Fic: Marked, Kara/Zak, Lee/Kara, R-NC-17, pre-mini AU, see warnings 2/5

[lanalucy]

It had been hours, and Zak had gotten tired of waiting for them to call him.  He’d let himself into Lee’s place and sat down on the far side of the living room.  Even if they looked, they wouldn’t see him until they cleared the hall and actually walked through the living room to either the front door or the kitchen.  Kara’s clothes were stacked neatly on the chair, and two coffee cups were sitting next to each other on the countertop, so he knew they’d been out here at least once since noon.

He could hear the murmur of voices down the hall below the spatter of water in the shower. Sounds like they’re in there together.  A minute or two later, he heard Kara laugh.  The water turned off and he couldn’t hear much of anything.

“You got anything I can wear, Lee?  Those clothes smelled disgusting.”

“Some of Zak’s stuff is in the bottom drawer.  He’s smaller in the waist than I am.  Maybe something in there’ll fit you.”  He put his head around the edge of the doorway, his wet hair sticking out every which way.  All he could see of Kara was a flash of her hip as she looked under the bed.

“Found my underwear!”  She waved it in the air.

What the frak?  Do I want to know why my girlfriend is looking for her underwear?  No, I don’t.

Kara found a pair of cut off sweatpants with a drawstring and figured that was the best she was going to get for bottoms.  T-shirts, Lee had hundreds of, so she just grabbed one without even looking at it.

“By the way, you need to change your door code,” she called back toward him as she walked toward the kitchen.  “I remember thinking that last night.  It’s the only thing I remember.  Other than....Zak!”

“Zak?  You remember Zak?  Should I be insulted?”

“Zak’s here, Lee.”

“Oh.”

“You want coffee?”  She held a cup toward Zak. What the frak is the etiquette for frakking one’s boyfriend’s brother in a dream that turns out to be all too real and then talking to said boyfriend at said brother’s house the morning after? She doubted she’d be able to find a card for this special occasion.

“No, Kara.  I don’t want coffee.”  His voice was monotone.

She nodded and poured herself another cup, hoping the uncontrollable trembling she felt inside wasn’t showing, and handed a second one to Lee as he walked into the living room.

They’re not acting any different.  Have they been frakking since they met and I just never paid attention? As soon as Lee and Kara got settled into seats, he asked, “So. Is one of you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Zak and Lee were both surprised when Kara spilled out, “I got drunk last night.  So drunk I don’t remember leaving the club.  I don’t even remember which club.  I don’t know why I didn’t go home.  I don’t remember coming here.  I had this really great dream that evidently wasn’t a dream, and I frakked your brother last night.”  She took a breath and opened her mouth to say something else, then shut it and fixated on her coffee cup.

Three or four minutes of very uncomfortable silence later, Zak carefully said, “Was it the first time?”  He was really glad neither of them was looking at him closely enough to notice his clenched fists.

Lee and Kara both whipped their heads toward him and said, “What?  Yes!” at practically the same time.

They all sat there for another couple of minutes, until Zak broke the silence with, “You know that she dreams about you?”  He looked at Lee.

“What?  How -” was all Kara got out, before Zak interrupted her with a hand in her direction.

“You dream about him.  You say his name in your sleep.  Sometimes you turn to me at night and call me by his name while you’re frakking me in your sleep.”  He refused to look at Lee and see how this revelation was affecting him.  If his brother was in love with Kara, he didn’t want to know.  It was bad enough knowing she was in love with him.

“Oh.”

“How long have you been in love with him?”

“What?  Zak, I love you,” she protested.

“I know.”  Zak got up and walked around behind the couch.  He somehow found Lee’s hickey without looking, dug his thumb in a little.  “I want to see yours.”

Kara’s startled gaze was stuck to the hickey under Zak’s thumb.

“Now.”

“Zak,” Lee moved toward Kara protectively.

“No, Lee.  Just shut up.”  He looked at Kara again.  “You’ve never let me mark you.  Said you didn’t like that.  I want to see what you let him do.”  When she still hesitated, he finished, “He’s seen it all.  He frakked you last night.  You were in the shower together fifteen minutes ago.  I want to see his marks on your body.”  He watched Kara’s eyes widen. Was that fear?

Kara put the coffee cup on the table and stood, not looking at either man.  She closed her eyes, then locked her gaze on Zak’s and pulled off Lee’s t-shirt.

“The rest.”

Kara was ashamed, and for the first time since her first week at the Academy, she felt compelled to cover herself.

“The sweats, Kara.”  Still no inflection in his voice.

She pushed them slowly down her hips until they pooled on the floor.

“Turn around.”  When she did, he burst out, “What the frak did you do to my girlfriend, Lee?  Gods.  She’s got bruises everywhere.”  His eyes bored into the back of her head.  “Is this what you like?  You like to be hurt?  Because, right now, I have to tell you that I could do that, and not regret it for a second.”

Kara whimpered as she turned back toward them.  “No.”

“Then why did you let him do this to you?”  Now the hurt in his voice was spilling out despite his efforts at control.

Lee tensed on the couch and Zak dug his fingers into Lee’s hair to hold him still.  “How could you do this to her?  Do you like hurting women?”

“For gods’ sake, Zak, no!”  Lee twisted away, walked over and picked up the clothes Kara had discarded.  He held them out to her.  She looked at Zak, as if for permission to get dressed again.

Zak’s head was a whirlwind.  One thought rose to the surface.  He’d teased Lee the night he’d come over to meet Kara about being a girlfriend stealer.  It had only been a joke.  Lee had never actually done that.  But...“What happened that night after I passed out, anyway?”

“What night?” Kara asked.

“The night you two met.  Now that I think about it, that’s when everything changed between us.”  He watched Kara’s eyes dart to Lee and down again to the floor as her face crumpled.  Lee was studiously looking toward the kitchen.  “Something obviously happened that night.”

“No, Zak. Nothing happened,” Kara insisted.

Zak gripped the couch, holding onto control by a mere thread.  “Something happened that night!” he shouted.  “Don’t tell me nothing happened.   I could cheerfully beat both of you to a pulp right now.  You frakked my brother!  And you, you hurt my girlfriend!  In what universe is that nothing?”  He backhanded a lamp off the end table and Lee stepped in front of Kara.

Zak’s chuckle was almost devoid of emotion.  “I’m not going to hurt her.  You’ve already done that.”  He paced back and forth in the tiny bit of space between the living room and the kitchen.  “You’ve been frakking him in your head for weeks now, Kara.  I guess it was foolish of me to think it would never happen while you were awake.”

“We weren’t awake, Zak.  We both thought we were dreaming.”  Lee’s voice was pleading.

“Not helping, Lee.  Knowing that it was normal enough for you to be dreaming of frakking each other that it never occurred to either of you that it might be real?  I can’t wrap my head around that.”

He stopped, his back to them, his hands on the butcher block.  “I’ll go back to my room at the dorm.  I don’t want to see you outside of class.  A week ought to be long enough for those to fade.  I can’t talk to you until they’re gone.”  He paused, “And I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can talk to you, Lee,” then walked out the door without looking at either of them again.

Kara stood there, shocked, shivering.  She didn’t feel Lee take the clothes from her hands, and she let him dress her without any awareness of it.  When he pulled her into his arms. she struggled briefly, then collapsed into him, letting her tears go.  She woke up in her own bed, with no idea how she’d gotten home.

~~~

When Kara got to school the next day, there was an email to all of Zak’s instructors that a student, one Zakary Adama, had called in a “family emergency” and would not be in class for a week.  She got through the rest of her teaching day by sheer dint of will.

~~~

Kara picked up the phone twenty-nine times during the next week to call Lee, and hung up without dialing every time.

Every day, she checked the mirror on the bathroom door.  On Monday after work, when she saw where some of her bruises were, she could almost understand why Zak had been so angry.  Truthfully, she could understand anyway.  She’d frakked up, badly.  She should never have gone to Lee’s when she was wasted.  But gods!  She couldn’t even remember any of that night.  Except the dream.  That was etched in her memory in vivid detail.  And the door code.  Gods, how stupid was that?

~~~

The following Sunday, Zak let himself into the apartment and woke her up.  “Get dressed.  I’ll wait in the living room.”

When she sat on the chair across from the couch, Zak looked at her for a minute or two, with no expression on his face at all.  “I’m going away for a while.  I’ve already gotten my sabbatical approved by the Commandant of the school.  When I come back - if I come back, I’m switching to Raptors.  I only went with Vipers because of my dad and Lee, and I don’t want to take a chance that you’d be my instructor again.”

When Kara made a sound and put her hand on her mouth, he looked anywhere but at her.  “Don’t worry.  I didn’t report you.  I know this was at least as much me as you.  I didn’t give you much chance to say no.”  He stood and paced in front of the couch.  “When I come back, I don’t know if I’m coming back to you.”

“I can wait.”

“No, Kara, you can’t.  Don’t make promises both of us know you won’t, can’t, keep.   I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, and let’s be honest - you won’t last two weeks without a frak.”

“I think that’s a little uncalled for.”

Zak laughed.  “That’s uncalled for?  Maybe.  But it’s true.”

“I guess I deserve that.”

“You deserve a lot more than that, but I can’t - even as hurt and angry as I am with you, I still love you.  And I’m angrier at Lee.  You were drunk.  I get that - I’ve done really stupid things when I was drunk, too.  But Lee wasn’t drunk and he should have stopped you.”  He turned toward the stairs to leave.  “What would be really great is if you could promise not to frak my brother anymore.”

“I - “ Kara looked at her hands.

Zak snorted in disgust.  “You can’t say it, can you?  You’re stone cold sober and you can’t honestly tell me you’ll never frak my brother again.”  He climbed the stairs to the door.  “Have a nice life, Kara Thrace.”

~~~