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If there was one thing that being the President of the Colonies taught Lee, it was that he was never alone. Marines followed him almost everywhere and if the area was already secure then Tory or another assistant were constantly around. He hadn’t been President for more than five days and Lee had slept in his bed for only a few hours.
That was why finding time alone with Kara was so strange. Lee didn’t know if the Captain had bribed the Marines standing guard at his hatch or if the blonde was really just that crafty but the last thing he expected was to find her in his quarters well after most of the ship had gone to bunk. And, probably more than that, once she was there, Lee hadn’t anticipated a gentle smile and soothing backrub.
It wasn’t that they’d been having sex. No, in fact as much as Lee sometimes wished they could fall so easily back into the careless romping they’d done before, too many things had permanently changed. Kara had died and come back to life for one. And there was still the complication of Kara’s husband, whom she refused to divorce.
Rather it was the uncertainty of whether they could fall back into their mercurial friendship being in their current professional positions that made Lee so uneasy. There were still those in the fleet that did not trust Kara's resurrection story and thought that she, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, was a cylon. Lee still believed she was not but he also had to assuage those who disagreed, those would he would have ignored were he not the acting President.
“Don’t you care what people might think if they find out you were here,” he asked when Kara told him to lie down on his bunk.
Kara sat next to him and ran her sensitive pilot hands down the naked skin of his back. “Do you care?”
Lee shivered from both the touch and the question. “I- I don’t know. I guess a part of me thinks that it doesn’t matter what they think.”
“Now that’s thinking more like a president,” Kara said with a smile in her voice.
Lee shut up after that, enjoying the soft touch that melted the knots made from hours of sitting in stiff backed chairs. He was beyond exhausted and really Kara should have been as well with the fleet constantly on alert, but he didn’t want to fall asleep while she was being so unusually tender.
He was blinking lazily, taking in the warmth of her body so close to his, and maybe getting a little aroused from it, when Kara finally spoke. Again, the long silence was unusual for her but another sign of how much had changed, in this case, for the better.
“Dee isn’t the only one who can be sunshine and roses you know,” she said dryly.
Lee tensed and sucked in a shocked breath. They didn’t really talk about Dee, Sam occasionally, but never Dee.
“Kara…,”
“I’m not trying to argue. Just,” He felt a strong puff of her breath against his neck. “We can be like this again. As friends, as whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?” Lee craned his head over his neck, wondering for a second if Kara had been replaced with someone else.
Kara looked nervous but stayed where she was, her hands still on his skin. “You’re still my…,” She trailed off and Lee’s stomach clenched. “We can still talk and be together like this even if there isn’t anything more. I still lo-,” she cut off abruptly and Lee grinned involuntarily.
“Kara,” he said wonderingly. “Are you saying that you love me?”
He could see the moment when she remembered the time, so long ago now, that he’d confessed his love for her. They both could easily think of a few times afterwards, times tainted with pain and betrayal, but the first time…the purity of the feeling hadn’t changed from then to now.
She smiled just as she smiled then and in a way that Lee thought he might never see again. Her eyes were clear and unburdened with whatever destiny the cylons had hoisted onto her shoulders. Her smile was wide and a little embarrassed, just as Lee had intended.
Kara opened her mouth, probably to argue, and he interrupted her with a grin.
“No takebacks.”
She chuckled and smacked his shoulder blade then kissed the skin she’d just abused so gently that Lee could have imagined it. The rasp of her lips said that he hadn’t though.
“I wouldn’t dare,” Kara said before she pulled away to let him turn over onto his back.
Lee held his breath when she scooted closer and lay down beside him. She took his stiff arm and wrapped it around her shoulders then closed her eyes.
He watched her for a little while and let his hand cup the ball of her shoulder, remember the softness of her skin underneath his fingertips, then closed his eyes as well.
END