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The problem with Lee is that he knows it all.
Sam is easy. He knows her outside in, all the main points and all her jagged edges that are so easy to catch on. He loves her uncomplicatedly, uncomplainingly, teases out her good side and smooths out the bad, brushes past the mistakes he knows about with an easiness she finds astounding. Yet could she ever tell him all she’s done?
He’s her damsel in distress, her safe harbour, the steady rock to her skittish storm. He’s just Sam, and it’s seductive how simple it seems.
The problem with Lee is how simple it really is. He knows her inside out, all her dirtiest secrets and guiltiest moments, her darkest days and hottest, blazing rows.
She confesses her most crushing sins before she goes out to die and he lets her, absolves her of murdering the person he had loved most in the world. When the order comes at the intersection of illegal and immoral and necessary he pulls the trigger first to dull the edge of her own nightmares. She’s asked to shoot point-blank the Admiral who’d done the same to her XO and Lee grits his jaw and is ready to guard her back with his life anyway, just because it’s her, because he always has her back.
He loves her complicatedly, but without reserve. He meets her blow for blow, every time, until her lips feel permanently bruised by the kiss of his smarting fist. He argues with her, bright blue eyes like the hottest parts of a flame, yells at her on the hangar deck and in the briefing room and as they stand half-undressed and would use up all the fuel in the universe to get her back.
He’s her partner in brushes past death, her cool head in the darkness of the black void, the reckless voice in her head when they are a little too alone. Their skeleton closet is dark and deep and crammed full, and still he reaches for her.
Sam wants her, drawn to the occasional brilliance of her good sides, but Lee wants all of her, is magnetised to the most broken parts of her heart. He knows it all, might know her better than she does herself, and he wants her anyway.
And that’s the problem with Lee.