Timing Is Everything
Sickly blue light streams in from the lights across the street as Kara waits patiently for the man beside her to fall asleep. As soon as his breathing evens out, she slips quietly from the bed and manages to locate most of her clothes, now strewn through the length of Kanavos' apartment. After a few minutes of searching she has located everything but her socks, and these she leaves behind as some bizarre testament to her stupidity.
Dressing quickly, Kara makes her way downstairs and outside, into the chilled night air. And it is starting to rain. She curses her luck; it's miles back to campus and the trams ceased to run hours before. Kara has only one option left, so she sucks up her pride, locates the nearest phone, and calls Lee.
The call wakes him up, that much she can tell from his voice; soft, like he doesn't want to exert even that much energy. And as she rattles on through her preamble, he doesn't sound annoyed so much as resigned.
"So what have you done now?"
"Never mind that, just come pick me up."
"Do you realize how many regs I would be breaking by taking a jeep to pick you up at this hour?"
"Lee, everyone else may believe that you live and die by the regs and the frakking Articles of Colonization, but I know better. Now shut up and come get me."
"Sometimes you are such a pain in the ass."
"But I make your otherwise pitifully dull life interesting, so do me a favor? Fetch me before I end up in sick bay for a week."
Fifteen minutes later he pulls up outside the tram lean-to. If she hadn't found it, Kara would've been soaked to the bone by now. Jaw firmly set, she sprints for the jeep, struggles with the door before opening it, and hops in.
"Took you long enough."
Lee smiles in response. "Never let anyone say you're ungrateful."
Fine, she'll let him have that one.
They are silent for a few minutes as Lee drives them back towards campus. It's the middle of the night and he's still obeying speed regulations, so it takes much longer than if she had been driving. She wants to tease him but doesn't have the energy to fight with him needlessly at this point.
Kara hopes that she'll be spared any confrontation over this, but as they sit idle at an intersection, waiting for non-existent cars to pass, Lee rests his arms on the steering wheel and looks over.
"What was it this time?"
He's never acknowledged this pattern of hers, to act out in wildly dangerous ways when something gets to her. He's been there to pick up the pieces, he's even been there when she's started out on one of her ill-fated missions, but Lee's never, ever probed. It's one of the things she loves about him.
If she's honest with herself (and sometimes Kara thinks she might be a little too honest), there are a lot of things she loves about Lee. She loves him as a friend who will come pick up her self-destructive ass in the middle of the night. She loves him as the guy that she can get mad at and hit, and that when he hits her back, he doesn't pull his punches. She loves that he secretly reads banned books and has a revolutionary streak, and that she's the only one that knows about it.
She loves that he's the one person who's broken through her defenses and hasn't tried to maul or destroy her.
In truth, though, that's exactly why she flirted shamelessly with Major Kanavos tonight. He'd been interested for a long time, and Kara was itching for someone to touch her, to kiss her, to make her whimper and cry out in ecstasy. She's been waiting for that to happen with Lee for a long time now.
"I saw Kanavos at the bar. We played a few rounds of pyramid, he bought me a few drinks, I won all of his money and then we went back to his place," she said, matter-of-factly.
Closing his eyes, Lee took a deep breath before saying anything. "You could get thrown out for this."
"So could he."
"Kara --"
"It was a calculated risk, Lee."
"So you were actually thinking with something besides what's between your legs."
If they hadn't been in such awkward positions, Kara would have punched him right then and there. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and leaned into his space.
"I was listening to my instincts, Lee. That doesn't mean I wasn't thinking."
Lee snorted. "Instincts? Your instincts are frakked, Kara."
"And you don't have any."
"No," he said, pointing a finger at her. "I simply try to let my brain rule over my groin."
"And that's why you'll always be second best in the cockpit."
"At least I won't die there out of an asinine need to prove something!"
Kara can see Lee's face twitching. It only does that when he's really, really upset. She is angry too, but there is something else coursing in her blood now, below the rage.
"Prove what?"
"That you're good enough," Lee says, softly.
"I am."
He answers her smirk and almost laughs.
"That when you're hurt, someone will care; and when you're gone, someone will grieve."
She's grown so tired of the way Lee looks at her as his pal and his wingman that she hasn't noticed that it means he loves her. If only he'd listen to his instincts, because right now, she's willing to bet that they're screaming at him to let go, let go and kiss the girl.
Meeting Lee's eyes, Kara knows she's right. Everything in her body is thrumming with anticipation. She leans forward and whispers, "I'm not going to break."
The moment their lips meet, Kara knows it's do or die. And for a second she's screaming at herself for her fantastic ability to frak up the one meaningful relationship she's ever had, but then Lee starts kissing her back and the world rights itself. In a few seconds, she's at the last degrees of vertical and all she can think is that they're going to have to surgically remove Lee from her body by force, because she's not going to give up this feeling without a fight.
And then they hear the horn, and the flashing lights.
They're still at the intersection. And have been for...Frak.
Lee pulls up and back and rights himself in the driver's seat. "Weren't you saying something about listening to your instincts?"
"I never said they had good timing," she quipped.
Then Lee nods and then smiles at her, and Kara knows that everything will be just fine.