling at her palms. Kara looked enchanted, leaning in to rest her cheek on the horse's and Lee found himself a little enchanted by the picture they made. She was something alright. Lee resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the blonde strands of hair caught in Viper's sleek, black fur. Instead, he slid his hand along his horse's neck and reached for his full saddle bags. "Is my cousin around here anywhere? I come bearing gifts." He showed a paint brush to Kara. "I couldn’t get any canvases this time, but maybe you can spruce up your cave." Kara smiled at him as she ran her hands up and down Viper's neck the big animal practically purring at the attention.
"Oh God," Sharon's voice floated down to him. "You brought my sister a horse. You'll never see him again."
Lee walked around Viper. "Over my dead body," he said and pulled his friend into a hug.
"She just swung a sword at you. Again. I think that can be arranged," Sharon laughed.
"I thought that meant she liked me," Lee smirked as he released Sharon. He slid his hands down her arms and grasped her fingers. "How are you doing?" he asked quietly.
Sharon squeezed his hands. "I'm okay."
He nodded and then found himself gasping for air as tree trunk arms encircled him from behind. "Where the frak have you been?" Karl demanded, jiggling Lee up and down a little. There was real worry in his voice so even as Lee squeaked in protest he patted his cousin's arms. It was nice to have someone who worried about him, even if he showed it by trying to squeeze the life out of him. Karl spun Lee around and let him go. "Gods, Lee! There was no way to know if anything had happened to you."
"Everything's fine," Lee said, but his straightforward pleasure of a few moments ago was marred as the reality of the situation closed in around him. "I can't stay, but I brought you some things."
"Can't stay?"
"I can't draw attention to you through my absence-"
"Frak that!" Karl swore. "You'll at least stay for dinner before you ride back."
"Fine," Lee held up his hands in capitulation, "That way I can let you know what's going on back home and you can tell me how living with the in-laws is." He felt a sharp flick to the back of his neck and turned to see Kara with his bags over her shoulders. He reached out to take one from her, but she ignored him and started walking, she jerked her head toward the cave and Lee found his eyes glued to her backside as he followed her.
"Speaking of my in-law. . ."
"Shut up, Karl."
* * *
Lee sat in silence in the soft sand, waiting for Kara. He knew she wouldn’t spend the night in Karl and Sharon's more comfortable surroundings and knew of nowhere else she would be so late at night. It had taken a few months and several visits with supplies from Lee, and all of their hard labor, but Sharon and Karl finally had their small cottage. It was built further inland, closer to the river.
It had been hours before he had been able to slip out of the stables tonight. He was being followed more and more closely and he was desperately worried that his self-indulgence in seeing his cousin-seeing her-as often as he did was going to cost them all.
He closed his eyes and let the chill of the breeze wash over him as he breathed in the sharp salt air. It was the only place left for him, this beach. The part of Lee that had laughed with Zak had been shriveling up to nothing but duty and honor and cold, empty platitudes until he had met her on this shore and had learned how to laugh again. Not the ironic snorts at his own idiocy or the dutiful chuckles at court dinners, but head back, mouth wide, expression of sheer joy kind of laughter. It was a gift he hadn’t even known he wanted, a comfort he had professed not needing, but it was there, given to him by the mere presence of the quiet Cylon royal.
Gods, but she was something. Something warm and sad and mysterious and familiar all in the same breath, and he wanted her instinctively. No thought involved, no second guessing that particular fact. Lee knew damn well that it was a beyond insane, not to mention doomed-this little fantasy of his, to live in a cave by the sea with the blonde woman who had somehow twisted him around her finger in these past months without saying a word. He had to stop coming to her, stop leading the danger to her doorstep. He had to let Kara and Karl and Sharon live without more threat than they already faced.
He sat in the dark, gathering the courage to leave. To not come back. To keep them safe.
* * *
Kara made her way down the path from her sister's newly built cottage to her cave. It was nice to finally have company after years of nobody, and even better to have her sister back. It kept Kara focused on family, on why she was keeping silent and not breaking down and just blurting out everything to the frakking Prince of Galactica, owner of the stubborn jaw and unhappy eyes. He wasn't fooling anyone.
No matter how Lee glossed over the particulars of his life, that resigned misery of his shone through and Kara couldn’t help but respond to it. She suspected that he didn’t share even a quarter of what was going on back in Galactica. Didn't want to even speak of it for fear that Karl, who was constantly worried about his cousin as it was, would tie him up and not let him leave.
Kara shivered in the chilly night air as she drew near her cave. The days were getting shorter and she was going to have to go hunt down more starwort for the mind numbing project of sewing shirts for birds, something that, despite D'Anna's assurances, was still not something she did well. Or quickly. She still saw them every now and then, but as time had gone by, her siblings had been forced to fly to more hospitable habitats for swans. She missed them.
Kara came to a halt when she saw Viper wandering about near the mouth of her cave. She looked around until she could barely make out whom she assumed to be Lee sitting in the sand several yards away, staring out onto the dark sea. She made her careful way toward him, pausing to give Viper a kiss. She knew he heard her coming but he didn't move, and she wondered for a moment if it was because he knew it was her or just didn’t really care who was approaching him.
She sat down next to him, bumping her shoulder into his. "Hi," Lee said, looking briefly at her. His voice was devoid of emotion. "I brought a ton of thread and needles and a big rug and put them in your cave. I like the painting on your walls. Very colorful." Kara nodded her thanks and then gestured toward the cave. She was cold, even if Lee wasn't, and wanted to get inside and start a fire.
He followed her, watching silently as she lit some of the lanterns he had brought her a month before. Kara waved him toward the pit she had dug and lined with colorful pillows, the only decently comfortable place to sit other than her bed.
"I can’t stay," he said softly. Kara stopped poking at her fire and put her hands on her hips. "I've been here awhile and need to get back-I have to leave for the capital first thing in the morning."
Kara, ignored him and turned her attention back to the fire. After stoking the embers into a nice blaze, she walked over to lounge in her pile of pillows, crooking her finger at Lee who sighed but obediently sat. "How are Karl and Sharon doing?" Kara gave a thumbs up and a grin accompanied by an eye roll. "Good," Lee said. "Do they need anything? Do you?" Kara did not like the tone of his voice nor the conversation. She shook her head slowly.
"Okay," Lee said. He paused for a long time before speaking slowly. "I want to run something by you." Kara nodded cautiously. "I think it's best if I don’t-if I don't come back here again." Kara felt her heart clench and began shaking her head. "Please-" Lee said. She threw a pillow at him. "Stop it, Kara." She threw another. He scooted closer and grasped both of her hands. "Stop! This is too dangerous. Laura has me followed all the time. Everything I do and say, everywhere I go-it’s is getting harder and harder to get away. I shouldn’t put you in danger like that."
Kara flipped her hands over, gripped Lee's and stared into his bleak eyes. No Lee to spar with on the beach or to smile at when he tried, unsuccessfully, to catch fish in the river. No Lee to just be with. She knew that Karl would go slowly crazy until he ran over the border to rescue his cousin. And she would miss him. The thought made her heart clench.
"Damn it, Kara! I thought that you of all people would understand. You who say nothing, reveal nothing, show nothing." Kara stared as Lee wrenched his hands free and scrambled angrily to his feet, watching actual emotion playing over his angular face. "You know. You know that there are things that have to be done, things that people like us can do, will do, things that others can't."
Kara surged to her feet. The helplessness filled her, made her angry and she put both hands on Lee's shoulders and glared as hard as she could. She shook him, then turned him around and pointed at her walls, swirled with color and then stabbed at his chest with her finger. It's what he needed, it's what he had brought her, a swirl of color on an empty stone wall. "I'll figure out how to keep you in paint," Lee said with irritation and Kara brought both hands up to her face and pressed hard in frustration, a silent scream.
She dropped her hands and glared before pushing him hard. He tripped over a pillow and onto his back and Kara promptly straddled him. He looked up at her and she sharply inhaled at the amazement and longing and goddamned resignation she saw in his blue eyes. There was no way to say it. No way to express her concern for him, no way to articulate the desire to just keep him in her cave forever where she could keep an eye on him and make him smile.
His hands moved up hesitantly to rest on her hips and he smiled a faltering but genuine smile. "Does that mean that you’d miss me?" He asked. Kara leaned down close, eyes searching, hands on either side of his face, and lightly head butted his forehead with hers. She pulled back and rolled off him. "I'd miss you too," he said quietly. "It doesn’t change the fact that this is a stupid risk to take."
He rose and smiled sadly. "If I were strong, I'd say good-bye and wish you a happy life." Kara stood more slowly. He was too strong, and too blind. Unwilling or unable to see what his absence would do to Karl-to her. That's why he might leave tonight and never come back. "See you around, Kara," he said, walking backwards as if to memorize her face before turning and striding out of the cave.
Kara found herself panicking a little, needing reassurance that it was truly a see you later instead of a farewell. She stepped quickly after him, taking Lee by the wrist and spinning him to face her. She put both hands on his shoulders and stared hard into his eyes. She slid her hands up his shoulders until they cupped the back of his neck and pulled lightly so that he rested his cheek against her own. For a brief, unexpected moment their eyes closed and a wave of heady weightlessness of shared burden washed over her. She felt his hands settle lightly on the sides of her face and the ocean breeze flutter her hair, and God, this man was so essential somehow.
Lee pulled away and Kara looked at him questioningly. "I'll be back," he promised. Kara nodded and touched his cheek lightly as a last attempt to fortify him.
She watched him efficiently saddle and mount Viper and disappear into the night. Kara turned her face up to the clear moon and prayed for the souls of the living and the dead, for her little lost niece, Hera, her parents and siblings, her brother-in-law and especially for the soul of Lee.
* * *
"Kara!" Lee called as he walked out onto the shore. She appeared in the mouth of her cave and waved. She looked tired, but Lee was too glad to see her to care. He was still sweating, breathing hard from his fast hike to the border, but he paid no attention to that as he jogged right up to her and pulled her into a hard hug. He felt her freeze at the unexpected embrace even as the tension melted from his body to have her so near, but then she relaxed and brought her arms around him, smoothing a hand down his spine and he felt some of his franticness ease. He pulled his head back so he could see her, drinking her in.
His visits were coming fewer and farther between because he was spending more and more time at the capital, trying to block Laura's witch hunt as unobtrusively and as often as possible. She had started imprisoning suspected Cylon collaborators based on her so-called religious visions. This morning, Lee had gotten word that two of the people loyal to him in the government had been thrown into the dungeon. He also had received confirmation from a very reliable source of a rumor he had caught wind of a couple weeks prior. Sharon and Karl's baby, Hera, was alive. Laura had fostered her out for reasons completely unknown by anyone Lee has spoken with, but she was alive and Lee was determined to find her.
Kara was frowning at him in concern. She drew a finger down his neck, causing Lee's breath to catch, and showed him his sweat with a questioning eyebrow raise. "I can’t ride Viper here anymore," Lee explained. "They're watching the stables now." Kara closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder briefly before stepping back. Lee reluctantly let her go. "We need to see Karl and Sharon. Now."
She nodded and turned on her heel to the path leading up and over the ridge of rocks toward the river and his cousin. Lee followed.
* * *
Kara held Sharon's hand very tightly. Hera. Alive. A year later. The thought was so astonishing and heart breaking at the same time. Karl and Lee were ignoring the dazed women and engaged in a shouting match, or at least Karl was shouting at Lee.
"I am going after my daughter!"
"They will arrest you in a second if they see you. I will take care of it," Lee spoke with that controlled anger, that reasonable tone that always got Kara's hackles up faster than if he had hit her.
"I don't see that it is your decision to make."
"And I don't see how you would consider risking your life when I can just-"
"Oh-You-Ugh!-" Karl was actually sputtering now, "Where the hell do you get off lecturing anybody about risking lives when you live in the shadow of your hallucinating, manipulative, psychopath of a stepmother?!"
"I don’t think that she's actually psychopathic-" Lee began.
"Don’t even start!" Karl roared. To his very great credit, in Kara's estimation, Lee shut up. "Lee," Karl said in a quieter, pleading tone of voice. "Lee, I have to do this. You get it. I know you do. If you didn't then Sharon and I would have been dead ten times over by now. There are things that you do for family that you don’t do for anyone else." Karl put his hands on Lee's shoulders and Lee grasped Karl's elbows. "She's my daughter. You don’t let me take care of you, even though I-you know I promised Zak I would. But I am going to take care of her."
Kara was shocked to see tears in Lee's eyes matching Karl's. He nodded, looking firmly at the ground and Karl pulled him into a tight, quick hug. "I don’t know much of anything," Lee said, stepping out from Karl's embrace. "Just rumors and snippets of supposed sightings. Hera has practically turned into a full-scale urban legend."
"Then we follow the clues," Sharon said, letting Kara's hand drop and standing next to her husband. Karl pulled her in front of him and locked his arms around her middle, resting his chin on her head. A wave of loneliness washed over Kara as she watched the three of them, so united in purpose and shared tragedy. She couldn’t share her secret with anyone, not even her sister who, if the world was fair, would have been able to share the burden.
Lee noticed her though. Lee always noticed. He held out a hand to her in invitation. Kara stood up and walked toward him, hesitantly reaching out, and he hauled her in close. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and Sharon grabbed her hand and, for the first time in a long, long while, Kara felt like she belonged.
* * *
He was soaked through. Cold and shaking as he scrambled and slid his way down the shore line in the dark, over rocks and severed branches. All he could think about, even when he felt something slice deeply into his left calf, was her. Kara and her don't-frak-with-me snarl and haunted eyes and wild grin. Kara who could undoubtedly take care of herself better than he could, but damned if he wasn't going to try anyhow because Karl and Sharon were still in Galactica looking for their daughter. He wasn't a knight in shining armor, simply was not decent enough for the title, but Lee would be damned if he left her to the mercy of a storm in a little cave on the sea.
He skidded around the corner and into the cave, water thigh high and swirling around him. "Kara!" he shouted. "Kara!" And there was desperation in his voice, even though she could not, would not, answer him. "Godsdamnit Kara, where are you?" A rock hit the cave wall near his head and he turned in the direction it had been thrown from. "Kara," he choked, and waded through the water to her, flinging aside some floating pillows.
She was holding a candle, shielding it from the onslaught of the splashing, rising tide. Her eyes were wide and searching and she groped around under the water.
"What are you still doing in here?" Lee asked, tugging on her arm, "The water is rising. We have to go!" She pulled some sodden fabric off her shoulder and shook it at him. "What?" Lee tried to grab it from her hand, but she wouldn’t let go. Kara shook it wildly again and then held up two fingers. "There are two more of those . . . things and you need to find them?" he ventured a guess and Kara practically sagged in relief. "Okay. You get out of here, I'll look." Kara's face took on a mulish tinge in the light of the candle. "Can't you just let me help you? For once? Let me do something for you!"
Lee hadn't realized he had been shouting until Kara's cold, pruney fingers slid over his mouth and she stepped in close. She grabbed him by the chin and held his head still while she looked straight into his eyes, the determination clear in her face. Lee clenched his jaw and nodded tightly, and she pinched his chin before handing him her candle. She crouched down in the now waist deep water and felt around, and then she was brandishing a handful of dripping material in each hand raised high over her head in triumph. "Now can we go?" Lee asked. Kara rolled her eyes at him, but she let him take her wrist and pull her back out into the storm.
* * *
Kara still could not believe that she had left those stupid swan shirts in the cave. When she had seen the tide coming in, the rain pouring down, she had grabbed as many of her things that she could carry and had scurried up to Karl and Sharon's place. When she had gotten the fire started and had settled comfortably in a chair, she had been hit with the realization that she had left her three year's labor-her entire frakking reason for being silent-back in a cave that would shortly be flooded. She had run out without a coat or even her shoes. Thankfully, God had been looking out for her and she had managed to recover the two finished shirts as well as the mostly finished one. Her starwort supply was a loss, but she would get more in the spring-she still had three years left and even as disinterested and unskilled a seamstress as she was, she was sure she could manage to finish by then.
She stumbled slightly over a rock on the steep incline, wincing at the pain in her bare feet, but Lee's hand kept her up, kept her moving in the wind and the torrent of rain. He had come out into the night, braved the storm, apparently run here without a frakking horse-and all for her. The warmth rose in her chest. He knew that Karl and Sharon were gone and he had come for her anyway. He knew that there was shelter to be had, but he had come to check. She was so, so tired of not being able to talk to him, to thank him, to just express some goddamn emotion that couldn’t be encompassed by shrugs and eye rolls. Something that was all about them, Kara and Lee, and nothing about family and duty and honor to country and frakking siblings turned into big, noisy water fowl.
They got to the top of the incline and were racing through the trees and Kara was done. She came to a complete standstill, pulling Lee to a stop with her. "What are you doing?" He shouted over the wind and the pounding of the surf, the rattle of rain on leaves, the crashing of thunder. He put his mouth right next to her ear and spoke with exasperated affection. "Kara-I don’t know if you've noticed but it's raining out here." And she turned her head and kissed him.
Lee responded instantly, opening his mouth to hers and filling his hands with her ass. She leaned against him as his tongue slid inside, before he abruptly pulled back to look at her, shock juxtaposed with want in his expression. He carefully pushed the dripping strands from her face, smoothing it back until her view was no longer obstructed, just filled with Lee and Lee's eyes and his mouth and-she leaned in again but was stopped by his hands on either side of her head.
"I can’t do this if you don’t mean it," Lee said, and Kara smiled at him, shaking her head a little at his utter cluelessness before leaning in and kissing his nose. "We shouldn’t do this anyway. Don’t you know that bright shiny futures aren’t for people like us?" She kissed his cheek, his temple, his forehead, eyes, chin, along that jaw line, until he pulled her in tight and ducked his head to bite into her shoulder. "Frak it," he muttered. "I don't care what the right thing is anymore." He backed her up against a nearby tree and positively devoured her mouth as she let her head fall back.
This was so insane. Her hair was caught in the tree trunk, the cold rain was relentless and Lee had her shirt pulled up over her breasts, licking long slow strokes over her nipples and driving her absolutely mad with his hot tongue on her chilled skin. She bit her lip hard because she could not, would not, say his name. Would not ruin three years work, no matter how good it felt to finally have Lee's mouth on her.
Her hands moved all over him, his chest, his shoulders, back and thighs until she was shaking and so was he. She reached for the front of his pants, fingers clumsy and a little numb from the cold. God, she was freezing to death and burning up all at the same time. She got her hands in and squeezed his length. "Shit! Your hand's cold," he gasped, bringing his head up to kiss her and laughing into her mouth. He tried to slide the sodden pants off her hips, but they clung so much that she pushed him away to totally strip them off herself, throwing her sibling's shirts to the ground from where they had still been wetly plastered to her shoulder.
Lee stopped breathing. She could see the air leave his body in a whoosh as he looked at her with nothing on her but a strip of shirt caught up under her arms, leaning against a tree with the water dripping down her body, streaming through her hair. She smiled at him. Only his pants were undone, but the material just clung to the angles of him. She crooked a finger at him. He surged forward, taking just enough time to pull her shirt down to protect her back from the rough tree before pushing her up off her feet and against the trunk. Her legs and arms wrapped around him and she locked her eyes with his as they remained suspended in the moment. He was beautiful. Beautiful and entirely hers because she knew his secrets, knew his pain and his temper and loved him anyway.
She made fists of her hands and pounded them three times on his shoulders. Now. Now. Now. And he slid into her with one long stroke. The sky continued to fall around her, rain muffling their gasps and his muttered endearments. The wind flung sticks and leaves and water at their bodies but it didn’t matter at all. Kara arched back, her hair snagging on bark, face to the sky as Lee moved, welcoming the rain as her body welcomed him. She let go completely, an almost painful release, crashing and wild and freezing and completely, irreversibly taken with the man surrounding her, the man she was surrounding. Lee shuddered against her and she tightened her arms and thighs. Brought her face down to watch the final edges of need and want sliding into contented peace on his face, stark with his hair slicked back.
They stared at each other before she brought her mouth to his, kissing him gently. He took a shuddering breath. "Kara," he whispered and she smiled as the storm raged around them.
* * *
In the end, he had just thrown her over his shoulder and carried her the remaining distance to Sharon and Karl's home. It was deluging and they had given up on getting her pants back on and, for the first time, he had noticed that she wasn't even wearing shoes. So he had slung her over, her fists pounding weakly at his back. He could feel her body shaking to hold in her laughter which he assumed was the reason he wasn't being beaten to a pulp. He kissed the bare, wriggling hip by his ear, gratified to feel her abrupt inhale, so he kissed it again before opening the door and stepping gratefully into the fire warmed room.
He slid her deliberately down his body, reluctant to let go for fear that she would be shortly coming to her senses. Kara grimaced at the sensation of her nearly naked body pressed to cold wet clothes, but she pressed a quick kiss to his lips before breaking free. He took the time to hang the cloth that had been hung over his other shoulder over wooden chairs; her pants and underwear and the three whatevers Kara had risked her life for. He shook them out to reveal misshapen shirts made from flowers and lots of thread. He laid them carefully on the table and frowned, contemplating them until his attention was caught by a completely nude Kara walking toward him, toweling her hair.
He stared at her lines and curves, where tan skin met cream, at muscles built from years of hard labor. She was way too good to be true, and certainly much more than he deserved. She stood before him and pulled the towel off her head, gesturing to his soaking wet clothes still uncomfortably clinging to him. When he made no move to strip, she draped the towel around her neck and began unbuttoning his shirt for him.
Lee put his hand over hers to still them, wanting her to think about what she was doing, what they were doing, but she just raised it to her lips and brushed a kiss over his knuckles, making his heart flutter, and continued on with single-minded intensity. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and he heard it land with a squelch behind him before his attention was entirely caught by her handing him the towel and reaching for his pants. "Kara." She looked at him, a faint smile on her face and her head tilted. "You don’t have to do this, I can take care of myself." His voice had been more pointed than he had intended, and her mouth was suddenly on his, rough and punishing.
She pulled back, looking defiant and angry and-hurt, he realized, and she proceeded to strip the pants off him before turning away. He followed her, putting his hands on her shoulders and pulling her back into his body so he could wrap his arms fully around her. He slid his face next to hers. "I'm just not used to being-looked after." She remained rigid against him, but she turned her head a little so that their cheeks brushed. "Please, Kara," he said, pressing kisses down the line of her shoulder, feeling her relax into him. "Don't let me ruin it. I'm really, really good at breaking things."
She deliberately stepped away from him, and he let his fingers linger on the smooth skin of her hips. She took another towel from a nearby chair and rubbed it efficiently over his body before pushing him toward the armchair in front of the fire-a triumph of Karl's foraging in the nearby Cylon village. He collapsed heavily and she climbed onto his lap, squirming until she got comfortable, with her legs dangling over the arm of the chair and arms wrapped firmly around his neck. She pressed her face into his throat and her bare breasts, still chilled, against his bare chest. Lee folded himself around her as much as possible, trying to get them both warm. Her damp hair was spread cold against his neck and chest, and he bundled the length of it up in his hands, twisting it into a single long rope and tying it in a loose knot on her head so that it was off her back and his skin. He kissed her temple. The last of the tension melted from her body and the sporadic shivers stopped altogether. She was asleep. Lee stared into the fire, listening to the storm howl around them, moving his fingers to her neck to feel Kara's pulse, heart beating in slow, measured time, trying to match his own rhythms to hers.
* * *
Kara drifted slowly awake. She was warm and held secure against Lee's chest. A faint snore made her smile. She lifted her head from his neck, moving slowly so as not to wake him. Judging from the state of the fire, she had only been a sleep for a couple of hours and, as appealing as Lee was, he and the chair were proving to be too hard to sleep on top of. When she tried to extract herself, he just held on tighter, so she kissed his slack mouth. She nipped at it, tugging on his bottom lip with her teeth until he sleepily responded, sighing happily into her. She pulled back to see his eyes, hooded and blinking and damnably blue. He smiled unreservedly at her and Kara slid her fingers over his lips to feel such an open expression.
She pulled gently out of his arms and stood up to stretch, enjoying his eyes on her even as she took in the elegant sprawl of him. She covered her mouth with her hand to fight down the laugh as a certain part of his body took a noted interest. She raised both eyebrows, and he shrugged but flushed a little, not meeting her eyes. Kara grabbed a hand and hauled him up to press against her before deliberately arching her hips into him.
"You are killing me," he groaned and she pulled him towards the bed, climbing under the blankets and drawing him in with her. Lee rolled half on top of her, propping himself up with one arm as she traced his skin with her fingers. "Are you sure I'm what you want?" he asked seriously.
Kara stilled at the uncertainty in his voice, the resignation creeping back into his expression. She brought her hands up to either side of his face and kissed him as softly as she could with their eyes open.
* * *
After he had left her drowsy-eyed and warmly bundled in the cabin with lingering kisses and promises to return soon, after he had walked into the still raging storm in the impossibly small hours of the morning to get back to the estate before dawn, the next time Lee saw Kara was a week and a half later, sewing on the crisp, sunny beach next to Sharon, who appeared to be doing much of the same. The relief at seeing his friend safe collided with the sharp pull in his body at seeing Kara.
"Good morning," Lee called out, and was gratified to see big smiles on both of their faces.
Sharon scrambled up and jogged lightly forward to throw her arms around him. "It's so good to see you," she whispered in his ear.
"Any luck?" He asked.
"Just a lot of rumors."
"Before I leave, tell me all of them," Lee said drawing back to look into her face. "We will find her, Sharon." Sharon nodded and let out a startled yelp as she was pushed out of the way by Kara who promptly kissed Lee full on the mouth, looping her fingers into the front of his pants and tugging him tight against her. "I take it that this is not a secret then?" he asked with amusement as he wrapped his arms around her.
Sharon laughed, "About time you made a move, Kara."
Lee mock glared at her. "Why do you think it was Kara who made the first move?"
"Oh, please," Sharon said in concert with Kara rolling her eyes.
"Where's Karl?"
"Feeling outnumbered?" Sharon asked. "He's back in the cabin, letting Kara and I do sisterly bonding or something like that." Lee was torn. He really did want to see his cousin, but he still had an armful of Kara and he hadn't seen her in days. Fortunately, Sharon took pity on him. "I have to go do some things around the house-we were gone for awhile. How about you two wander up for lunch in a couple of hours?"
Lee couldn’t remember if he had called out an affirmative before he kissed Kara again, but he waved the concern away as he was tackled onto the ground and surrounded by waves of blonde hair.
* * *
Some time later, Kara lay flat on her back in the sand. She had pulled her pants back on in deference to the temperature, but was enjoying the feeling of Lee tracing the lines of the tattoo on her arm too much to put her shirt back on.
"Did you lose a lot when your cave flooded?" Kara shook her head lazily. It really had been astonishing how much had still been in there. It had taken a few days to dry, but she was still pretty set. "Let me know if you need anything, okay?" She opened an eye and raised an eyebrow suggestively. "Give me a minute. Gods, woman, you’re insatiable." She grinned widely and pulled Lee down into a slow, warm kiss.
He pulled back and sat up. "We should probably get dressed and head for the cottage." Kara nodded but didn't move. His rough palm slid down the center of her body, between her breasts to rest heavily on her navel. She opened her eyes and found him staring so hard at her, like she might disappear if he stopped, and she felt the shiver start in the base of her spine until her skin erupted in goose bumps from the sheer force of the need on his face. He frowned at her chilled skin and reached for her shirt and handed it to her.
She sat up and pulled the shirt over her head and gave an exaggerated pout when he fastened his pants to make him smile, although it was really a shame to cover up that body. He grabbed hold of her hips and kissed her soundly on the side of her neck. "Let's go," he said, stooping to pick up his shirt and pulling it on as they began walking. He laced his fingers through hers and, for a moment, Kara felt decidedly normal.
Part III