A Gift for Sci_Fi_Shipper (3/4)
Jul. 24th, 2011 10:16 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
callmeonetrack.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
pilots_presentsTitle: When you're all alone, in a lonely room (3/4)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
howlinchickhowl
Summary: Kara Thrace had never thought she would ever find a man as wonderful as her dad, until the summer that he took her to Kellerman's – A crossover fic with Dirty Dancing
Characters: Lee, Kara, and various others
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Excessive sap and a little bit of cheese?
Beta Thanks: Huge thanks and apologies topressdbtwnpages who took what was basically a 40K word stream of consciousness that I hadn't read through since I'd written it the first time, and turning it into something that vaguely resembled a series of sentences that go to making a plot. Thanks to her also for her fact-checking skills, because a meringue is a tasty sugary dessert, not a dance, and I apparently think they are the same thing. And of course the brilliant comment on my general demeanor of melodrama - “it's just rain, it's not cylons.” So true, bb, so true.
Author Notes:sci_fi_shipper asked for a crossover with Dirty Dancing, and the idea really appealed to me, which is why this ended up being so epically long. I bit off a little bit more than I could chew, but I really hope that I've managed to do the request justice.
“I want to try something.” Lee told her as she tied the laces on her jazz shoes, the smile on his face was something new, he seemed pleased with himself somehow. Uh-oh.
“Electro-shock therapy?” She joked. She had no idea what he had planned or how he’d come to believe that it was going to work, but she was pretty certain that it was not going to end well for either of them. She was a lost cause.
“No.” He said pointedly, holding out his hand. “Come here.” She rose and crossed to his side of the room, placing her hand into his outstretched palm. He pulled her round to face him, standing an arms length away, and wiggled her arm a little with his hand. “Relax!” He told her, “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
She smiled, and he dropped their arms, stepping a little closer so that his scent filled her nose, pine needles and sweat and some musky cologne.
“You’ve been having trouble finding the beat in the music.” He stated, and she nodded, that much was obvious. “So today we’re not using the music, today the beat is all you.” She must have looked completely panicked because he laughed gently, rubbing his thumb along her knuckles where their hands were still joined. “Kara relax ok? This isn’t going to hurt. I’m not tricking you, I’m helping you.”
She doubted that very much.
“You know the steps, ok? You’ve memorized them, now you just have to learn how to make them work.” He stepped back from her again, the smell of pine needles lingering though the rest was gone, and dropped her arm. “So move.”
He waited a moment, and when she stayed completely still he rolled his eyes in frustration.
“Kara, move.”
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, collecting herself, preparing herself for what he was asking, and then nodding, she moved her feet. She lost count on the fourth step and groaned in frustration.
“Ok. Ok, it’s ok.” He grabbed her hand again, ducked his head and forced her to look at him. “You have to stop counting.”
She gave him a look that she hoped conveyed how incredibly nuts she thought he was, and he smiled again. She wished that he would stop doing that, as attractive as he was under normal circumstances, when he smiled she could barely think of anything but the curve of his lips and what that might taste like.
“I’m serious!” He said, a chuckle escaping his throat, “You’re thinking about it too much. It’s not a beat, it’s not the mambo,” and here she raised her eyebrows because she was pretty certain it was the mambo, “it’s a feeling. A heartbeat.”
Something seemed to occur to him then, his face twitched in a kind of epiphany, and he brought their joined hands up in between them and laid her palm flat against his chest. Oh. His muscles rippled beneath his shirt, he pinned her hand to him with his own, and she wondered if he could feel the heat in her skin or see the flush in her cheeks. If he did he paid them no mind because he was still talking to her like she was supposed to be listening, and she nodded dazedly as though she had been paying attention.
“It’s not enough just to know the steps,” he said, and began tapping his index and middle fingers over the back of her hand in time with the beating of his heart beneath her palm, “you have to feel the music.” With every heartbeat he tapped his fingers, and Kara let her eyes drift closed, shutting out everything but the soft thump of his heart, the light touch of his fingers on hers, the warmth of his chest through the cotton of his shirt.
After a few moments just standing there and listening to, feeling his heart beat, Kara felt something stir inside of her, an itch in the soles of her feet, a kind of impulse in her hips, electricity flowing through her every vein, compelling her to move. And so she did.
Her feet moved into the steps she knew by heart easily, instinctively complying to the thrum of his heart, and she felt for the first time free. She focused on nothing, allowing herself to just be for a moment, and it was incredible.
“Breathe.” His soft voice in her ear was husky and closer than she’d realized.
She shivered and her eyes flew open, staring straight into his. This was it, the moment when she would screw it up, would lose count, but she didn’t. His heart kept beating, her feet kept moving, and a grin spread slowly across her face. His own grin matched it and he nodded his encouragement. For the first time since this whole thing began, Kara felt that it might just work.
*
The rain came down heavily, persistently, but had done nothing to assuage the unbearable humidity that had been frustrating her all day long. Kara was hot, tired, and the air was too thick to breathe in comfortably, and she really didn’t want to be practicing right now.
It had been two days since their breakthrough, two days left until the big show, and Lee and Kara had been practicing every single hour that they both had free. She had gotten up in the dark of the early morning and slipped out of the cabin, returning just before dinnertime to her father’s looks, concerned, half hurt, and barely had the energy to carry a conversation through the meal before excusing herself to drag herself back to their rooms and fall into bed.
Kara had hardly spoken to her dad in three days, and she knew it was upsetting him. She just wanted this to be over, wanted it done with, and while she had improved considerably with all the practice they had been doing, she was still far from ready, and there were parts of the routine that Lee yet to teach her.
Today he seemed even more frustrated than she was, insisting they run through the routine from beginning to end over and over again until it came to her like breathing. He picked up on every mistake, corrected every misplaced foot, and she felt worse about herself now than she had the first day.
This was the eighth time they’d run through the whole choreography since lunch, and Kara was starting to lose her concentration. She lost her footing during the final sequence, pulled her arm back too far and overextended her back, pulling Lee too far with her and he yelped in pain.
“Sorry!” He pulled himself to standing and turned to face her, eyes reproachful.
“Are you trying to kill me?!” He practically shouted. Kara realized she had never heard him raise his voice before. it was raw and rasping. It scared her. He doubled over, palms resting on his knees as he caught his breath“You have to concentrate! Is this your idea of fun?”
Fun? Fun? Was he kidding?! God what a complete asshole, he thought this was fun for her? She was exhausted, and aching and frustrated and insecure and none of it was for her benefit. Was she having fun?
“Yes, yes as a matter of fact it is.” She was yelling too now, all of her anger from the past week, from her whole life pouring out of her, fueling her in her ire. “The show is in two days time, you won’t show me the lifts, I’m not sure on turns, I’m doing all of this to save your ass!” He looked up at her from beneath long lashes, eyes dark and dangerous. “What I really wanna do? Is drop you on it.”
She breathed in, out, in, out, staring him in the eyes the whole time just so that he wouldn’t think she was sorry. She wasn’t sorry. She was pissed off. This was not her idea of fun.
Lee rose slowly to standing, keeping eye contact with her, breathing heavily. At length he shrugged, the muscles in his shoulders rolling over his bones as his shoulders rose and fell.
“Well then let’s get out of here.” He crossed to the couch where his discarded jacket and her street clothes lay, shoved her things at her and turned his back while she changed. When she was finished he strode out the door without a glance back at her. She surmised that she was to follow.
She bent her head and pulled the hood of her coat tight around her face to shield against the large raindrops and followed the path his feet were walking, ending at his car. He pulled at the handle of the passenger side door, but it wouldn’t budge. He pulled again and still no movement. He pressed his face against the window and then slammed his hand down against the pane.
“I locked the keys in the car.”
Without any warning he backed away from the vehicle and started kicking at one of the white posts set into the lawn. Kara wondered if he had finally just lost it, but he returned a minute later with the post in his arms and motioned for her to stand aside. She moved away from him and watched, slightly horrified as he rammed the post into the car’s back window, glass shattering all over the back seat, and he reached in to pull out the keys.
Throwing the post carelessly away, he opened the passenger door for her. A sweep of his arm gestured her inside the car and she clambered in, dumbstruck. He slammed the door behind her and ran quickly to his side, pulling his own door closed as he settled himself in the seat. He pulled out quickly, tyres squealing loudly as they rounded the corner of the building and slid under the arch separating the resort from the staff quarters.
They were about ten minutes along a dirt-track leading them up into the mountains when she finally recovered her voice.
“You,” she said slowly, her words taking a minute to work themselves around her tongue, “are beyond insane.”
He looked at her from across the seat and started laughing almost immediately, a full blooded cackle that warmed her whole body. She found herself laughing too, almost maniacally in the wake of all their frustration from before, the tension between them breaking like the crest of a wave. For the first time in days her heart felt light. She settled back in her seat to enjoy the drive to wherever it was he was taking her.
Their drive took them forty-five minutes up the mountainside. By the time they got where they were apparently going the rain had stopped and the sun was making itself known above the tree-tops. Lee took her by the hand and led her down a path through the forest, thick here and fragrant, coming to a stop where a small stream transected their path in a thin valley.
Across the rift there lay the trunk of a fallen tree, and Lee climbed carefully onto it, turning to help her as she followed him.
Lee walked his way across the trunk, only just wide enough for his two feet to stand together. He stopped at the other end and span quickly on the spot, holding his arms out straight on either side of him. Kara grabbed a hold of a protruding branch and used it to lower herself to sitting at the wider end of the tree where it met the bank.
“Now, the most important thing to remember in lifts,” his voice was full on teacher Lee, firm and commanding but not stern, and she was reminded of how actually good at this he was, “is balance.”
He jumped in the air suddenly, switching feet front to back and landed lopsided, over corrected and took a moment leaning one way and the other trying to recover. “I got it now!” He laughed eventually, triumphant, and Kara giggled at his goofy smile.
“So where’d you learn to be a dancer?” It had struck her when thinking about how good a teacher he was that she really knew nothing about him, and he nothing about her. There hadn’t been much time in between dance basics and then the routine for chit chat. Kara was interested in him, who he was.
“Well,” Lee walked back and forth along the tree, using it as a balancing beam. As he spoke he bent down and dropped one leg onto either side so that he was sat facing her, “My father was a military man, a career soldier, and my brother and I were raised in the tradition, my brother is a pilot in the Airforce, I was supposed to go into the Navy like my dad. But I just didn’t get it, it wasn’t what I wanted, and when I was eighteen I told him that.”
Lee sighed heavily, a wistful note, and he cast his eyes to the side, remembering something from long ago. “Suffice it to say he wasn’t happy about it, I left home and never went back.”
He smiled at her sadly and swung his legs back up, pushing himself up on his feet and trying to find his balance again.
“So I was just hanging out in this luncheonette one day, a bunch of my buddies and me just sitting around doing nothing, and this guy comes in and says that Arthur Murray was giving a test, for instructors. They taught you all these different dances, taught you how to break them down, different ways to teach them.”
He spread his legs wide along the length of the bark, lunging forward and extending one arm. “It seemed as good a way as any to piss off my dad.” He said with a final shrug before crooking a finger in her direction, beckoning her to join him.
Kara rose shakily to her feet and Lee moved forward, offering his hand to take and then drawing her slowly out onto the log with him. When they reached the middle he stopped, pulled her arms up into frame, and walked her slowly backwards and forwards. Kara peered down at her feet but his finger beneath her chin tipped her head upwards. He pointed from her eyes to his, just like the first night they had danced together. She focused on his eyes and just let herself move, imagining that she could hear his heartbeat, and found that she barely even noticed that she was five feet up in the air. She had her balance.
After about ten minutes of careful dancing on their pine balance beam, Lee had declared her ready for “stage two” and guided her gently off of the trunk, tugging her through the forest and out into a wide field of long grass.
He positioned her where he wanted her and then walked off. Kara counted about twenty paces before he turned to face her.
“Ok. The big lift, the show-stopper. It’s very simple. You come at me, I lift you in the air. For now, that’s all you need to know.” She rolled her eyes, of course he wouldn’t just tell her the whole story straight off.
“So, when you’re ready, run at me.” He bent his knees and reached out his arms, and Kara balked. Was it really as simple as ‘run at me’? She highly doubted it. But she steeled herself, squared her shoulders and took off at a run.
When she reached Lee he brushed his hands across her waist and stopped her there. Confused, she shook her head at him, had she done something wrong? But he just backed up another twenty paces, and motioned for her to come again. She did and again he stopped her, backed up, and beckoned her.
“Ok, next time I’m gonna lift you. Don’t be scared.” Kara ran, and he picked her up about a foot off the ground before placing her back down and backing up. Apparently they were doing this in increments.
After about ten stages of lifting her different heights off the ground, Lee said he thought she was ready to go for it.
“Put your arms out to the side, keep your body straight, don’t flop, you have to hold yourself as much as I’m holding you ok?” Kara nodded, and he motioned that it was alright to come. But just as she started to run he stopped her. “You have to trust me Kara, we have to have that. If you don’t trust me, you will hurt me.”
Kara contemplated that. Did she trust him? She thought she did, though she couldn’t say why.
There was something about Lee that was right, that made sense to her in a way that no one had ever made sense. Not even her father. She nodded, drawing back on one leg and preparing herself for the jump.
Kara sprinted towards him, focusing only on his eyes, and when she reached him she did as he had told her. She entrusted herself to the strong hands clamping around her waist, pushing her skywards. She stretched out her arms, extended her legs, and for the briefest of moments she was flying, weightless in the air.
A laugh burst from her, a single note of pure joy, and then she looked down. In a split second her balance was gone. She was falling face first over Lee’s head into the long grass below.
Kara shrieked as they hit the ground. Lee had fallen backwards, pulled by her momentum and she had landed mostly on him. He groaned and she cackled, flopping onto her back to relieve him of her weight.
“You know,” Lee groaned again, “the best place to practice this, is in the water.”
The lake was huge - at least a mile across Kara decided as she sat on the shore untying her laces - and it was indescribably beautiful. You would never know it was here unless someone showed you, surrounded as it was entirely by thick forest.
She toed off her plimsolls and shrugged her jacket off of her shoulders. To her left she heard the soft slip of cotton and turned to find that Lee had divested himself of his tank top. He bent down to untie his own shoes and Kara watched, mesmerized, as every single muscle in his back rippled with the movement.
When he'd suggested that they practice in the water Kara had not considered the probability that he would be wearing less clothes than he already was. She’d gotten fairly good over the last week at not letting his incredible body affect her when they were trying to work.
There had been a slight hiccup when they had been learning the first portion of the routine. It involved him running his fingertips very gently down the length of her side to her waist, and the tenderness of the caress had been too much for Kara, her stomach fluttering as Lee's hands trailed across her skin.
She had managed to laugh it off, convincing him that she was just incredibly ticklish, but she hadn't been able to look him in the eye for the entire afternoon.
But this was too much. Lee was shirtless, and pretty soon he was going to be wet. Kara was not sure how she was going to be able to hand being so close to him without completely humiliating herself.
He turned to her once his shoes were off, his lips quirking into a smug smile when he caught her staring. His eyes flickered over her swiftly before he cocked his head in the direction of the lake.
“C’mon.” He murmured, a slight rasp troubling the usually silken tone of his voice, trembling down her spine and settling at the base, warming her all over. Lee took off for the water, and Kara rose to her feet to follow him.
He waded out about ten feet and stopped, turned and waited for her to join him. Kara met him there, an unexpected incline putting her off balance and she fell forward into him. His hands went to her hips to steady her, her own landing flat on his chest. His skin was soft and firm beneath her fingers, she resisted the urge to smooth her palms over his muscles. She was definitely in trouble.
“You ready?” Lee asked, hands moving from her hips to her waist, fingers squeezing her gently to reassure her.
She nodded, tipped her head one way and the other, and then nodded again. “Alright, bend your knees, and remember what I told you.” She nodded, he bent, and then she was up in the air above him, flying once again for that brief moment before she tipped over the edge and dived head first into the water.
“You’re right,” Kara sputtered when she resurfaced, pushing her hair back off her face, “this is a much better place to practice.” Lee chuckled as he wiped the water from his face, nodding and extending an arm to her to pull her back into position.
“Again, alright? Try to hold the position as long as you can.” Kara nodded and bent her knees ready, his hands clamped at her waist and hoisted her up, water dripping from her drenched shirt directly onto his face.
“Sorry.” She called down to him, but he shook his head quickly.
“Don’t think about it, just think about what you’re doing. Hold the position, don’t break it.”
Kara held the tension in her arms and legs, lifted her chin higher into the air. To her astonishment she stayed there, floating on the breeze, a bird soaring through the sky. She laughed ecstatically, and then she lost her balance, falling once more into the water below.
She emerged laughing, joyous, and swam back toward Lee, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and letting him swing her back round to their starting position. He was laughing too, swinging her a little too far and then pulling back, he set his hands back on her waist and steadied her in the water.
Their eyes met for an endless moment, and she thought she felt his fingers tighten slightly, his thumbs rubbing tiny circles along the flat plane of her stomach. He glanced downward and she was suddenly incredibly aware of how her pale pink cotton tank top, now soaked with lake water, was almost completely transparent. She held her breath, unable suddenly to move even an inch.
Lee raised one of his hands to her arm and hooked his fingers underneath the strap of her top where it had slipped down off of her shoulder to her elbow. He pulled the strap back up to it’s proper place, the backs of his fingers trailing her skin the entire way, and then all the way back down to her wrist.
Kara shivered and he met her eyes again, a kind of bewilderment clouding the normally crystal blue. For the first time she thought that perhaps, perhaps he wasn’t completely indifferent to her after all. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, shook his head. He seemed completely at a loss.
“One more time?” Kara asked eventually, figuring that bringing them back around to the task at hand would break the moment without embarrassment for either of them. Lee seemed to agree, because he nodded his head, and then hoisted her up without a word.
*
The gravel crunched beneath her feet, glistening in the bright morning sunlight as Kara and Sonja walked side by side along the path.
“I can’t believe it’s tonight.” She exclaimed. Despite all the work she’d been doing, the day itself seemed to have sneaked up on her, caught her unawares. Kara was nervous about the outcome.
Sonja smiled at her, face warm and understanding.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Lee’s a strong partner, he won’t let you mess up.” Kara drew in a breath and blew it out, she was right. Lee was good, he had taught her well, she could do this. And if she did mess up Lee would find a way to make it work, she believed that about him.
She smiled back at Sonja, holding the door to the staff locker rooms open for her and following her inside.
She stood up on a bench while Sonja circled her, making adjustments where the dress didn’t quite fit properly. Kara ran through the routine in her head, step for step, beat for beat, going over everything she had to remember.
“Thanks Kara.” She was interrupted amidst a stream of turns and looked down to where Sonja was staring up at her, eyes wide and sparkling wet. Though Sonja had been present at some of their rehearsals when they hadn't coincided with her own lessons, her involvement had mainly been restricted to correcting Kara’s posture, commenting on her form. They hadn’t really talked at all, especially not about why everyone was really doing this.
“I just wanted you to know, whatever Guy may have said about me, I don’t sleep around. I loved him, and I thought he -” she paused, blinked back tears and looked down at her feet. “I thought it was something special.” She looked back up, a mournful smile marring her beautiful face.
“Do you believe in God?” She asked suddenly and Kara, shocked, nodded gently. “Do you think He’ll forgive me?” She choked back a sob, bringing her hand to her mouth. Kara couldn’t take it, she reached out to the older woman, pulling her in to a tight embrace.
Sonja sobbed into her chest as Kara pressed her face into the soft blond curls that framed her head.
“He’ll forgive you.” She whispered vehemently, “He’ll forgive you.”
*
That night, for the second time in her life, Kara lied to her father. He knocked on her door shortly after seven, and she had been in bed already, waiting for him.
“You ok baby?” He had asked, coming further into the room. The concern in his voice did nothing to calm the lump of guilt that had set up shop in her throat.
“I’m fine really, I just have a headache. Do you mind if I skip dinner tonight?” Dreillide lay a hand against her forehead and pursed his lips.
“Are you sure? You should eat.”
“I’m not hungry, I just want to sleep it off. Really.” She burrowed down further under the covers, trying to convince him that the only thing she wanted to do then was lie there in her bed and not move.
“Ok. If you’re sure. I’m playing cards after dinner with Bill and a couple of the other guests, but I’ll check on you when I get back ok?” He rubbed his thumb along her brow and smiled his familiar, gentle smile. She loved him so much.
“No, dad you don’t need to check on me. It’ll be late when you finish your game, just go right to sleep. I’ll be fine, I promise.” He considered for a moment before nodding his assent. He leaned down and placed a kiss on her forehead, rubbing his nose against hers.
“Feel better kiddo.” He whispered and she nodded.
Kara waited exactly three minutes once she heard him leave and then she launched herself to her feet, grabbing her bag from underneath the bed and leaving by the side door. She ran all the way up to the staff quarters where she was supposed to meet Lee with his car.
Lee was already waiting when she got there, he opened the car door for her and Kara climbed in and buckled her seat belt while he rounded the car to his side. Her leg bounced up and down while she waited for him to start the car, and when she realized that he hadn’t she looked over at him.
“How’re you feeling?” He asked, a knowing smile playing about his lips.
“Like I’m gonna vomit.” She deadpanned, and he chuckled softly. “Just drive.” She told him. She stared out the window the entire way to the Sheldrake, running through the routine in her head, determined that she was going to achieve her goal.
*
Standing on the darkened stage in front of an entire ballroom of people, Kara couldn’t help but question her sanity. What was she thinking? She was never doing this again. Ever.
“Relax.” Lee whispered in her ear as the lights rose on them, lifting her arm over his head to their starting position. As the music started and Lee’s fingers drifted down her side toward her other hand. She plastered a smile onto her face and offered one final prayer to God, asking for a miracle.
The beat kicked in and they began to move in earnest, the now familiar steps of the dance presenting themselves in their proper order, Kara felt a surge of optimism. They were going to get through this, she could feel it in her bones.
Her forced smile turned to a genuine one and she beamed at Lee as she span into him, executing the move almost perfectly. He grinned back at her, mouthing the next move at her as she span away from him again.
They swept the floor together, feet in perfect time with the music, corner to corner and then back to the middle, and by the time Lee pulled her in close and whispered, “Ready for the lift?” she knew that she was.
They parted in the middle of the floor, backing away from each other until they were on opposite sides of the stage. Kara waited until the spotlight fell on him before she took her run up, but her timing was wrong, or something, and when she reached him she suddenly stopped short. His hands were ready at her waist, but she pulled back from them. The moment was gone, she’d missed it.
She tried to cover her mistake, did something crazy with her arms just to distract from the fact that she’d messed up. Lee caught on, spinning her to face him and directing her with gentle pressure from his hands while he figured out how to get them back into the choreography.
Kara followed him blindly, her confidence of moments ago shattered, a black hole taking up residence in her gut. He managed to get them back on track and she forced her face into a smile as they finished out the routine. The second and third lifts came off fine, the final sequence a grand flourish, but when the lights came up and the audience broke into applause she was just glad that the whole thing was over. She took her bows, mortified, and followed Lee off the stage.
*
As she changed her clothes in the back of Lee’s car on their way back to Kellerman’s, Kara started to feel halfway normal again. They had all the windows open and the fresh mountain breeze was cooling her skin as she came down from the exertion of their performance.
“You know, you did real good tonight. You worked really hard.” Lee’s voice called from the front seat. She snorted as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her shirt and pulled it on over her head. “I’m serious,” he assured her “you should be proud of yourself.”
“I didn’t do the lift.” She reminded him as she tucked her shirt into the waistband of her pants. When she looked in his direction their eyes met in the rear view mirror. He had been watching her.
“You did real good.” He repeated, his voice low and silky smooth. She pulled herself gracelessly into the front seat, catching her foot on his shoulder and slumped down into the soft leather.
Looking across at Lee she saw him turn his head to the front quickly, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Kara tamped down a smile, the muscles in her stomach rippling quickly. Something had shifted between them since the afternoon at the lake. Their last practice had been fraught with a new kind of tension, Lee's eyes lingering on her for longer, his eyes darker than they had been. It was like he’d only just noticed that she was an actual woman and not just some nosy kid who was butting her nose into his life.
The whole ride back she kept almost catching him looking at her, his head snapping back to the road each time she glanced his way. By the time he pulled to a stop outside his cabin at Kellerman’s, she was completely on the edge.
Lee cut the engine and got out of the car, coming around to her side to open her door for her. She took the hand he offered and climbed out, the fact that he kept her hand in his while he closed the door sending a thrill down her spine. Lee faced her, looking down at their joined hands, and then into her eyes.
Kara felt him lean into her just the tiniest bit. Her breath caught in her lungs, she couldn’t exhale. His thumb rubbed along her knuckles and Kara felt the contact all over her body, her skin tingling with anticipation. Lee was going to kiss her.
“Lee!” Karl was running toward them, panicked and clearly distraught, “C’mon,” he said when he reached them, not even pausing for breath, “it’s Sonja.” He ran off into the darkness towards Sonja’s room and with the barest glance back at her Lee followed him. Kara was close on his heels.
There was a crowd forming outside Sonja’s room, they parted swiftly as Lee and Karl shoved their way through. Kara followed close behind Lee and when they reached the steps that led up to her cabin she could hear groans from inside. Oh God.
“Did you call an ambulance?” Was Lee’s first question when they managed to make it into her room. Sonja was laid on her bed doubled over, clutching her abdomen. Her face was contorted in agony, her forehead drenched in sweat. As soon as she saw Lee she burst into tears.
“She said the hospital would call the police! She made me promise not to.” Kara stood frozen in the doorway as Lee sat gingerly on the bed, taking Sonja’s hands in his shushing her gently. Karl stepped further into the room, his face twisted in abject misery as he tried to explain. “He didn’t use no ether, nothing.”
Kara was suddenly furious with him, he had arranged this hadn’t he? Had taken her money and given it to someone who had done this?
“I thought you said he was a real M.D.” She reproached him, stepping from the doorway. When he looked her way she could tell that no amount of anger that she could conjure would make him feel worse than he already did.
“The guy had a dirty knife and a folding table!” He turned back to the bed, his face crumpling as he took in the sight of Sonja, her bloodstained shirt covering her injuries. “I could hear her screaming down the hallway and I swear to God I tried to get in, I tried.” His voice broke as he uttered the last and he shut his mouth tight, unable to say anything else.
Kara couldn’t take it, she had to do something, she had never seen anyone look like Sonja looked, shivering and sweating and terrified. Kara was terrified too. She had to do something.
On instinct, she turned and ran out the door. She sprinted along the gravel pathway and down the clubhouse steps, over the bridge and along the narrow strip of path down to the guest quarters. By the time she reached her cabin her breath was coming in short shallow pants, and before she had even the chance to wake her father he sat up in bed, alert to the sound of her ragged intakes of air.
“Kara? Baby is everything alright?”
“No,” She panted, rummaging around in his drawer for the emergency medical kit she knew he kept in there. Finding it she pulled it out and turned to face him. “You have to help me, Dad, please hurry.”
“What is it?” He asked as he rose from the bed.
“I’ll explain on the way, just get dressed, quickly, please.” He must have sensed the desperation in her tone because he got dressed swiftly and silently, and followed her out the door without any more questions.
I hope he covered this before he dropped out of med school. She thought to herself as they set out for their destination, and as they walked, she began to explain.
They reached Sonja’s room in record time, once Dreillide had been apprised of the situation he had understood the urgency and followed her at a run the entire way. She pushed their way through the crowd and ushered him inside. He dismissed everyone from the room in an authoritative voice and the group of onlookers dispersed, only she and Lee remained.
Dreillide examined the patient, gently shushing her when she groaned in pain, assuring her that he would take care of her in hushed tones that he had usually reserved for Kara herself.
“Who’s responsible for this girl?” He asked quietly, loading a syringe with some kind of painkiller.
“I am.” Lee said after a moment, Kara reached for him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Please, is she- Is she going to be alright?”
Kara had never seen her father look at anyone the way he looked at Lee then, disgust and disappointment and anger blinding in his eyes. It scared her in a way that she had never been scared before. He dismissed them, telling them he needed to be alone with his patient. They closed the door behind them and waited outside.
They stood on the porch in silence for half an hour or more, Lee and Kara and Karl, who was sat on the steps with his face in his hands. Kara rubbed his back absently for a while. Despite her earlier outburst, this wasn’t his fault. None of them would have known any better, and she knew that Karl would never have done it if he thought it would hurt Sonja.
The door opened and all three of them jumped to attention. Her father came out onto the porch, closing it behind him. Karl jumped forward to shake his hand.
“Thank you so much sir, thank you, we can’t begin to tell you how grateful we are.” Dreillide took his hand and offered a small smile.
“She’s going to be alright,” he told Karl, “she’ll need to rest.” Karl nodded and assured him that she would.
“Thank you sir.” Lee’s quiet voice was thick as he extended his hand for her father to shake.
Dreillide looked at Lee's hand in disgust and instead of taking it, grasped her by the elbow instead and dragged her forcefully down the steps. She cast a glance back at Lee standing on the porch, but his head was hung low and he didn’t see her.
“So this is what you’ve been doing all this time? These are the people you’ve been helping?” His voice was clipped as he hurried her down the clubhouse stairs. Kara nodded silently, so overcome with so many emotions she wasn’t sure if she could speak. “You said it wasn’t illegal!”
Dreillide stopped still in the middle of the bridge, fingers clutching tight at her elbow.
“You would have made me tell you.” She whispered.
“You’re damn right I would!” He turned away from her, turned back and then started walking again. “You’re not the person I thought you were Kara. I don’t know who you are. You’re not to see those people again.”
“If you would just let me explain-” She started but he cut her off, turning on her again, coming close so she could see the whites of his eyes.
“No! You’re never to see any of them ever again. I know these people Kara, Hell, twenty years ago I was that kid, that guy you were hanging all over in there, I know what he’s like, I know what he’ll do, and I don’t want that for you. Do you understand me?!”
“I don’t understand you!” She cried as he walked away from her. “I don’t understand you because you never explain yourself! My whole life you’ve been telling me one thing and knowing another, how am I supposed to understand you?”
Kara felt the tears start to roll down her cheeks, felt the burning behind her eyes, she always got a headache when she cried.
“You say you don’t know who I am any more, well I don’t think I ever knew who you were. And if you don’t have to explain yourself to me, then I sure as hell don’t have to explain myself to you!”
She turned and ran, not heeding his calls as they fell upon her ears. She ran from him as far as she could, until she could no longer hear him, until her lungs burned and her knees gave way and she stumbled, fell onto the grass by the side of the path. The events of the evening sat heavily on her chest. She struggled to breathe as everything came down on her, Sonja's face and Lee's eyes and her father's voice all swimming round her head in endless circles. How had everything turned into such a mess?
She knocked quietly on the old wooden door. Lee's light was on but that didn’t necessarily mean he was awake, and she wasn’t completely certain that he would want to see her anyway. It was a harrowed version of the Lee she knew who pulled back the door, surprise at seeing her there plain on his face..
“Can I come in?” She asked softly and he motioned her inside. As she passed she noted tear tracks on his face, red rims around his eyes. She looked around his room, sparsely furnished and messy as he moved quickly around it, picking up clothes off a chair and throwing them in a heap, drawing his covers over the bed.
“Sorry, it’s not a great room. You’ve probably got a great room.” Lee said absently, not really focusing on her as he continued to tidy.
“No, Lee, it’s a great room.” She said, too keenly she knew, but he had seemed so unsettled, so anxious, and at least now he had stopped tidying. He gestured to the chair he had cleared and Kara sat down on it, playing with her hands on her knees and trying to figure out the best way to say what she’d come here to say.
“I came here,” she stopped, that wasn’t, it wasn’t right. “I’m sorry about the way my father treated you” She eventually came out with. Not exactly elegant, but the truth at least.
He shook his head in disbelief.
“No your father, your father was great!” He sank into his own chair, eyes focused on some point just in front of him, remembering. “The way he took care of Sonja, it was-”
“Yes,” Kara interrupted, the image of Sonja moaning on her bed too much for her just then, “but I mean the way he was with you.” She paused, thinking about her father, the things he’d said to her before she’d run off. “It’s really me it has to deal with.” She said, more to herself than to Lee, the weight of what he’d told her, what that implied, settling over her finally.
“I came here tonight because, because my father-”
Lee was shaking his head, violently, wildly.
“No, no. The way he saved her, that was incredible. I could never do anything like that, that was...” He trailed off, staring at his hands. “You know I always figured that people thought a certain way about me, but that I knew better, I knew that no matter what they thought I was this certain person, and they couldn’t take that away from me. But your dad, tonight, he-”
He stopped again, thought for a moment, and then looked at her. “You know maybe the reason people treat me like I’m nothing is because I’m nothing.” He rose from his seat and started pacing.
“That’s not true.” She told him, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I’m serious, I mean, look at me. I chose this! I had a whole life in front of me, college, career, wife and two kids, all of it just waiting for me, and I threw it away for what? To piss of my old man? To stick it to him where it really hurts? What kind of person does that make me? I’m worse than nothing, I’m a self made nothing.” He laughed at himself, a choked sort of gargle and she rose instinctively, went to stand by him. He had stopped pacing and was stood, lost in thought in the middle of the room.
“None of that is true, Lee, you...you’re everything.” The words left her mouth and she felt suddenly naked, exposed as he stared at her, looked right into her.
“I’ve never met anyone like you.” He whispered, moved closer, studying her like she was something precious, handle with care. “You protect people, take care of them. Someone’s lost and you find them, someone’s bleeding and you-”
“Yeah I go get my daddy,” she cut him off, remembering his comment in the bar when they’d first decided to get into this mess, remembering how wrong she had thought he was, and how right he had turned out to be. “That’s real brave, like you said.”
Kara looked down at the floor. This whole thing was just one big mess, one awful week that everyone had come out of battered and bruised. She wished she could take it back, get into bed and go to sleep and wish for it all to have been a dream.
“That took real guts to go to him.” Lee insisted, and for a second she found it horribly amusing how they were each so very angry at themselves, each trying to persuade the other not to be.
But then his hand was on her face, in her hair, angling her head up to look at him. Kara met his eyes hesitantly, warily, intimidated by the sheer wealth of emotion he carried there. “I’m glad that you did.” He whispered. “I’m impressed that you did.” He laughed a little, and she smiled. “Are you afraid of anything at all?” The wonder in his voice was too much, she drew away.
“I’m afraid of everything,” she told him earnestly, Lee shook his head. “I’m afraid of what I did, of what I saw, of who I am.” He smiled a little at that and reached for her hands. It made her bold, gave her the strength to look him in the face and say it, the thing she had been wanting to say since the moment he’d first laid his hands on her.
Kara felt suddenly as though her whole life she had been just waiting for this moment, waiting to stand in this room with this man and say these words to him.
“But mostly, mostly I’m afraid that I’m going to walk out of this room, and never feel my whole life, the way I feel when I’m with you.”
Part 4
Author:
howlinchickhowl Summary: Kara Thrace had never thought she would ever find a man as wonderful as her dad, until the summer that he took her to Kellerman's – A crossover fic with Dirty Dancing
Characters: Lee, Kara, and various others
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Excessive sap and a little bit of cheese?
Beta Thanks: Huge thanks and apologies to
pressdbtwnpages who took what was basically a 40K word stream of consciousness that I hadn't read through since I'd written it the first time, and turning it into something that vaguely resembled a series of sentences that go to making a plot. Thanks to her also for her fact-checking skills, because a meringue is a tasty sugary dessert, not a dance, and I apparently think they are the same thing. And of course the brilliant comment on my general demeanor of melodrama - “it's just rain, it's not cylons.” So true, bb, so true.Author Notes:
sci_fi_shipper asked for a crossover with Dirty Dancing, and the idea really appealed to me, which is why this ended up being so epically long. I bit off a little bit more than I could chew, but I really hope that I've managed to do the request justice.“I want to try something.” Lee told her as she tied the laces on her jazz shoes, the smile on his face was something new, he seemed pleased with himself somehow. Uh-oh.
“Electro-shock therapy?” She joked. She had no idea what he had planned or how he’d come to believe that it was going to work, but she was pretty certain that it was not going to end well for either of them. She was a lost cause.
“No.” He said pointedly, holding out his hand. “Come here.” She rose and crossed to his side of the room, placing her hand into his outstretched palm. He pulled her round to face him, standing an arms length away, and wiggled her arm a little with his hand. “Relax!” He told her, “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
She smiled, and he dropped their arms, stepping a little closer so that his scent filled her nose, pine needles and sweat and some musky cologne.
“You’ve been having trouble finding the beat in the music.” He stated, and she nodded, that much was obvious. “So today we’re not using the music, today the beat is all you.” She must have looked completely panicked because he laughed gently, rubbing his thumb along her knuckles where their hands were still joined. “Kara relax ok? This isn’t going to hurt. I’m not tricking you, I’m helping you.”
She doubted that very much.
“You know the steps, ok? You’ve memorized them, now you just have to learn how to make them work.” He stepped back from her again, the smell of pine needles lingering though the rest was gone, and dropped her arm. “So move.”
He waited a moment, and when she stayed completely still he rolled his eyes in frustration.
“Kara, move.”
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, collecting herself, preparing herself for what he was asking, and then nodding, she moved her feet. She lost count on the fourth step and groaned in frustration.
“Ok. Ok, it’s ok.” He grabbed her hand again, ducked his head and forced her to look at him. “You have to stop counting.”
She gave him a look that she hoped conveyed how incredibly nuts she thought he was, and he smiled again. She wished that he would stop doing that, as attractive as he was under normal circumstances, when he smiled she could barely think of anything but the curve of his lips and what that might taste like.
“I’m serious!” He said, a chuckle escaping his throat, “You’re thinking about it too much. It’s not a beat, it’s not the mambo,” and here she raised her eyebrows because she was pretty certain it was the mambo, “it’s a feeling. A heartbeat.”
Something seemed to occur to him then, his face twitched in a kind of epiphany, and he brought their joined hands up in between them and laid her palm flat against his chest. Oh. His muscles rippled beneath his shirt, he pinned her hand to him with his own, and she wondered if he could feel the heat in her skin or see the flush in her cheeks. If he did he paid them no mind because he was still talking to her like she was supposed to be listening, and she nodded dazedly as though she had been paying attention.
“It’s not enough just to know the steps,” he said, and began tapping his index and middle fingers over the back of her hand in time with the beating of his heart beneath her palm, “you have to feel the music.” With every heartbeat he tapped his fingers, and Kara let her eyes drift closed, shutting out everything but the soft thump of his heart, the light touch of his fingers on hers, the warmth of his chest through the cotton of his shirt.
After a few moments just standing there and listening to, feeling his heart beat, Kara felt something stir inside of her, an itch in the soles of her feet, a kind of impulse in her hips, electricity flowing through her every vein, compelling her to move. And so she did.
Her feet moved into the steps she knew by heart easily, instinctively complying to the thrum of his heart, and she felt for the first time free. She focused on nothing, allowing herself to just be for a moment, and it was incredible.
“Breathe.” His soft voice in her ear was husky and closer than she’d realized.
She shivered and her eyes flew open, staring straight into his. This was it, the moment when she would screw it up, would lose count, but she didn’t. His heart kept beating, her feet kept moving, and a grin spread slowly across her face. His own grin matched it and he nodded his encouragement. For the first time since this whole thing began, Kara felt that it might just work.
*
The rain came down heavily, persistently, but had done nothing to assuage the unbearable humidity that had been frustrating her all day long. Kara was hot, tired, and the air was too thick to breathe in comfortably, and she really didn’t want to be practicing right now.
It had been two days since their breakthrough, two days left until the big show, and Lee and Kara had been practicing every single hour that they both had free. She had gotten up in the dark of the early morning and slipped out of the cabin, returning just before dinnertime to her father’s looks, concerned, half hurt, and barely had the energy to carry a conversation through the meal before excusing herself to drag herself back to their rooms and fall into bed.
Kara had hardly spoken to her dad in three days, and she knew it was upsetting him. She just wanted this to be over, wanted it done with, and while she had improved considerably with all the practice they had been doing, she was still far from ready, and there were parts of the routine that Lee yet to teach her.
Today he seemed even more frustrated than she was, insisting they run through the routine from beginning to end over and over again until it came to her like breathing. He picked up on every mistake, corrected every misplaced foot, and she felt worse about herself now than she had the first day.
This was the eighth time they’d run through the whole choreography since lunch, and Kara was starting to lose her concentration. She lost her footing during the final sequence, pulled her arm back too far and overextended her back, pulling Lee too far with her and he yelped in pain.
“Sorry!” He pulled himself to standing and turned to face her, eyes reproachful.
“Are you trying to kill me?!” He practically shouted. Kara realized she had never heard him raise his voice before. it was raw and rasping. It scared her. He doubled over, palms resting on his knees as he caught his breath“You have to concentrate! Is this your idea of fun?”
Fun? Fun? Was he kidding?! God what a complete asshole, he thought this was fun for her? She was exhausted, and aching and frustrated and insecure and none of it was for her benefit. Was she having fun?
“Yes, yes as a matter of fact it is.” She was yelling too now, all of her anger from the past week, from her whole life pouring out of her, fueling her in her ire. “The show is in two days time, you won’t show me the lifts, I’m not sure on turns, I’m doing all of this to save your ass!” He looked up at her from beneath long lashes, eyes dark and dangerous. “What I really wanna do? Is drop you on it.”
She breathed in, out, in, out, staring him in the eyes the whole time just so that he wouldn’t think she was sorry. She wasn’t sorry. She was pissed off. This was not her idea of fun.
Lee rose slowly to standing, keeping eye contact with her, breathing heavily. At length he shrugged, the muscles in his shoulders rolling over his bones as his shoulders rose and fell.
“Well then let’s get out of here.” He crossed to the couch where his discarded jacket and her street clothes lay, shoved her things at her and turned his back while she changed. When she was finished he strode out the door without a glance back at her. She surmised that she was to follow.
She bent her head and pulled the hood of her coat tight around her face to shield against the large raindrops and followed the path his feet were walking, ending at his car. He pulled at the handle of the passenger side door, but it wouldn’t budge. He pulled again and still no movement. He pressed his face against the window and then slammed his hand down against the pane.
“I locked the keys in the car.”
Without any warning he backed away from the vehicle and started kicking at one of the white posts set into the lawn. Kara wondered if he had finally just lost it, but he returned a minute later with the post in his arms and motioned for her to stand aside. She moved away from him and watched, slightly horrified as he rammed the post into the car’s back window, glass shattering all over the back seat, and he reached in to pull out the keys.
Throwing the post carelessly away, he opened the passenger door for her. A sweep of his arm gestured her inside the car and she clambered in, dumbstruck. He slammed the door behind her and ran quickly to his side, pulling his own door closed as he settled himself in the seat. He pulled out quickly, tyres squealing loudly as they rounded the corner of the building and slid under the arch separating the resort from the staff quarters.
They were about ten minutes along a dirt-track leading them up into the mountains when she finally recovered her voice.
“You,” she said slowly, her words taking a minute to work themselves around her tongue, “are beyond insane.”
He looked at her from across the seat and started laughing almost immediately, a full blooded cackle that warmed her whole body. She found herself laughing too, almost maniacally in the wake of all their frustration from before, the tension between them breaking like the crest of a wave. For the first time in days her heart felt light. She settled back in her seat to enjoy the drive to wherever it was he was taking her.
Their drive took them forty-five minutes up the mountainside. By the time they got where they were apparently going the rain had stopped and the sun was making itself known above the tree-tops. Lee took her by the hand and led her down a path through the forest, thick here and fragrant, coming to a stop where a small stream transected their path in a thin valley.
Across the rift there lay the trunk of a fallen tree, and Lee climbed carefully onto it, turning to help her as she followed him.
Lee walked his way across the trunk, only just wide enough for his two feet to stand together. He stopped at the other end and span quickly on the spot, holding his arms out straight on either side of him. Kara grabbed a hold of a protruding branch and used it to lower herself to sitting at the wider end of the tree where it met the bank.
“Now, the most important thing to remember in lifts,” his voice was full on teacher Lee, firm and commanding but not stern, and she was reminded of how actually good at this he was, “is balance.”
He jumped in the air suddenly, switching feet front to back and landed lopsided, over corrected and took a moment leaning one way and the other trying to recover. “I got it now!” He laughed eventually, triumphant, and Kara giggled at his goofy smile.
“So where’d you learn to be a dancer?” It had struck her when thinking about how good a teacher he was that she really knew nothing about him, and he nothing about her. There hadn’t been much time in between dance basics and then the routine for chit chat. Kara was interested in him, who he was.
“Well,” Lee walked back and forth along the tree, using it as a balancing beam. As he spoke he bent down and dropped one leg onto either side so that he was sat facing her, “My father was a military man, a career soldier, and my brother and I were raised in the tradition, my brother is a pilot in the Airforce, I was supposed to go into the Navy like my dad. But I just didn’t get it, it wasn’t what I wanted, and when I was eighteen I told him that.”
Lee sighed heavily, a wistful note, and he cast his eyes to the side, remembering something from long ago. “Suffice it to say he wasn’t happy about it, I left home and never went back.”
He smiled at her sadly and swung his legs back up, pushing himself up on his feet and trying to find his balance again.
“So I was just hanging out in this luncheonette one day, a bunch of my buddies and me just sitting around doing nothing, and this guy comes in and says that Arthur Murray was giving a test, for instructors. They taught you all these different dances, taught you how to break them down, different ways to teach them.”
He spread his legs wide along the length of the bark, lunging forward and extending one arm. “It seemed as good a way as any to piss off my dad.” He said with a final shrug before crooking a finger in her direction, beckoning her to join him.
Kara rose shakily to her feet and Lee moved forward, offering his hand to take and then drawing her slowly out onto the log with him. When they reached the middle he stopped, pulled her arms up into frame, and walked her slowly backwards and forwards. Kara peered down at her feet but his finger beneath her chin tipped her head upwards. He pointed from her eyes to his, just like the first night they had danced together. She focused on his eyes and just let herself move, imagining that she could hear his heartbeat, and found that she barely even noticed that she was five feet up in the air. She had her balance.
After about ten minutes of careful dancing on their pine balance beam, Lee had declared her ready for “stage two” and guided her gently off of the trunk, tugging her through the forest and out into a wide field of long grass.
He positioned her where he wanted her and then walked off. Kara counted about twenty paces before he turned to face her.
“Ok. The big lift, the show-stopper. It’s very simple. You come at me, I lift you in the air. For now, that’s all you need to know.” She rolled her eyes, of course he wouldn’t just tell her the whole story straight off.
“So, when you’re ready, run at me.” He bent his knees and reached out his arms, and Kara balked. Was it really as simple as ‘run at me’? She highly doubted it. But she steeled herself, squared her shoulders and took off at a run.
When she reached Lee he brushed his hands across her waist and stopped her there. Confused, she shook her head at him, had she done something wrong? But he just backed up another twenty paces, and motioned for her to come again. She did and again he stopped her, backed up, and beckoned her.
“Ok, next time I’m gonna lift you. Don’t be scared.” Kara ran, and he picked her up about a foot off the ground before placing her back down and backing up. Apparently they were doing this in increments.
After about ten stages of lifting her different heights off the ground, Lee said he thought she was ready to go for it.
“Put your arms out to the side, keep your body straight, don’t flop, you have to hold yourself as much as I’m holding you ok?” Kara nodded, and he motioned that it was alright to come. But just as she started to run he stopped her. “You have to trust me Kara, we have to have that. If you don’t trust me, you will hurt me.”
Kara contemplated that. Did she trust him? She thought she did, though she couldn’t say why.
There was something about Lee that was right, that made sense to her in a way that no one had ever made sense. Not even her father. She nodded, drawing back on one leg and preparing herself for the jump.
Kara sprinted towards him, focusing only on his eyes, and when she reached him she did as he had told her. She entrusted herself to the strong hands clamping around her waist, pushing her skywards. She stretched out her arms, extended her legs, and for the briefest of moments she was flying, weightless in the air.
A laugh burst from her, a single note of pure joy, and then she looked down. In a split second her balance was gone. She was falling face first over Lee’s head into the long grass below.
Kara shrieked as they hit the ground. Lee had fallen backwards, pulled by her momentum and she had landed mostly on him. He groaned and she cackled, flopping onto her back to relieve him of her weight.
“You know,” Lee groaned again, “the best place to practice this, is in the water.”
The lake was huge - at least a mile across Kara decided as she sat on the shore untying her laces - and it was indescribably beautiful. You would never know it was here unless someone showed you, surrounded as it was entirely by thick forest.
She toed off her plimsolls and shrugged her jacket off of her shoulders. To her left she heard the soft slip of cotton and turned to find that Lee had divested himself of his tank top. He bent down to untie his own shoes and Kara watched, mesmerized, as every single muscle in his back rippled with the movement.
When he'd suggested that they practice in the water Kara had not considered the probability that he would be wearing less clothes than he already was. She’d gotten fairly good over the last week at not letting his incredible body affect her when they were trying to work.
There had been a slight hiccup when they had been learning the first portion of the routine. It involved him running his fingertips very gently down the length of her side to her waist, and the tenderness of the caress had been too much for Kara, her stomach fluttering as Lee's hands trailed across her skin.
She had managed to laugh it off, convincing him that she was just incredibly ticklish, but she hadn't been able to look him in the eye for the entire afternoon.
But this was too much. Lee was shirtless, and pretty soon he was going to be wet. Kara was not sure how she was going to be able to hand being so close to him without completely humiliating herself.
He turned to her once his shoes were off, his lips quirking into a smug smile when he caught her staring. His eyes flickered over her swiftly before he cocked his head in the direction of the lake.
“C’mon.” He murmured, a slight rasp troubling the usually silken tone of his voice, trembling down her spine and settling at the base, warming her all over. Lee took off for the water, and Kara rose to her feet to follow him.
He waded out about ten feet and stopped, turned and waited for her to join him. Kara met him there, an unexpected incline putting her off balance and she fell forward into him. His hands went to her hips to steady her, her own landing flat on his chest. His skin was soft and firm beneath her fingers, she resisted the urge to smooth her palms over his muscles. She was definitely in trouble.
“You ready?” Lee asked, hands moving from her hips to her waist, fingers squeezing her gently to reassure her.
She nodded, tipped her head one way and the other, and then nodded again. “Alright, bend your knees, and remember what I told you.” She nodded, he bent, and then she was up in the air above him, flying once again for that brief moment before she tipped over the edge and dived head first into the water.
“You’re right,” Kara sputtered when she resurfaced, pushing her hair back off her face, “this is a much better place to practice.” Lee chuckled as he wiped the water from his face, nodding and extending an arm to her to pull her back into position.
“Again, alright? Try to hold the position as long as you can.” Kara nodded and bent her knees ready, his hands clamped at her waist and hoisted her up, water dripping from her drenched shirt directly onto his face.
“Sorry.” She called down to him, but he shook his head quickly.
“Don’t think about it, just think about what you’re doing. Hold the position, don’t break it.”
Kara held the tension in her arms and legs, lifted her chin higher into the air. To her astonishment she stayed there, floating on the breeze, a bird soaring through the sky. She laughed ecstatically, and then she lost her balance, falling once more into the water below.
She emerged laughing, joyous, and swam back toward Lee, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and letting him swing her back round to their starting position. He was laughing too, swinging her a little too far and then pulling back, he set his hands back on her waist and steadied her in the water.
Their eyes met for an endless moment, and she thought she felt his fingers tighten slightly, his thumbs rubbing tiny circles along the flat plane of her stomach. He glanced downward and she was suddenly incredibly aware of how her pale pink cotton tank top, now soaked with lake water, was almost completely transparent. She held her breath, unable suddenly to move even an inch.
Lee raised one of his hands to her arm and hooked his fingers underneath the strap of her top where it had slipped down off of her shoulder to her elbow. He pulled the strap back up to it’s proper place, the backs of his fingers trailing her skin the entire way, and then all the way back down to her wrist.
Kara shivered and he met her eyes again, a kind of bewilderment clouding the normally crystal blue. For the first time she thought that perhaps, perhaps he wasn’t completely indifferent to her after all. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, shook his head. He seemed completely at a loss.
“One more time?” Kara asked eventually, figuring that bringing them back around to the task at hand would break the moment without embarrassment for either of them. Lee seemed to agree, because he nodded his head, and then hoisted her up without a word.
*
The gravel crunched beneath her feet, glistening in the bright morning sunlight as Kara and Sonja walked side by side along the path.
“I can’t believe it’s tonight.” She exclaimed. Despite all the work she’d been doing, the day itself seemed to have sneaked up on her, caught her unawares. Kara was nervous about the outcome.
Sonja smiled at her, face warm and understanding.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Lee’s a strong partner, he won’t let you mess up.” Kara drew in a breath and blew it out, she was right. Lee was good, he had taught her well, she could do this. And if she did mess up Lee would find a way to make it work, she believed that about him.
She smiled back at Sonja, holding the door to the staff locker rooms open for her and following her inside.
She stood up on a bench while Sonja circled her, making adjustments where the dress didn’t quite fit properly. Kara ran through the routine in her head, step for step, beat for beat, going over everything she had to remember.
“Thanks Kara.” She was interrupted amidst a stream of turns and looked down to where Sonja was staring up at her, eyes wide and sparkling wet. Though Sonja had been present at some of their rehearsals when they hadn't coincided with her own lessons, her involvement had mainly been restricted to correcting Kara’s posture, commenting on her form. They hadn’t really talked at all, especially not about why everyone was really doing this.
“I just wanted you to know, whatever Guy may have said about me, I don’t sleep around. I loved him, and I thought he -” she paused, blinked back tears and looked down at her feet. “I thought it was something special.” She looked back up, a mournful smile marring her beautiful face.
“Do you believe in God?” She asked suddenly and Kara, shocked, nodded gently. “Do you think He’ll forgive me?” She choked back a sob, bringing her hand to her mouth. Kara couldn’t take it, she reached out to the older woman, pulling her in to a tight embrace.
Sonja sobbed into her chest as Kara pressed her face into the soft blond curls that framed her head.
“He’ll forgive you.” She whispered vehemently, “He’ll forgive you.”
*
That night, for the second time in her life, Kara lied to her father. He knocked on her door shortly after seven, and she had been in bed already, waiting for him.
“You ok baby?” He had asked, coming further into the room. The concern in his voice did nothing to calm the lump of guilt that had set up shop in her throat.
“I’m fine really, I just have a headache. Do you mind if I skip dinner tonight?” Dreillide lay a hand against her forehead and pursed his lips.
“Are you sure? You should eat.”
“I’m not hungry, I just want to sleep it off. Really.” She burrowed down further under the covers, trying to convince him that the only thing she wanted to do then was lie there in her bed and not move.
“Ok. If you’re sure. I’m playing cards after dinner with Bill and a couple of the other guests, but I’ll check on you when I get back ok?” He rubbed his thumb along her brow and smiled his familiar, gentle smile. She loved him so much.
“No, dad you don’t need to check on me. It’ll be late when you finish your game, just go right to sleep. I’ll be fine, I promise.” He considered for a moment before nodding his assent. He leaned down and placed a kiss on her forehead, rubbing his nose against hers.
“Feel better kiddo.” He whispered and she nodded.
Kara waited exactly three minutes once she heard him leave and then she launched herself to her feet, grabbing her bag from underneath the bed and leaving by the side door. She ran all the way up to the staff quarters where she was supposed to meet Lee with his car.
Lee was already waiting when she got there, he opened the car door for her and Kara climbed in and buckled her seat belt while he rounded the car to his side. Her leg bounced up and down while she waited for him to start the car, and when she realized that he hadn’t she looked over at him.
“How’re you feeling?” He asked, a knowing smile playing about his lips.
“Like I’m gonna vomit.” She deadpanned, and he chuckled softly. “Just drive.” She told him. She stared out the window the entire way to the Sheldrake, running through the routine in her head, determined that she was going to achieve her goal.
*
Standing on the darkened stage in front of an entire ballroom of people, Kara couldn’t help but question her sanity. What was she thinking? She was never doing this again. Ever.
“Relax.” Lee whispered in her ear as the lights rose on them, lifting her arm over his head to their starting position. As the music started and Lee’s fingers drifted down her side toward her other hand. She plastered a smile onto her face and offered one final prayer to God, asking for a miracle.
The beat kicked in and they began to move in earnest, the now familiar steps of the dance presenting themselves in their proper order, Kara felt a surge of optimism. They were going to get through this, she could feel it in her bones.
Her forced smile turned to a genuine one and she beamed at Lee as she span into him, executing the move almost perfectly. He grinned back at her, mouthing the next move at her as she span away from him again.
They swept the floor together, feet in perfect time with the music, corner to corner and then back to the middle, and by the time Lee pulled her in close and whispered, “Ready for the lift?” she knew that she was.
They parted in the middle of the floor, backing away from each other until they were on opposite sides of the stage. Kara waited until the spotlight fell on him before she took her run up, but her timing was wrong, or something, and when she reached him she suddenly stopped short. His hands were ready at her waist, but she pulled back from them. The moment was gone, she’d missed it.
She tried to cover her mistake, did something crazy with her arms just to distract from the fact that she’d messed up. Lee caught on, spinning her to face him and directing her with gentle pressure from his hands while he figured out how to get them back into the choreography.
Kara followed him blindly, her confidence of moments ago shattered, a black hole taking up residence in her gut. He managed to get them back on track and she forced her face into a smile as they finished out the routine. The second and third lifts came off fine, the final sequence a grand flourish, but when the lights came up and the audience broke into applause she was just glad that the whole thing was over. She took her bows, mortified, and followed Lee off the stage.
*
As she changed her clothes in the back of Lee’s car on their way back to Kellerman’s, Kara started to feel halfway normal again. They had all the windows open and the fresh mountain breeze was cooling her skin as she came down from the exertion of their performance.
“You know, you did real good tonight. You worked really hard.” Lee’s voice called from the front seat. She snorted as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her shirt and pulled it on over her head. “I’m serious,” he assured her “you should be proud of yourself.”
“I didn’t do the lift.” She reminded him as she tucked her shirt into the waistband of her pants. When she looked in his direction their eyes met in the rear view mirror. He had been watching her.
“You did real good.” He repeated, his voice low and silky smooth. She pulled herself gracelessly into the front seat, catching her foot on his shoulder and slumped down into the soft leather.
Looking across at Lee she saw him turn his head to the front quickly, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Kara tamped down a smile, the muscles in her stomach rippling quickly. Something had shifted between them since the afternoon at the lake. Their last practice had been fraught with a new kind of tension, Lee's eyes lingering on her for longer, his eyes darker than they had been. It was like he’d only just noticed that she was an actual woman and not just some nosy kid who was butting her nose into his life.
The whole ride back she kept almost catching him looking at her, his head snapping back to the road each time she glanced his way. By the time he pulled to a stop outside his cabin at Kellerman’s, she was completely on the edge.
Lee cut the engine and got out of the car, coming around to her side to open her door for her. She took the hand he offered and climbed out, the fact that he kept her hand in his while he closed the door sending a thrill down her spine. Lee faced her, looking down at their joined hands, and then into her eyes.
Kara felt him lean into her just the tiniest bit. Her breath caught in her lungs, she couldn’t exhale. His thumb rubbed along her knuckles and Kara felt the contact all over her body, her skin tingling with anticipation. Lee was going to kiss her.
“Lee!” Karl was running toward them, panicked and clearly distraught, “C’mon,” he said when he reached them, not even pausing for breath, “it’s Sonja.” He ran off into the darkness towards Sonja’s room and with the barest glance back at her Lee followed him. Kara was close on his heels.
There was a crowd forming outside Sonja’s room, they parted swiftly as Lee and Karl shoved their way through. Kara followed close behind Lee and when they reached the steps that led up to her cabin she could hear groans from inside. Oh God.
“Did you call an ambulance?” Was Lee’s first question when they managed to make it into her room. Sonja was laid on her bed doubled over, clutching her abdomen. Her face was contorted in agony, her forehead drenched in sweat. As soon as she saw Lee she burst into tears.
“She said the hospital would call the police! She made me promise not to.” Kara stood frozen in the doorway as Lee sat gingerly on the bed, taking Sonja’s hands in his shushing her gently. Karl stepped further into the room, his face twisted in abject misery as he tried to explain. “He didn’t use no ether, nothing.”
Kara was suddenly furious with him, he had arranged this hadn’t he? Had taken her money and given it to someone who had done this?
“I thought you said he was a real M.D.” She reproached him, stepping from the doorway. When he looked her way she could tell that no amount of anger that she could conjure would make him feel worse than he already did.
“The guy had a dirty knife and a folding table!” He turned back to the bed, his face crumpling as he took in the sight of Sonja, her bloodstained shirt covering her injuries. “I could hear her screaming down the hallway and I swear to God I tried to get in, I tried.” His voice broke as he uttered the last and he shut his mouth tight, unable to say anything else.
Kara couldn’t take it, she had to do something, she had never seen anyone look like Sonja looked, shivering and sweating and terrified. Kara was terrified too. She had to do something.
On instinct, she turned and ran out the door. She sprinted along the gravel pathway and down the clubhouse steps, over the bridge and along the narrow strip of path down to the guest quarters. By the time she reached her cabin her breath was coming in short shallow pants, and before she had even the chance to wake her father he sat up in bed, alert to the sound of her ragged intakes of air.
“Kara? Baby is everything alright?”
“No,” She panted, rummaging around in his drawer for the emergency medical kit she knew he kept in there. Finding it she pulled it out and turned to face him. “You have to help me, Dad, please hurry.”
“What is it?” He asked as he rose from the bed.
“I’ll explain on the way, just get dressed, quickly, please.” He must have sensed the desperation in her tone because he got dressed swiftly and silently, and followed her out the door without any more questions.
I hope he covered this before he dropped out of med school. She thought to herself as they set out for their destination, and as they walked, she began to explain.
They reached Sonja’s room in record time, once Dreillide had been apprised of the situation he had understood the urgency and followed her at a run the entire way. She pushed their way through the crowd and ushered him inside. He dismissed everyone from the room in an authoritative voice and the group of onlookers dispersed, only she and Lee remained.
Dreillide examined the patient, gently shushing her when she groaned in pain, assuring her that he would take care of her in hushed tones that he had usually reserved for Kara herself.
“Who’s responsible for this girl?” He asked quietly, loading a syringe with some kind of painkiller.
“I am.” Lee said after a moment, Kara reached for him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Please, is she- Is she going to be alright?”
Kara had never seen her father look at anyone the way he looked at Lee then, disgust and disappointment and anger blinding in his eyes. It scared her in a way that she had never been scared before. He dismissed them, telling them he needed to be alone with his patient. They closed the door behind them and waited outside.
They stood on the porch in silence for half an hour or more, Lee and Kara and Karl, who was sat on the steps with his face in his hands. Kara rubbed his back absently for a while. Despite her earlier outburst, this wasn’t his fault. None of them would have known any better, and she knew that Karl would never have done it if he thought it would hurt Sonja.
The door opened and all three of them jumped to attention. Her father came out onto the porch, closing it behind him. Karl jumped forward to shake his hand.
“Thank you so much sir, thank you, we can’t begin to tell you how grateful we are.” Dreillide took his hand and offered a small smile.
“She’s going to be alright,” he told Karl, “she’ll need to rest.” Karl nodded and assured him that she would.
“Thank you sir.” Lee’s quiet voice was thick as he extended his hand for her father to shake.
Dreillide looked at Lee's hand in disgust and instead of taking it, grasped her by the elbow instead and dragged her forcefully down the steps. She cast a glance back at Lee standing on the porch, but his head was hung low and he didn’t see her.
“So this is what you’ve been doing all this time? These are the people you’ve been helping?” His voice was clipped as he hurried her down the clubhouse stairs. Kara nodded silently, so overcome with so many emotions she wasn’t sure if she could speak. “You said it wasn’t illegal!”
Dreillide stopped still in the middle of the bridge, fingers clutching tight at her elbow.
“You would have made me tell you.” She whispered.
“You’re damn right I would!” He turned away from her, turned back and then started walking again. “You’re not the person I thought you were Kara. I don’t know who you are. You’re not to see those people again.”
“If you would just let me explain-” She started but he cut her off, turning on her again, coming close so she could see the whites of his eyes.
“No! You’re never to see any of them ever again. I know these people Kara, Hell, twenty years ago I was that kid, that guy you were hanging all over in there, I know what he’s like, I know what he’ll do, and I don’t want that for you. Do you understand me?!”
“I don’t understand you!” She cried as he walked away from her. “I don’t understand you because you never explain yourself! My whole life you’ve been telling me one thing and knowing another, how am I supposed to understand you?”
Kara felt the tears start to roll down her cheeks, felt the burning behind her eyes, she always got a headache when she cried.
“You say you don’t know who I am any more, well I don’t think I ever knew who you were. And if you don’t have to explain yourself to me, then I sure as hell don’t have to explain myself to you!”
She turned and ran, not heeding his calls as they fell upon her ears. She ran from him as far as she could, until she could no longer hear him, until her lungs burned and her knees gave way and she stumbled, fell onto the grass by the side of the path. The events of the evening sat heavily on her chest. She struggled to breathe as everything came down on her, Sonja's face and Lee's eyes and her father's voice all swimming round her head in endless circles. How had everything turned into such a mess?
She knocked quietly on the old wooden door. Lee's light was on but that didn’t necessarily mean he was awake, and she wasn’t completely certain that he would want to see her anyway. It was a harrowed version of the Lee she knew who pulled back the door, surprise at seeing her there plain on his face..
“Can I come in?” She asked softly and he motioned her inside. As she passed she noted tear tracks on his face, red rims around his eyes. She looked around his room, sparsely furnished and messy as he moved quickly around it, picking up clothes off a chair and throwing them in a heap, drawing his covers over the bed.
“Sorry, it’s not a great room. You’ve probably got a great room.” Lee said absently, not really focusing on her as he continued to tidy.
“No, Lee, it’s a great room.” She said, too keenly she knew, but he had seemed so unsettled, so anxious, and at least now he had stopped tidying. He gestured to the chair he had cleared and Kara sat down on it, playing with her hands on her knees and trying to figure out the best way to say what she’d come here to say.
“I came here,” she stopped, that wasn’t, it wasn’t right. “I’m sorry about the way my father treated you” She eventually came out with. Not exactly elegant, but the truth at least.
He shook his head in disbelief.
“No your father, your father was great!” He sank into his own chair, eyes focused on some point just in front of him, remembering. “The way he took care of Sonja, it was-”
“Yes,” Kara interrupted, the image of Sonja moaning on her bed too much for her just then, “but I mean the way he was with you.” She paused, thinking about her father, the things he’d said to her before she’d run off. “It’s really me it has to deal with.” She said, more to herself than to Lee, the weight of what he’d told her, what that implied, settling over her finally.
“I came here tonight because, because my father-”
Lee was shaking his head, violently, wildly.
“No, no. The way he saved her, that was incredible. I could never do anything like that, that was...” He trailed off, staring at his hands. “You know I always figured that people thought a certain way about me, but that I knew better, I knew that no matter what they thought I was this certain person, and they couldn’t take that away from me. But your dad, tonight, he-”
He stopped again, thought for a moment, and then looked at her. “You know maybe the reason people treat me like I’m nothing is because I’m nothing.” He rose from his seat and started pacing.
“That’s not true.” She told him, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I’m serious, I mean, look at me. I chose this! I had a whole life in front of me, college, career, wife and two kids, all of it just waiting for me, and I threw it away for what? To piss of my old man? To stick it to him where it really hurts? What kind of person does that make me? I’m worse than nothing, I’m a self made nothing.” He laughed at himself, a choked sort of gargle and she rose instinctively, went to stand by him. He had stopped pacing and was stood, lost in thought in the middle of the room.
“None of that is true, Lee, you...you’re everything.” The words left her mouth and she felt suddenly naked, exposed as he stared at her, looked right into her.
“I’ve never met anyone like you.” He whispered, moved closer, studying her like she was something precious, handle with care. “You protect people, take care of them. Someone’s lost and you find them, someone’s bleeding and you-”
“Yeah I go get my daddy,” she cut him off, remembering his comment in the bar when they’d first decided to get into this mess, remembering how wrong she had thought he was, and how right he had turned out to be. “That’s real brave, like you said.”
Kara looked down at the floor. This whole thing was just one big mess, one awful week that everyone had come out of battered and bruised. She wished she could take it back, get into bed and go to sleep and wish for it all to have been a dream.
“That took real guts to go to him.” Lee insisted, and for a second she found it horribly amusing how they were each so very angry at themselves, each trying to persuade the other not to be.
But then his hand was on her face, in her hair, angling her head up to look at him. Kara met his eyes hesitantly, warily, intimidated by the sheer wealth of emotion he carried there. “I’m glad that you did.” He whispered. “I’m impressed that you did.” He laughed a little, and she smiled. “Are you afraid of anything at all?” The wonder in his voice was too much, she drew away.
“I’m afraid of everything,” she told him earnestly, Lee shook his head. “I’m afraid of what I did, of what I saw, of who I am.” He smiled a little at that and reached for her hands. It made her bold, gave her the strength to look him in the face and say it, the thing she had been wanting to say since the moment he’d first laid his hands on her.
Kara felt suddenly as though her whole life she had been just waiting for this moment, waiting to stand in this room with this man and say these words to him.
“But mostly, mostly I’m afraid that I’m going to walk out of this room, and never feel my whole life, the way I feel when I’m with you.”
Part 4
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Date: 2011-07-25 01:24 am (UTC)THEY ARE SOOOO SEXY TOGETHER!! WHOOOO!
OMG and how much did I love all the little canon-y bits of goodness in this?! The beyond insane giggling! The we have to have this/trust each other Kara! Sonja just about broke my heart with the "Do you believe in God?" Such a great fit!
(I actually wandered off in the middle of reading this part because I had to go do a google images search of the shot where Johnny is dancing with Baby and the other chick is behind her holding her hips. I was going to work some cracky manip magic on that baby, but I got nothing!)
And OMG did I mention the sexual tension? CUT THAT WITH A KNIFE, WHY DON'T YOU?! I really love that we're getting to Lee's vulnerable parts here, because it makes me think more of Lee than Patrick. And you're doing such a wonderful job with Kara being half-girl, half-woman. The lift section was smoking hot and now, NOW, ON TO THE FABULOUS SEXY FIRST TIME!!! WHEEEEEEE!
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Date: 2011-08-17 10:40 pm (UTC)Hee! Putting canon bits in is fun, and I've always enjoyed them when they showed up in ice!pilots, I tried to fit them in where I could!
I love how excited about the sex you are, you make me chuckle :D
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Date: 2011-08-18 12:14 am (UTC)Canon callbacks are the most fun.
Lol. PORN OR GTFO. That's our motto around here ;)
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Date: 2011-08-21 05:27 pm (UTC)Lady I love your brain.
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Date: 2011-07-26 03:52 am (UTC)*RUNS TO NEXT CHAPTER*
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Date: 2011-08-17 10:41 pm (UTC)♥
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Date: 2011-09-23 03:45 am (UTC)As to the "piloty" part of this chapter - the sexual tension is fabulous! You've reworked some of my favorite parts of the film, and you've cut in some really fun bits and pieces of canon. Love it.
Total Aside: SOMEDAY (when you are not endlessly writing fic as you seem to be now) I would love to read a crossover where you totally change the storylines of each, rather than transposing. I know that's a HUGE request, but honey, you've got the chops for it. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing your writing forcing two dissonant storylines to mesh together into something totally NEW AND AMAZING!
And now a gif:
no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 12:41 am (UTC)I love that you mentioned this before mentioning pilots. When I was writing this story it became so much more about her relationship with her dad for me than it was about Kara and Lee. I love them, but I was so into this dynamic that I kind of got distracted by it. It's mostly my favourite part of the movie, Jerry Orbach was so talented, and every single time I watch that scene where she tells him that he let her down too and his face crumples and the sun shines, it legitimately hurts me.
So now I feel like you've extended me this massive challenge that's just sitting there waiting for me to high-five it. I just don't even know how/where I would start! I guess it's the kind of thing that comes from having the idea for it. This was a request so didn't come from the mire of my own brain, so maybe one day I'll think of something that I think needs pilots and do something crazy with it, who knows. Either way, I'll be thinking about it, DAMN YOU!
Outside of damning you though, you rock :D I love that your comments generally involve some variation on 'this is good, do it better', it's good to have someone push you, so thank you.
<3 <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 12:58 am (UTC)Outside of damning you though, you rock :D
Passing the comment right back to YOU... (and appropriate gif below). LOL
Seriously though, you do ROCK! Woot!
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Date: 2011-12-17 10:47 pm (UTC)the whole father-daughter part is heartbreaking. as is the part about the abortion - but that's part of the original story :(
the chapter as a whole is very sexy - especially the lake part.
i loved-loved the "beyond insane" mention - it was perfect there. and i'm sorry but have to stop here with this comment because Part 4 is yelling very loudly after me.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-02 04:58 pm (UTC)