Author's note: As this will be the last chapter of this fic, I'd like to thank all of those who have left such kind reviews. I had lots of fun writing this and I hope you enjoy the end.

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He finds his father's office unlocked but apparently empty, mostly dark inside. After a hesitation he wonders why the mostly ineffectual lamp on the desk was left on and goes inside to switch it off. He's made it to the desk when he hears "He's on Colonial One for the next hour."

He jumps a bit and looks over to the cozy worn couch where he makes out the partly shadowed blond figure. For some reason he clicks the lamp to the lower setting before he goes slowly over. Her demeanor seems calm and indifferent; he hesitates but then sits down next to her.

She belatedly adds, "Knowing him, maybe longer."

"What, are you just waiting for him?" he quietly asks.

"I'm expected to have reported here when he gets back," Kara explains. It doesn't explain why she's early, but he finds it easy to imagine she just needed to get away from some things. His father's quarters are admittedly a good kind of refuge, and even though Bill wouldn't be too happy about them just hanging out in here, he finds himself very tempted to stay. He's about to ask if she wants him to leave, but she adds a flat comment, "I guess he's pretty pissed off at me."

There's a bottle sitting on the table that was probably there when she walked in. He grabs a couple glasses off the little side table and pours them both a small amount. She's belated in leaning forward to pick hers up, and even then just holds it, motionless.

"He's frustrated," Lee says in a way of reassurance. "He knows you went through some bad stuff, though. I'm sure the smoke will clear up in a while."

Kara finally takes a sip after he does. She's shaking her head after she swallows. "I don't think so. He's been fed up with me before, but...I think it's different this time."

"Don't worry about it, okay? He's just. He's just being an asshole, but he can't be pissed at you forever. We both know he's forgiven me before for being a much bigger pain in the ass than you, so..."

"Yeah, but," she mutters, "you're his son."

He looks at her directly. She won't meet his eyes through the dimness, but he doesn't waver. "You're practically his too, anyway."

"It's nice to think so," she replies with a terse raising of brows.

He lets out a sigh, a Don't be that way look on his face. But she gives a resistant motion, like she's numbly resigned and can't put up with him weakening it.

She takes another sip and then is holding the glass in one hand, her other lingering at her mouth, at what she's about to say. He feels the impending weight of it somehow before she speaks.

"You know..." She seems to take a breath before she says, "I've never had much luck with family."

Some aching understanding twists into his chest, and while he would've tried to put these revelations about her out of his mind in the past, he just lets it sink far, far in, until he feels desperate to erase it from both of them. It means so many things about her at once, but mostly Lee is realizing and remembering how so much of the problem with them started with trying to punish each other, Lee dropping it at some point almost without realizing while Kara was seemingly never going to stop even after she forgot why she had to do it.

"Don't do that," he finally weakly says.

"Don't do what?" she says with an attempt at a laugh, but it's more incredulous-sounding than defensive.

"Look, I spent the last three months being a pain in everyone's ass, letting Dad be a pain in mine when I got off my game, thinking about frak-all except for how we were going to get you back. No, let me finish," he has to cut her off. "I know it's not much of a comfort, after going through that hell, knowing that somebody was waiting for you to come back, cause it doesn't fix anything, does it? But we both had to get you, and I don't know if it's family or what it is, but he needs you to be okay. So of course he's going to be pissed off at you when you get back and after all that, you're seemingly not even living."

She is still frowning, but she turns a different kind of somberness on him with a sidelong look. "You angry too?"

"Not with you. No," he cuts off with a little bitter scoff. "No, I'm pissed, because neither of us were naive enough to really expect New Caprica was going to be anything but a temporary reprieve, if much of that at all, but...I mean, something was different. And we had that much, and I frakked it up...A year ago, when we were down there..."

Something starts to tense just a little all over her body, and he just has to hope not in a bad way, has to keep launching in. He feels like he's running out of steam, though, so his next statement is simple, raw.

"I asked you the wrong question."

Kara presses her lips together. She swallows, and asks, "What do you want to ask me now?"

He slowly reaches over and takes the glass out of her hold and sets it on the table. He foolishly thinks about holding her hand before he knows not to, diverts the soft purpose of that into what he says. "Are you okay?"

Kara gradually breathes in deep and lets it out, not seeming to move an inch except for where the corners of her mouth are smiling in the same sad hope he saw in her when she first got back, but with more of an inertia, a prelude to something.

She doesn't look him in the eye, and she doesn't answer the question; instead, in a statement and a question and a scared declaration, she says, "Lee..."

And before he can start to wonder who the frak this woman is and how and when she became the big neon blaring meaning of everything good in his life, he's bringing her mouth into his with a gentle grasp at her cheeks, kissing and holding and drinking her in, just thanking the frakking gods that she kisses back and even more firmly, longingly.

She lets out one long sigh as he opens and deepens it, too insane to be slow about it, a hand already roaming from its place on the couch to hint between her thighs. She breaks off, just enough to plead, "Come here."

"I—" He's panting a little, tries to gesture as if to remind her where they are, but he already knows he gives about as much of a damn as she does. "Do we—"

"Get the—"

"—Yeah." He brushes his lips at hers just shortly, gets up.

When he comes back from locking the hatch, she seems to be uncertainly contemplating the couch, all too much in a fervent daze to really care. He reaches down and shoves the glass table away a bit and then he's down on his knees in front of her seated body, pulling her down. Her arms wrap up around him, her breath sounding eager when their laps collide in a rhythm as he's easing her down onto the floor.

At some point he pauses long enough to just squeeze her to him, overcome momentarily by how she's clawing at his shirt, breathing almost like she's going to cry. He's hugging her and kissing slow along her neck like she always seemed to like, and there's a terrible pang in his chest when he gets to her ear and mutters, "Did he hurt you?"

"...Not like that." She makes a bit of a gulping sound, running a hand through his hair. "Not like that."

He feels like there's still a hesitation, and he doesn't know what to say, but then she's saying, "Come on," so he comes on and slips them around for undoing and shucking off their clothes, feeling a solid familiarity in the thumping of arms and legs against the hardness of the floor, but it's also new and shockingly soft and Gods—

"Kara," he gasps, when her knuckle's teasing down his placket before she wrangles him out; he has the presence of mind to wriggle out of his last layer when she insistently shoves up at his bottom tank. The slight roughness and the demanding is so familiar that it's jarring—frakking beautifully alarming—when he keeps looking at her and seeing something in her expression that's so sad but also culminating, so much more focused on him rather than the act than he was ever used to. His nerves spin up into a sudden need that makes him rear up off his back and grab her down for an urgent, long-lingering, gradually slowing kiss.

When her lips leave his her hips are already lining up around him, and a couple seconds later they both open their mouths and still in that first silent gasp. She bites her lip and holds it, just feeling, until she finally starts slowly moving and they stretch into the twin echoes of short groans.

She seems to let the moment pull her in a way so much more soft and instinctual than she normally lets herself be, and he watches the flexing and pulsing and breathing of her, all languid over the soaring feeling in the air. They can't take their time too much, though, and after dropping forward to kiss along his neck and collarbone, she rocks a few movements into him and then sharply collapses through a long gasp, ending on a note that is his first name again, still a sweet and new sound from her tongue that makes him lose his mind a little bit; and when he hears it now he moves up, re-situates above her. She lulls him through it and when he falls and falls, weakens to pieces all over her she's nestling into his neck and shoulder and suddenly muttering, "Missed you. I missed you."

His mouth that's trapped down over her collarbone just starts slowly grinning.

"So, um."

"I missed you too," he breathes out, still overwhelmed, recovering.

"I just wanted to ask, if we could do this again...like really soon," she goes on, now in a more panting tone like his. Maybe because she's actually not sure what he'll say.

A tiny noise escapes her as he rearranges himself off of her, separating from her. But he answers by leaning over and kissing her with pointed eagerness, so the next sound is a somewhat amused-sounding hum.

And then the next thing she says is: "Scissors."

Admiral Adama still has the same pair of old-fashioned hair shears Lee can vaguely remember him owning when he was five years old, and it ordinarily crowns the top of his medicine cabinet. Kara runs water over her hair in the sink once she's mostly dressed again; she watches closely in the mirror as Lee smoothes all the blond tresses into enough order to chop them up to a decently even length.

"Shorter?" He laughs when she looks dissatisfied.

Mock-accusing, she mutters, "You like it long. Don't you?"

In the mirror she can see something, vulnerability and affection, momentarily distracting him from answering. "I'll do it shorter."

Bill arrives just as they're done cleaning her hair off the bathroom floor; he only sees Lee standing out closer to the entrance and is about to ask what's going on. Then Kara appears, clearing her throat and standing up straight and going up to his desk all reporting-for-duty and business. And maybe it's the imploring look that Lee very shortly gives his father, maybe it's the fact that she cut her hair, maybe it's something about the three of them being in one room together, but something is disarmed enough for him to walk up behind his desk, sighing, and just say, "Why don't you have a seat."

A second later Lee realizes he's getting a questioning look. He simply explains, "It can wait. I'll come back in an hour."

But as soon as she can find him afterward, he makes love to Kara again slowly and playfully under the blanket in his bunk, and he can't remember the last time he lost track of time, but he's late to meet his father, and for whatever reason the old man doesn't seem to mind.

They don't return to the loosening-boots routine; even when they were still using that signal they didn't really need it. It is mostly never exactly planned now; they just happen to find themselves alone somewhere, some days, and Kara makes a joke at Lee a second before she's pulling over and wrapping herself around him. He gets the worst of her teasing in the same moments she's looking so crazy about him it sends a pleasantly uneasy shock down his spine. She is tyrannical and greedy in her affection and it's different from any comfortable relationship he's ever bothered with. And he doesn't know why he ever told himself he didn't want it.

He swears she gets more gorgeous every day, and the whole thing feels like a long seasonal blooming in slow motion, the way he remembers with an intense ache the feel of knowing she was probably dead for so long, the way he has become inhuman in his understanding that he can't take anything for granted any more. After so many cleaner, simpler relationships of his life in the time before the fall, here amid the atrocities and the starving and the suffering, he scrabbles to give her what she'll let him give and wonders if this is him actually floating along the bright apex of his life. He thinks he's starting to understand how the Agathons look at each other, like they've seen everything they could ever need to see. He hopes on some planet out there there will be pollination, coloration, the phases of leaves falling, but more and more of her mouth and it doesn't matter if there isn't. He feels young and old and withering, and golden, and good.

Most of the time she's not any easier. She still has a look in her eyes like a disembodied part of her is running for the door whenever he's around; she still shifts and shimmies trying not to look like she's uncomfortable if he gets too sentimental, if she feels too close. Half of the time he isn't certain about anything, half of the time he wonders if she wishes she didn't want him, half of the time, half of all the time they have.

They're not going to live forever, and he's finding it harder to care.

As for the rest of the crew, they are remarkably oblivious. Yes, the two of them never appear to spend time together, but sometimes Kara will be the only person to mumble a response to something Lee will lightly say from all the way across the room, or he'll catch her eyes laughing when something happens he knows she'll find funny when they're seated at separate tables. They aren't the subject of rumor or novelty they might have been shortly after they met, which makes things easier. It is still a game, keeping everything under wraps, but there's a new kind of mischief in it; this time they're both playing.

One day when several pilots have volunteered to help clean up the deck storage rooms, he and Kara have spent the last five minutes in a snickering splash-fight that started with her launching a wet rag hard into the back of his head. When it becomes apparent that they're the only two who are going to show up to help with this room, Kara's look softens on him. She's sitting on one of the tables and scrubbing her fingers through his slightly slick hair.

"You're all wet," she says, wry and pleased, and Lee has to stop her hand at the waistline of his pants.

"We don't have time..."

She cocks an eyebrow speculatively. "What are you saving it for? The dance?"

He makes a thoughtful humming sound. "That's tonight, isn't it?"

"Uh-huh," Kara replies, hops off and into a play-sparring stance and landing a light one-two on his chest. A motiveless reflex: He grabs and holds her by both wrists before her arms can pull away. Still in a practically childish mood, she responds with a short high laugh. The smile, the perfect and powerful slice of those teeth forming a crevice on her face, makes Lee realize what he's about to say.

"I love you, you know that?"

Her smile falls, but not to a frown; her hands pull away but then come back, indecisive, joining her fingers through his.

"You're an idiot," she finally teases. "You know that?"

"Yeah." He laughs.

Then it's uncomfortable for her in a couple seconds, so he spares her by initiating an eager, brief kiss to the mouth and then actually affectionately pushing her back by the shoulder, turning her away, and just in time for somebody to come in after them.

Helo glances inside, seeing Lee first. "Have you seen—There she is." Helo holds up a file in Kara's direction.

Lee backs up to exit the room, nodding on the way out at Helo, who gives an acknowledging greeting.

Half a moment after the hatch is closed behind Lee, she cocks an eyebrow, noticing a self-satisfied smile on her friend's face.

"What?"

Helo shakes his head, laughing.

"What?" Kara demands again.

Helo's eyes stray in the direction of the entrance for just a second, then he smiles and shakes his head. "You think you've got everybody fooled."

"Ah-hah." Kara smiles ruefully. "...Do I?"

Helo lets out a chuckle and gives her a jeering shove to the shoulder. She gives it back.

Fight night. After Kara's just knocked down Racetrack, it's Helo versus Apollo, and Kara arrives back at the scene in time to see Lee hanging over the ropes to joke with Sam about something.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Sam is saying, giving Kara a one-arm squeeze as she walks up. "You break a leg, Apollo."

"Hey, yeah. Break two," Kara adds, and winks. Lee just kind of rolls his eyes at her, gives Sam a wave before he goes to sink back into the audience, gets back to revving himself up.

It turns out to be the most fiercely charged of the friendlier fights, soon attracting the most booming noise from the crowd yet, the most bets. Kara manages to be the one rearing up most of the excitement; everyone close to the fight can hear her jeering yells above all the rest, her brows fierce and her knuckles gripped tight at the ropes.

One jab to the face knocks Lee a few steps back; he shakes it off.

"Get him!—You bitch, c'mon!" Kara shouts.

Helo gets a couple punches under Lee's guard, and then she's doing a kind of angry hop, crawling up the ropes in the corner and hollering sharp: "Apollo, you motherfrakker—if I'm out thirty bits on you your ass is getting kicked twice tonight!"

That particular encouragement proves to be a mistake: A stunned Lee turns his glance just slightly towards Kara, and Helo blows a left hook that smacks him spinning into the ropes. He falls to his knees but trembles up; Tigh blows the whistle.

When Helo's getting water from his wife, Lee just grabs himself up, momentarily ignoring Cottle to turn a look of confusion on Kara, lips snarling to move over the plastic in his mouth. "Yuh belm..."

She moves up and reaches right between his lips, snatches out his mouthguard. "What?"

He asks, "Your bet's on me?"

For a second she just looks straight at him, like she doesn't get why this surprises him. Then her mouth slowly curls into a silent laugh. She tucks his mouthguard back in between his teeth, picks up his water bottle and pours him a few swallows before patting him coachingly on the jaw.

"Don't lose."

He doesn't. For the rest of the fight he catches Helo's weakest blocks with clever speed and even a good-humored attitude; the match just turns to so fast it's fun, and it's finally with a more or less level head but extremely windstruck, grinning exhaustion that Helo stays down to hug the mat with a groan.

Lee is accepting a well-done nod from his dad, shaking off his sweaty hair, when Starbuck catches his eye: Her eyes gleaming like that, you'd think she just won the fight, even in the gesture she gives that seems to be some half-effective imitation of gratitude. Her eyebrows flit up and down a couple times as she presents, unfolded and crisp, the nice fat number on her prize cubit bill between pinched fingers, before she crumples it into her fist and kisses the knuckles.

He cocks an eyebrow; he yells, "Yeah, and what do I get?"

Why is she laughing like that? Maybe the whole crowd, still rowdy from the excitement of the last bout, is wondering. Wondering what she's doing running back down to center, clutching fast to hoist herself up into the ring.

The part that will always be funny to everyone else is that Lee Adama looks every bit as shocked about it as half the people in the crowds. The witnessing masses, already loud with cheers and curses, become almost maddened with amusement, their voices a sudden chorus of galvanized crowing at what happens rather quickly: Kara Thrace jumps with comfortable eagerness into Lee's arms and clutches herself around him, her thighs and legs shifting and locking around his waist when his gloved hands can't hold tightly to her torso, in a way far too much like a lover for this to make much of any sense, for a second.

Even as Lee holds to the familiarity of her body, the immediate flustered look on his face makes Kara toss her head back in that short snicker of hers that's like a flint spark of a prayer; this happens only a second before the arc of her neck retracts, her head coming back down, the movement orchestrated by one of her forearms bringing his head up in an insistent cradle before she kisses him, mine, at the dizzy spinning axis of so many roaring voices.