Mourning ((RP for number_eight))

[arrow_of_apollo]

Four months ago (Gods, he thought, has it only been four months?), when Lee had moved into this cabin aboard Colonial One, he had looked at the small space and decided that while it wasn't the familiar locker he'd shared onboard the Galactica with Dee, it was a hell of a lot roomier than a even an officer's rack, so things couldn't be that bad. And although he had come to feel comfortable with the space, it had never become a home. It felt even less like one now.

Lee felt a hot, wet tear roll down his face and he wiped at it angrily. He couldn't count the number he'd shed in the last twelve hours, every one of them searing, every one of them painful. Part of him wondered if he was mourning more than just a person, he was mourning everything she had meant to him-- more importantly, the things she had given him.

Even when they weren't together, even when Lee knew she was furious with him, Dee had always been a kind of beacon of hope. Not just for him, but for everyone aboard the battlestar, his father especially. Her faith in Admiral Adama had been unwavering, and her belief that Lee was a good man meant for great things just as firm. She had believed when they had not.

And now she was dead, because she had lost that faith, and had those beliefs shattered. The wasted, blasted Earth had broken all of them, but Anastasia Dualla had had the furthest to fall.

Lee reached again for the bottle of ambrosia-- a gift from Colonel Tigh, of all people, who had handed it over without comment-- just as a knock sounded on the hatch of his quarters. He was confused for a moment until he remembered that someone from Galactica would be arriving with Dee's personal effects. Still gripping the half-empty bottle, knowing he would need its help, Lee rose and opened the hatch.

Comments

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

"Lee. I'm so sorry."

It was all Sharon could think of to say when he opened the hatch and she saw the broken man before her. Had Dee killed herself because she'd finally discovered the truth about them? Oh, God, she hoped not. Dee had actually been a friend to both Helo and to her, had been Hera's babysitter so many times when both she and Helo had the same CAP rotations.

And now she was gone.

Her family had mourned for Dee privately as she'd tried her best to explain to Hera that Dee was gone, but she knew it couldn't compare to what Lee must have been going through. So, Sharon had been the one to volunteer to take her personal effects to Lee, hoping that maybe she could cheer him up somehow. Sharon saw the Old Man and how hard he'd taken it; she was pretty sure that Lee had no one to talk to about it all.

As she handed one of the five boxes to Lee, she clasped her hands behind her back. The last time they had seen each other, they had kissed and promised to speak again.

That was before Earth, though.

"Is... is there anything I can do?"

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

"Sharon?"

Lee shook his head, realizing that it made sense for Sharon Agathon to be there, holding Dee's boxes. From what he'd come to understand, the two women were friends, and that Dee had even taken to babysitting the Agathons' daughter, Hera. A pang shot through Lee's chest, making him wince, as he thought of Dee playing with the little girl. If I'd been a better husband... Lee cut off the thought there, as he'd been having hundreds of them since learning about Dee, and every one of them hurt like hell.

"Come on in," he told Sharon, waving her into the cabin and taking the box she offered. "And thank you," Lee added, out of reflex.

He looked back at Sharon, considering her question and offered her a pained, crooked smile.

"Anything you can do to make me forget? Dee, Earth, the truce, the whole frakking thing?"

That sounded pretty good to Lee. Numbness. Nothingness, forgetting.

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

She saw the bottle in his hand and sighed. "Well, looks like you've already got a head start on trying to forget." Not that she was going to blame him at the moment. If it had been the other way around, and Helo was gone? Sharon wouldn't want to talk to anyone or see anyone. She would've wanted to get frakking drunk as hell and just forget everything.

She sat down on the couch, even though he hadn't officially invited her to. "Lee, I know I can't say that I understand what you're going through, but..." Sharon looked down at her hands, then over to the one box she'd brought.

"You helped me before, when I was so numb. After I thought Hera was dead and my world pretty much ended. I didn't want anything or anyone, and you forced me to feel. It might not have been pretty, it might have been two people angry and frakking and nothing else, but it was what I needed."

Sharon hoped she didn't have to say anything else to make it clearer to Lee what she was suggesting.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

"Hmph," was all Lee's reply to the mention of the bottle, other than letting it thump on the table heavily before he set the box down beside it. It was hard to look at her, and Lee found himself doing his best to keep from doing it. Not that Sharon was particularly special in that regard, as he hadn't wanted to see or look at anyone since he'd left Galactica a few hours ago. Of course, there were other things running underneath his surface antisocial tendencies.

Still, he dropped into a chair to listen to Sharon, even though she'd pretty much invited herself in and sat down without asking. Lee would have a pretty good understanding of why later on, but at that moment, he just couldn't care. He looked up in surprise when Sharon made her suggestion. It spun his head around for a few moments.

Finally, he smiled. "Right. That's what I need right now. A reminder of what a frakking terrible husband I was to her."

Lee stood up and dragged in the last boxes, not bothering to even pick them up off the deck. Then he shut and locked the hatch. "I failed her. As a husband, as a President... I failed her." He picked up the bottle and knocked back a swallow, wiping his lips with the back of his fist. "I failed everyone."

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

Sharon looked away and winced once Lee mentioned that. It wasn't like she was the role model wife of the year, either, but to have everything they'd done tossed back into her face?

She watched him bring in the boxes and shut the hatch, and wondered what was going on in his head. Did he hate her? Did he hate Dee for leaving? Sharon didn't think that was it, exactly. "You didn't fail her. She made her own choice, and even though we might not ever understand it, it was hers to make. There wasn't anything you could have done differently."

Which was true. Lee was punishing himself when in reality, the dream of Earth had been something that everyone -- human and Cylon alike -- had wished for. D'Anna had decided to remain behind, effectively committing suicide too. He wasn't the only one who had lost someone.

And besides, Sharon had always liked Dee, which only made her relationship with Lee all the more hard.

"I think," she started, "that right now we have to hold onto something. Everyone has lost hope, and it's not because of you, so stop frakking thinking that it is, got it?"

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I'm sure there was something. Been a better husband, Commander, President... take your pick." If there was one thing that Lee Adama was damn good at, it was feeling sorry for himself. This was one of those moments where he could stop covering that up and putting it aside for whatever greater good he happened to be serving at the time.

"I saw what it's like on Galactica," said Lee. "People, soldiers, weeping in the corridors, wandering around drunk or dazed. You're right-- they've all given up." He let out a bitter laugh and reached for the bottle again, this time just taking a swig straight out of it. "Not that I blame them, of course. When the one thing your leaders have been promising you will make it all okay is nothing but a ball of irradiated rock. It's not much different on the civilian ships."

With a loud thump, Lee set the bottle down in front of Sharon. He looked back at her, wondering why she'd sat down, why she was trying to help him now, when there were a lot of much sadder sacks running around. "So what's worth hanging on to right now, Sharon? Each other? You figure if we spend a little rack time together, things won't be so bad?" Lee shrugged and reached for the buttons on his shirt. "Sure, what the frak..."

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

Sharon jumped at the sound of the bottle in front of her, then sighed and grabbed it herself to take a drink of whatever Lee had actually left behind -- which wasn't much. He was about as drunk as he'd been back when she'd ran into him at the pilots' rec room and he'd almost raped her.

Their whole relationship had started then, and somehow no matter how hard they both tried, it had never really ended.

She'd come here to help him, not a pity frak but more to give him what he'd given her before. Maybe to help him stop feeling so frakking numb... she put the bottle back down and wiped at her mouth when Sharon's eyes got wide at Lee. "Wait, no, you're..." She stood up and tried to stop his hands from unbuttoning his shirt. "That's not what I meant."

Goddammit, he was too frakking drunk. She ran a hand through her long hair. "This was supposed to be about us, not about 'some rack time.'"

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

"Oh, 'us'," Lee replied. "Which 'us' would that be? Is it the one that by all rights, really shouldn't have much occasion at all to be in the same room together, especially now that I'm a civilian? Or the 'us' that really ought to hate each other's guts, considering what has happened between us? Or do you mean the 'us' that seems to always end up frakking instead of fighting?"

Not that Lee himself knew the answer, and not that he understood how he could have the history with Sharon Agathon that he did and still have done the things they had done. Whoever and whatever they were, they'd gotten... tangled, and tangled badly. Lee wasn't sure there was any way to get free of that binding, short of cutting his way out. And there wasn't a single part of him that wanted to go that way.

Lee swung his legs up onto the table and turned his head toward Sharon. "Okay, so if we're not going to have a tumble, I guess you get to have the honors of analyzing me. So what do you figure is wrong with me, huh, doc?"

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

"I'm not analyzing anything, Lee." Why did he always have to make it so complicated? "You just lost your wife, and I know you must be feeling bad about it because..." Sharon gestured to the nearly-empty bottle.

She closed her eyes and counted to ten to calm down, but it didn't work. "God, you're such an ass. Even when I feel bad for you, you still have to make me frakking pissed at you for the way you're acting. Would she want to see you like this? Honestly, would Dee want this?" Sharon paused, then asked, "What was the last thing she said to you?" She was honestly curious. It still bothered her that through it all, maybe she didn't know Dee as well as she thought she did.

"Look, Lee, you can't deny that there is an 'us', whichever version of it you want to choose. It's still there, and I'm not here to let you take your anger and resentment at Dee out on me." Or maybe she was.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

"Bad?" Lee asked, eyebrows raising. "I'm not feeling 'bad' about my wife being dead, Sharon, I am crushed. Devastated. Despondent." He lifted a hand, pressing two fingers against his temple. "Dee blew her brains out all over her own locker. I loved her in my own, stupid, blind and horribly unfair way, and now she's dead."

Sharon pressed at him, the way she always seemed to do. She pushed his buttons, got under his skin and goaded him into doing and saying things that he never thought he would. Sharon drove him insane, but he was never going to be able to let go of her. That was something he'd quietly realized a long time ago.

Lee laughed at her question. "That's the frakking point! Of course she didn't want to see me like this, or any other way. She didn't want to see anyone or anything anymore! She couldn't take it, so she checked herself out." Squeezing his eyes shut didn't keep him from re-living the minutes before it happened, though. "She thanked me for having fun," he told Sharon.

Her last words, though, set him off. "Then get out," he growled. "If you're not here to let me vent this, and you're not here to make me feel better-- or even just distracted-- then you are welcome to get the frak out."

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

Just like Sharon loved Helo. It was wrong to keep pushing at him like this, but hadn't he done the same thing to her long ago?

She rolled the words Dee had said to Lee over and over in her head, trying to figure out what it meant, and Sharon had nothing. It sounded like a normal day between a husband and wife. "I'm sorry," she repeated to him, still not sure how to comfort him for his loss. The way he re-enacted Dee's suicide made Sharon angry, though. She knew it was the alcohol and pain talking, but...

"Frak it," she mumbled to herself before walking up to Lee and kissing him softly, then pulling away.

"I guess you really do get to decide if you want to vent, feel better, or be distracted after all, Lee."

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

"If it weren't for her, I couldn't have talked to the Quorum, and if I hadn't done that..." Lee waved his hand. "They'd be in a full-scale panic. There would be the entire delegation, pounding on the hatch of Roslin's cabin on Galactica. As it is, we're so close to Zarek declaring her unfit to serve..." He shook his head, not wanting to deal with any of it anymore, not after Dee.

Sharon's kiss took him by surprise, considering what she had been saying, but then again, it sort of didn't. It was him and her in a room alone, with no one around to know or hear. The formula had pretty much always added up to the same thing.

Lee reached out with both hands to hold Sharon's face. He didn't know if he should push her away. He didn't know if he should push her to her knees. What he did do was pull her to him, insistent but not rough, and kiss her back. "It doesn't matter which," he confessed. "None of it matters, not now, not anymore. But I need this." Lee closed the gap and kissed her again, more strongly.

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

She nodded her head as she kissed him back, but harder because she needed it, too. She just hadn't needed his anger right away at her proposition.

Everyone was in mourning in some way or another, and Sharon was no different.

She began pulling at Lee's clothes, the taste of alcohol still burning her lips and his words still ringing in her ears. He loved Dee. He missed Dee. He was angry and hurt and upset and all Sharon was was some sort of outlet, she supposed.

She should absolutely walk away from him right now instead of offering herself up to Lee to make him feel better. Instead her hands began pulling his pants down as she deepened their kiss.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

He felt Sharon's mouth part as his tongue slid against hers. He felt her hands on his pants, tugging them open and down even as he pulled at the zipper on her flight suit. Lee felt her body trying to press against his and make room for their efforts to get undressed at the same time. He could feel her tight, slim form under his hands as they pushed the uniform down from her shoulders. He could feel all of that, and that was all Lee was feeling in that moment, which was the way he wanted it.

In her flight suit, it took longer to get Sharon undressed. With every buckle and strap Lee had to contend with, his frustration grew. Lee was painfully hard as soon as she had gotten his pants down, and as soon as he'd pulled away her tank top, Lee closed his mouth down on Sharon's small breast hungrily.

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

It was always like this with them. Touching, feeling, but not thinking because if they did, both of them would understand how wrong everything was at the moment and they'd stop.

Sharon didn't want to stop. She didn't want a pity frak, she just wanted his mouth on her breast to never stop.

It had taken him a long time to get her flight suit off, and she reached her hand down to feel how hard he already was. Sharon squeezed him once and sighed happily, because this? This was what she'd been missing. This could make everything better, all the pain, the deaths, finding Earth... she could forget for a moment once they were frakking.

"Lee, I need you inside me right now," she managed to get out as her hand stroked him quickly to let him know just how much she wanted him.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

Lee took a sharp breath when Sharon's fingers circled around his shaft. She'd learned to read him a long time ago, and now with that perfect Cylon recall, she always knew just how and where to touch him. His mouth switched to the other breast, giving Sharon room to stroke him, which she did almost painfully fast. Lee took another breath, this one deliberately slow, trying to come down from the edge.

"Need it too," he groaned, his hand skimming down Sharon's flat belly and curling between her legs. Lee's fingers found her sex wet and heated and yielding. He slid a pair of fingers into her even as his tongue pressed its way into her mouth.

Satisfied she Sharon was ready, Lee moved them toward the bed. He nearly tripped over one of the cardboard boxes, and it made him hesitate. What was he doing? What did he think this would solve? A hundred questions raced through his mind, the same hundred that always did. Lee brought his hand to his mouth, tasting Sharon on his fingers, and settled beside her as he let himself forget.

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

Sharon groaned as soon as his fingers slipped inside her and she arched against him, her own fingers moving to his shoulders and tightening as Lee managed to make her forget again, like he always did. Her moan was stopped by his mouth, though, and once they ended up on the bed, she looked at him and pulled him down on top of her.

"Frak me." She had a feeling that he didn't want it soft or sweet. He was drunk and in mourning. He wanted to forget as much as she did -- probably moreso -- so she spread her legs for him wide and waited.

Everytime they'd frakked, practically, it had been hard and fast, but never painful. The look in Lee's eyes of emptiness made her think that this time, though, it would be different. This time, once he shoved himself into her, it would hurt her because he'd be using her body. Hadn't she said she didn't want that?

Right then, though, Sharon saw it was what Lee needed. So she would give it to him, let him do whatever he needed to move on. "Frak me," she repeated.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

He nodded as Sharon told him what to do. Lee was drunk and drifting, and the idea that Sharon would lead him, that she knew as well as he did what he wanted-- what they both wanted, he bet-- and that he could stop thinking and feeling anything more than just the physical was the best idea in the universe. When she pulled him on top of her, Lee noted but wasn't surprised by the strength in the gesture. He'd gotten used to it early on, the surprising strength in that small, slender body.

Lee sank into her heat as she said it again. "Yes," he hissed, both in agreement and in pleasure. She was always so hot inside, and he knew she could tighten down around him until it hurt, if she chose. Part of him very much wanted it to hurt.

Hips beginning to move, Lee started out quickly, his arms already shaking as they held him up. Lee slid in and out of her, hard and fast, and the feeling shot from their joined bodies straight through his every limb. He panted and moaned as he thrust into Sharon, lowering his head push a crushing kiss down on her mouth. Everything else in the world began to fade into the background.

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

Her moan was quieted by his kiss, which didn't feel like any sort of kiss Lee had ever given her before. His thrusts in and out hurt, surprisingly, but she figured her body would be able to take it.

Sharon was surprised, though, at how quickly the warmth began to burn up and down her spin as her orgasm hit her and her legs wound themselves around his waist, pulling him deeper into her as she became lost to whatever hurt he wanted to give her to make them both forget.

Her muscles tightened down around him as she shuddered, and Sharon knew it had to have hurt him by sheer strength. She stopped, finally, and lay there for him. Watching his eyes, she calmed her breathing as wetness poured out between her legs and she whispered, "Hurt me."

She'd just hurt him. He could hurt her back. It was only fair.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

There was nothing. When he'd ejected from the Blackbird, Lee had let his mind drift away to a place that wasn't the dangerous, deadly situation he was in. It was someplace calm and silent and as isolated and removed from the battle around him as possible. Now, as he and Sharon Agathon tested the strength of the bed in his quarters, Lee Adama's mind was just as isolated, but the place was anything but calm and quiet. It was a noisy, raucous red-tinged place of anger and bitterness, and instead of floating, he was frakking Sharon.

This time it was the noise and frantic exertion that was keeping the world at bay.

He hadn't even realized that he'd been hurting Sharon until she gave the pain back, crushing around his length as she came. Lee cried out, the pain somehow dulling his sense of despair even further. In that moment, it made sense. Pain was also a feeling, and for once, it was one he was welcoming. And by her words, it looked like Sharon welcomed it, too.

His thrusts were already as hard and deep as they could be, so Lee reared up slightly, freeing his right arm to strike Sharon across the face. "Me," he moaned, "give me more... hurt me, too..."

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

Her head slammed into the bed after he hit her, mainly because Sharon was taken off-guard when he'd done it. She hadn't known he wanted to hurt her so badly or in that way... how much pain was the man in?

Too much, she decided.

She touched her cheek and then all thinking stopped when he asked her to hurt him, again. Again? How, why...? She frowned and wondered what sort of pain he wanted -- or rather, needed. Unsure, Sharon struck him hard across his face, but held back some of her Cylon strength. "I don't..." She bucked her hips upwards and squeezed down on him, hurting his cock as much as she could even as she pulled him deeper within her.

The pain of it all caused her to cry out Lee's name, over and over, as she came again.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

The pain burst across Lee's vision, like he'd managed to just dodge an explosion in his Viper. It stopped him, even from continuing to thrust into Sharon, he was so shocked. Of course, he'd asked her to hurt him, and it was just right that she'd take the same route he had. As Lee blinked and his brain settled back into place, he looked back at Sharon again. His sight was clear and sharp in a way it hadn't been since they'd found Earth. Something about the hurt and sharing it, giving it back and forth to someone who needed it, too... was helping.

Lee didn't understand how or why, only that if he could keep feeling this way, then he could just simply keep on going.

He started to move his hips again, ready to drive into Sharon's heat, but was stopped when she went vise-tight on him again. Sharon screamed his name, and as she came, the shuddering pressure pushed Lee over the edge. Her name escaped his chest in a roar as Lee pushed hard one last time, thrusting even deeper into her sex before exploding, too. His body wrenched and jerked as his climax hit with painful force.

Still shaking, Lee's arms gave out and he fell onto Sharon.

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

Her arms wrapped around his back and stroked the skin there softly in contrast to how they'd just frakked. Sharon wasn't sure what else she could do or say right now, though.

"I..."

She ended up pressing a kiss against his cheek as she held his body to hers, like it was the only real thing left in the whole galaxy somehow.

"I'll stay here with you if you want me to," she decided finally, biting her lip after she'd said it because she wasn't sure what Lee wanted anymore.

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

Panting, Lee stared back at her. It was, perhaps, the worst and most insane idea ever offered. There was no reason for Sharon Agathon to spend more time with the Caprican delegate to the Quorum than necessary, no matter the fact that she'd been one of his pilots in his former career. They hadn't even been friends, so far as anyone knew.

But the feel of her with him... Lee couldn't make himself let go. He could feel the drifting sadness starting to pull at him, and he needed something to hold. Someone to hold.

"Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, please." He'd deal with the consquences later.

They settled in, awkward and unsure, but never releasing one another.