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Title: One foot in sea and one on shore
Author: elly427
Rating: PG-15/R. End of the world. Angst. AU.
Summary: "I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for this." He smiles awkwardly and shoots a tight grin her way. "Is that strange?" Kara and Lee, slightly less damaged, all over again.
Soundtrack: Blue Rodeo, 5 Days in May. Title from Mumford and Sons 'Sigh No More.'
A/N: I have no idea where this came from, beyond a sudden yearning for Kara/Lee modern apocalypse fic and a desire to write a fic using our f-word instead of ‘frak.’ I have also been trying to write a fic with '5 days in May' for inspiration since I joined fandom. Here this is.
[][][]
The ships appear overnight.
There's no communication, no nothing. Kara flies her latest set of passengers - nervous New Yorkers - back to Anchorage and is only interested in the news so far as two of her next three bookings cancel on her.
Kara heads to her apartment and throws a few things into a bag that is already half packed. She’d like to blame it on the life of a pilot, never staying in one place too long, but that’s not it.
At the sight of the ships, something inside her had eased, had sighed finally, relaxing after what felt like years of waiting. She can’t explain it, and she doesn’t understand, but she when grabs two bags she already had packed and her spare stash of ammo, she’s still relieved. Glad, even.
[][][]
She gets a text from Karl, an old buddy from flight school.
Get out of the cities is all his message says, a picture of him and Sharon and their little girl flashing on her phone's screen when the message comes through.
She texts back - what? and karl, come on, whats going on, what do you know? but never hears anything back.
She loads her Cessna with supplies. Regardless of weirdness, it's the smart thing to do before winter.
[][][]
She first met Lee at the local dive, a month before shit goes down.
She’d come for the music, but he was hot, and he'd been alone, and when she smiled at him and set her shoulders to emphasize the small amount of cleavage this shirt gives her, he’d noticed.
He fucked her in the bathroom, against the stall door, and didn't stop even when the bathroom door opened, letting in the sounds of the crowd and the giggles of two teens.
She came hard, gasping against his mouth, and he groaned, low and long, and she came back to herself soon enough to hear the embarrassed titters of the girls, quickly packing their make up back into their purses before fleeing the restroom.
"Fuck," he’d sighed into her neck before letting her slide down his body to the ground.
"Mmm," she’d managed, reaching for her jeans and pulling them up.
"'Lee," he’d said, taking care of the condom and doing up his own jeans before offering his hand to shake.
"Kara," she’d replied, head tilted and on a laugh.
He’d tried to buy her a drink. She’d slipped out when he went to the bathroom an hour later.
[][][]
She meets him again under an overpass, watching Anchorage be destroyed.
The light from the alien ship is almost pretty, she thinks, blue and green ands so fucking powerful they had no chance, no chance at all.
The voice behind her is tentative, quiet. "Hey,"
She turns and sees him, recognizes him after a moment. He’s familiar, but it still takes a second to place him as another unknown hook up from the bar. She tenses; every part of her wants to run but there's no where left to go, so instead she squares her shoulders, sets her jaw and says "hey."
They watch. Something explodes, shakes the ground beneath their feet, and continues to burn, smoke thick and black.
The father next to her pulls his teenage daughter into his chest to muffle the sounds of her sobs.
What must be a gas pipeline explodes and burns, burns.
“What do we do now?” the man next to her asks bleakly.
“I have no idea,” she says.
[][][]
The dad starts talking about sticking together an hour into the assault. She starts looking over her shoulder and fidgeting at about the same time.
Lee notices. He’s never far from her side, but then again she’s never far from his.
The dad and another guy are arguing about where to go and whether they should head back into the city or not. Lee swings his arms and shakes them out, turns away like he’s taking a little stroll to loosen tense muscles. She follows.
[][][]
They take his truck. It's hella tricked out, and has more horsepower than Kara's, chagrined as she is to admit it. With Pops and the other guy shouting at each other, it hadn’t taken much subterfuge to move her bags into the already-full bed of his truck.
"Survivalist?" she asks once they're forty five minutes down the road.
"I like to be prepared," he shrugs, and she glances over and is able to read the tension in every line of his body, shoulders around his ears and hands tight on the wheel.
"I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for this." He smiles awkwardly and shoots a tight grin her way. "Is that strange?"
"No," she says without hesitation. She knows exactly what he means.
[][][]
At the first rest stop she tries to thank him with a blowjob. It's all she has to offer, she thinks. His hands twine in her hair for a moment before pulls her up, away from his crotch.
"Hey, hey," he says. eyes and voice gentle. Something inside her wants to lean into him, but instead she curls her arms around her body and shifts her weight to her hip, confrontational.
"I wasn’t-" she starts, but he interrupts.
"You don't have to -"
"No?" she asks. She doesn’t know him. He has no idea who she is. She doesn’t owe him anything, and vice versa. She’s hated owing anyone anything her entire life, and she doesn’t want to start now.
Her arms uncross and reach. Lee takes a gasping breath at her hand on his thigh. "No," he says, shaky and like he might reconsider.
She slides fingertips upward until his hand catches her wrist.. "No," he says again, this time firmly. His eyes are hard when she looks up. "You don’t have to-”
Kara has never been one to misunderstand rejection. “Okay,” she says, more uncomfortable than she’d like to be.
[][][]
They have no indication they're being followed. They have no indication that the aliens - fuck, aliens - have any interest in pursuing anyone beyond the larger cities.
Still, they drive.
She might not know him well, but she can tell Lee is tired. His face is pinched, lines there that aren't permanent enough to be normal. She'd seen the same look on her own face at the last rest stop.
Seven and a half hours outside Anchorage and still hours from daylight, Lee pulls over. Kara's half asleep against the passenger door and doesn't pay attention until he's back in the cab, pill bottle in hand.
He offers her one, but she shakes her head. “One of us should sleep for a while, then when those wear off we can switch.”
He nods, and grimaces when he crunches down on the first pill.
[][][]
“I was an investment banker,” he admits when she asks. “I was pretty sure the mortgage market was going to tank, so I got out early.”
That explains the truck and the clearly expensive but trying-very-hard-to-look-casual clothes and boots.
“What about your clients?”
He has the decency to blush. “There’s more than one reason I’m hiding out in Alaska,” he says.
They stop for a break, later. He’s in the middle of stretching, arms high over his head, when she punches him in the stomach. Once he staggers back up she clocks him in the face with her solid right hook.
For a second she thinks he might hit her back, but he uncurls his fists and cradles his cheek instead. “What the fuck?”
“For America,” she says, sweetly. He glares.
[][][]
His cabin is on a lake, far enough from civilization that they’re on gravel roads and then a dirt track for over an hour before they arrive.
There are solar panels on the roof, two diesel generators out back, and a fancy enough water purification system that Kara whistles, actually honest to God whistles when she sees it.
Lee has the grace not to meet her eyes. “I don’t mind being off the grid,” he says.
“Exactly how pissed off were these clients?” she asks.
[][][]
“I think I’ve slept with your brother,” she says casually, fingering the framed photo from Zak’s college graduation.
“Probably,” he says, reaching for the socket to plug in the fridge. “He’s kind of a slut.”
Kara snorts, then saunters over towards him. He finally finds the outlet and the fridge hums to life with a satisfying thump.
[][][]
The cabin is small, but has two bedrooms. She wakes long before he does most mornings, and takes the fishing equipment that he is hopeless with to the lake to catch breakfast.
He usually has coffee going by the time she returns, even if it’s usually the grounds from the day before.
It’s kind of like a vacation. She tries not to think about the cause.
[][][]
She holds up a picture of Lee and a blond that had been tucked way in the the back of the shelf it was on. "Sister?" knowing that's not it at all.
"Ex," he says shortly, reaching for the frame.
She holds it out, away from her body and him as he comes closer. "What happened?"
"She wanted kids, I didn't. I should have gotten rid of it before." He leans in and tries to reach for the photo.
"No," she says softly. "She's probably-" dead hovers on her lips, but she stops. Not out of jealously, but out of a sudden sadness for all the people, all the fucking people who are gone, dead, no more.
Lee drops his reaching arm, and turns. "Whatever. Do whatever you want with it." He stalks out of the room, out of the cabin.
She stands there, stuck.
After a while, she removes the picture from the frame. She puts the frame in the kindling pile and tucks the photo between the pages of the Shakespeare anthology she knows neither of them will ever pick up.
[][][]
"Married?" he says, casual, like it doesn't matter.
"Once," she says. She wants to say "we were young and I was stupid, and thought I was so, so in love. It seemed like the only thing to do."
Her thumb goes reflectively to her ring finger. She resists the urge to spin the ring that was once there.
Sam had once suggested tattoos, eyes bright and drunk. She’s glad now she’d resisted.
[][][]
The night the radio transmissions from Anchorage cut off, Lee holds her down on his bed and fucks her.
It’s nothing more than the emergency signal from the NPR station, but it’s been enough of a life line for her to believe the entire city isn’t in ruins. Lee must feel the same way based on the look on his face when the signal cuts abruptly to static.
They’ve never talked about it, but they both know Anchorage would be low on the list of priorities for an invading force (if either of them can think beyond the absurdity of an alien invasion. Which they can, and do, because, well, here they are.) Sure, there’s the naval base, and Kara has always assumed there were some secret missile bases ready to hit Russia from back in the day, but it’s small, and destroying the strategic targets would be enough, she thinks.
The static on the radio means something else, means that whomever is out there means business, means extermination, means their lives are, if not over, then permanently different than ever before.
She can’t fight the shiver than races down her spine. Lee’s touch, abrupt though it is, is a welcome distraction, his sudden mouth fierce and biting.
There’s no tenderness, no sweet words breathed against skin; instead his hands tighten around her wrists where they have them pinned above her head, and he lowers his chin and fucks into her, hips straining and breath huffing.
It’s hot; it’s undeniably hot, Lee rough and wild and out of control. But it makes something inside her ache, too. It’s an unfamiliar sensation. She has the fleeting thought that theirfirst time wasn’t meant to be like this, but then Lee bites her neck just right, just like he’s done before, and she shudders and remembers this isn’t the first time at all.
When he’s done, when he’s made her come with fingers and bites and sucking kisses, she sighs and he lies next her. His breath is still panting, heavy against her damp skin, his fingers tracing unaware patterns against the skin of her hip.
Her own voice startles her. “It-” will be okay? Was just a signal failure? Shouldn’t mean so much to them, so far away from the big cities, even though they both know Anchorage is small potatoes compared to the rest of the planet, and if they’ve moved on to exterminating cities of its size humanity has bigger problems than the ones they are both holding close to the chest.
Lee rolls on to his side, regards her seriously. “Kara-” he starts, then shakes his head. His hand trails down her side and in, and two fingers slide into her still fluttering wetness.
“Oh,” she manages, and when his mouth finds hers she kisses him again.
[][][]
They finally make it out of bed and into the shower, but it only takes her reaching for the soap for him to press her against the cold tile wall.
“They won’t, we’re - it’s fine, it’s fine, we’re safe-” she cuts him off, brutal, with her mouth. Lies will do neither of them any good at this point.
[][][]
He makes breakfast. The portions are slightly smaller than usual. She doesn’t comment on his sudden rationing, despite her grumbling stomach.
[][][]
They run together for a lack of anything else to do. No paved roads force them to the lakeshore, and, once discovered, onto the few deer trails around Lee’s cabin.
They take turns setting the pace until the trail opens in a meadow. Lee catches up to her and bumps her shoulder.
“Tired?” he asks in a tone, and she doesn’t even have to turn her head to see his grin. “What, you too busy getting laid last night to get a decent sleep?”
She rolls her eyes and jostles him back. He laughs and she - charmed, but unwilling to admit it - pushes back hard enough that he trips, loses his footing and stumbles down into the fragrant late summer grasses.
She follows him down willingly, lips finding his as her arms wrap around his neck. “You know, I think you’re right. I could use a rest.”
He laughs until his t-shirt going over his head muffles the noise.
[][][]
They have finite supplies, and, she supposes, a finite amount of time. They’ll last one winter, but never two. She doesn’t mention it, and neither does he.
[][][]
She’d nearly been due for a new IUD when the bombs hit. There’s no way she’s still protected, but Lee never asks and she’s not sure how to bring it up. She’s gone through their supplies and there were no condoms there the first time any more than there are now.
She’s not willing to give him, or the comfort sex brings, up. She likes Lee and the way he can get under her skin with a glace, leaving her shattered and wrecked with his fingers and mouth and body. There’s not a lot she wouldn’t be willing to give up for this.
[][][]
The snow starts early this year.
“Nuclear winter . . .” Lee trails off from the porch, dusk coming earlier than any year Kara remembers.
There’s nothing to say to that, nothing at all that can refute the truth. She climbs up the steps, reaches out and finds his hand reach halfways to her already.
It’s not enough, it could never be enough, considering. But it’s close, she’s surprised to find.
[][][]
She finds him on the step one night, bottle of Johnny Walker Blue clasped loosely between his fingers.
"I didn't know you were hiding the good stuff," she says.
He doesn't look at her. "Not hiding. Just . . . saving it."
"Okay," she says, stretching her legs out in front of her. "What for?"
Lee is silent for a long time before he takes a swig and offers her the bottle.
"I don't," she says. On his look, she elaborates. "Anymore." It seems silly, maybe, at the end of the world, but she'd fought for this control, fights for it now, and no fucking alien invader is going to take it away from her.
Lee is silent through a third of the bottle, until he finally sets it down on the step next to his hip. "It's been ten years tonight since I spoke to my father. And it’s - was - whatever - today is his birthday."
She doesn't say anything; neither does he. It's something that she knows him as well as she does, but knows nothing about him.
Forty-five minutes later he's slumped against her shoulder. She half-goads, half-carries him to bed, gets him tucked in and leaves water and two of their limited aspirin on the bedside table for him.
He stumbles out of the bedroom around eleven the next morning. She sets cold toast and warm tea down in front of him, and he eats it without thanks. It's still enough.
[][][]
One morning she finds Lee in the kitchen in the middle of reconstituting eggs. The sun is shining and birds are singing outside and warm air buffets the curtains through the open window.
It's easy - so easy to pretend that this is normal, just a weekend away with a lover, a brief respite.
But it's not, it's not, and Lee turns just as the thought crosses her mind.
"Hey, hey," he says, abandoning the eggs to wrap an arm around her waist, brush a kiss against her forehead, moving his body into hers.
Her arms find his neck and she sighs into his collar. They stay like that longer than they have before, long enough that when she shifts, he shifts with her, turns it into a sway, and he's suddenly shuffling them around the kitchen, humming something tuneless.
It's so normal and wonderful and fucking perfect she can't hide her smile, even though she bites her lip with trying.
He twirls her out of his arms with a flourish, pulls her back in over the sound of her laughter. Her mouth finds his and she kisses him, lips wide and grinning.
They break both of the juice glasses and knock most of the cutlery from where he'd laid it out on the table. The powdered eggs are definitely beyond edible by the time they get to them. Neither of them cares, even though it means no breakfast for today.
[][][]
She hears the sound long before she sees any sign of life, of movement. Her hand goes for the gun no where near her hip before she thinks twice.
Lee is there, from nowhere, at her side, and his hand finds hers, squeezing tight enough to hurt as the massive chrome machines emerge from the woods.
The man walking amongst them looks almost comically tiny, feet shorter and much, much slighter. Kara has a moment of faint hope that he’s here to tell them it’s safe, that they’re being rescued.
Then he smiles. “Hello Kara,” and fear slides down her spine.
Author: elly427
Rating: PG-15/R. End of the world. Angst. AU.
Summary: "I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for this." He smiles awkwardly and shoots a tight grin her way. "Is that strange?" Kara and Lee, slightly less damaged, all over again.
Soundtrack: Blue Rodeo, 5 Days in May. Title from Mumford and Sons 'Sigh No More.'
A/N: I have no idea where this came from, beyond a sudden yearning for Kara/Lee modern apocalypse fic and a desire to write a fic using our f-word instead of ‘frak.’ I have also been trying to write a fic with '5 days in May' for inspiration since I joined fandom. Here this is.
[][][]
The ships appear overnight.
There's no communication, no nothing. Kara flies her latest set of passengers - nervous New Yorkers - back to Anchorage and is only interested in the news so far as two of her next three bookings cancel on her.
Kara heads to her apartment and throws a few things into a bag that is already half packed. She’d like to blame it on the life of a pilot, never staying in one place too long, but that’s not it.
At the sight of the ships, something inside her had eased, had sighed finally, relaxing after what felt like years of waiting. She can’t explain it, and she doesn’t understand, but she when grabs two bags she already had packed and her spare stash of ammo, she’s still relieved. Glad, even.
[][][]
She gets a text from Karl, an old buddy from flight school.
Get out of the cities is all his message says, a picture of him and Sharon and their little girl flashing on her phone's screen when the message comes through.
She texts back - what? and karl, come on, whats going on, what do you know? but never hears anything back.
She loads her Cessna with supplies. Regardless of weirdness, it's the smart thing to do before winter.
[][][]
She first met Lee at the local dive, a month before shit goes down.
She’d come for the music, but he was hot, and he'd been alone, and when she smiled at him and set her shoulders to emphasize the small amount of cleavage this shirt gives her, he’d noticed.
He fucked her in the bathroom, against the stall door, and didn't stop even when the bathroom door opened, letting in the sounds of the crowd and the giggles of two teens.
She came hard, gasping against his mouth, and he groaned, low and long, and she came back to herself soon enough to hear the embarrassed titters of the girls, quickly packing their make up back into their purses before fleeing the restroom.
"Fuck," he’d sighed into her neck before letting her slide down his body to the ground.
"Mmm," she’d managed, reaching for her jeans and pulling them up.
"'Lee," he’d said, taking care of the condom and doing up his own jeans before offering his hand to shake.
"Kara," she’d replied, head tilted and on a laugh.
He’d tried to buy her a drink. She’d slipped out when he went to the bathroom an hour later.
[][][]
She meets him again under an overpass, watching Anchorage be destroyed.
The light from the alien ship is almost pretty, she thinks, blue and green ands so fucking powerful they had no chance, no chance at all.
The voice behind her is tentative, quiet. "Hey,"
She turns and sees him, recognizes him after a moment. He’s familiar, but it still takes a second to place him as another unknown hook up from the bar. She tenses; every part of her wants to run but there's no where left to go, so instead she squares her shoulders, sets her jaw and says "hey."
They watch. Something explodes, shakes the ground beneath their feet, and continues to burn, smoke thick and black.
The father next to her pulls his teenage daughter into his chest to muffle the sounds of her sobs.
What must be a gas pipeline explodes and burns, burns.
“What do we do now?” the man next to her asks bleakly.
“I have no idea,” she says.
[][][]
The dad starts talking about sticking together an hour into the assault. She starts looking over her shoulder and fidgeting at about the same time.
Lee notices. He’s never far from her side, but then again she’s never far from his.
The dad and another guy are arguing about where to go and whether they should head back into the city or not. Lee swings his arms and shakes them out, turns away like he’s taking a little stroll to loosen tense muscles. She follows.
[][][]
They take his truck. It's hella tricked out, and has more horsepower than Kara's, chagrined as she is to admit it. With Pops and the other guy shouting at each other, it hadn’t taken much subterfuge to move her bags into the already-full bed of his truck.
"Survivalist?" she asks once they're forty five minutes down the road.
"I like to be prepared," he shrugs, and she glances over and is able to read the tension in every line of his body, shoulders around his ears and hands tight on the wheel.
"I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for this." He smiles awkwardly and shoots a tight grin her way. "Is that strange?"
"No," she says without hesitation. She knows exactly what he means.
[][][]
At the first rest stop she tries to thank him with a blowjob. It's all she has to offer, she thinks. His hands twine in her hair for a moment before pulls her up, away from his crotch.
"Hey, hey," he says. eyes and voice gentle. Something inside her wants to lean into him, but instead she curls her arms around her body and shifts her weight to her hip, confrontational.
"I wasn’t-" she starts, but he interrupts.
"You don't have to -"
"No?" she asks. She doesn’t know him. He has no idea who she is. She doesn’t owe him anything, and vice versa. She’s hated owing anyone anything her entire life, and she doesn’t want to start now.
Her arms uncross and reach. Lee takes a gasping breath at her hand on his thigh. "No," he says, shaky and like he might reconsider.
She slides fingertips upward until his hand catches her wrist.. "No," he says again, this time firmly. His eyes are hard when she looks up. "You don’t have to-”
Kara has never been one to misunderstand rejection. “Okay,” she says, more uncomfortable than she’d like to be.
[][][]
They have no indication they're being followed. They have no indication that the aliens - fuck, aliens - have any interest in pursuing anyone beyond the larger cities.
Still, they drive.
She might not know him well, but she can tell Lee is tired. His face is pinched, lines there that aren't permanent enough to be normal. She'd seen the same look on her own face at the last rest stop.
Seven and a half hours outside Anchorage and still hours from daylight, Lee pulls over. Kara's half asleep against the passenger door and doesn't pay attention until he's back in the cab, pill bottle in hand.
He offers her one, but she shakes her head. “One of us should sleep for a while, then when those wear off we can switch.”
He nods, and grimaces when he crunches down on the first pill.
[][][]
“I was an investment banker,” he admits when she asks. “I was pretty sure the mortgage market was going to tank, so I got out early.”
That explains the truck and the clearly expensive but trying-very-hard-to-look-casual clothes and boots.
“What about your clients?”
He has the decency to blush. “There’s more than one reason I’m hiding out in Alaska,” he says.
They stop for a break, later. He’s in the middle of stretching, arms high over his head, when she punches him in the stomach. Once he staggers back up she clocks him in the face with her solid right hook.
For a second she thinks he might hit her back, but he uncurls his fists and cradles his cheek instead. “What the fuck?”
“For America,” she says, sweetly. He glares.
[][][]
His cabin is on a lake, far enough from civilization that they’re on gravel roads and then a dirt track for over an hour before they arrive.
There are solar panels on the roof, two diesel generators out back, and a fancy enough water purification system that Kara whistles, actually honest to God whistles when she sees it.
Lee has the grace not to meet her eyes. “I don’t mind being off the grid,” he says.
“Exactly how pissed off were these clients?” she asks.
[][][]
“I think I’ve slept with your brother,” she says casually, fingering the framed photo from Zak’s college graduation.
“Probably,” he says, reaching for the socket to plug in the fridge. “He’s kind of a slut.”
Kara snorts, then saunters over towards him. He finally finds the outlet and the fridge hums to life with a satisfying thump.
[][][]
The cabin is small, but has two bedrooms. She wakes long before he does most mornings, and takes the fishing equipment that he is hopeless with to the lake to catch breakfast.
He usually has coffee going by the time she returns, even if it’s usually the grounds from the day before.
It’s kind of like a vacation. She tries not to think about the cause.
[][][]
She holds up a picture of Lee and a blond that had been tucked way in the the back of the shelf it was on. "Sister?" knowing that's not it at all.
"Ex," he says shortly, reaching for the frame.
She holds it out, away from her body and him as he comes closer. "What happened?"
"She wanted kids, I didn't. I should have gotten rid of it before." He leans in and tries to reach for the photo.
"No," she says softly. "She's probably-" dead hovers on her lips, but she stops. Not out of jealously, but out of a sudden sadness for all the people, all the fucking people who are gone, dead, no more.
Lee drops his reaching arm, and turns. "Whatever. Do whatever you want with it." He stalks out of the room, out of the cabin.
She stands there, stuck.
After a while, she removes the picture from the frame. She puts the frame in the kindling pile and tucks the photo between the pages of the Shakespeare anthology she knows neither of them will ever pick up.
[][][]
"Married?" he says, casual, like it doesn't matter.
"Once," she says. She wants to say "we were young and I was stupid, and thought I was so, so in love. It seemed like the only thing to do."
Her thumb goes reflectively to her ring finger. She resists the urge to spin the ring that was once there.
Sam had once suggested tattoos, eyes bright and drunk. She’s glad now she’d resisted.
[][][]
The night the radio transmissions from Anchorage cut off, Lee holds her down on his bed and fucks her.
It’s nothing more than the emergency signal from the NPR station, but it’s been enough of a life line for her to believe the entire city isn’t in ruins. Lee must feel the same way based on the look on his face when the signal cuts abruptly to static.
They’ve never talked about it, but they both know Anchorage would be low on the list of priorities for an invading force (if either of them can think beyond the absurdity of an alien invasion. Which they can, and do, because, well, here they are.) Sure, there’s the naval base, and Kara has always assumed there were some secret missile bases ready to hit Russia from back in the day, but it’s small, and destroying the strategic targets would be enough, she thinks.
The static on the radio means something else, means that whomever is out there means business, means extermination, means their lives are, if not over, then permanently different than ever before.
She can’t fight the shiver than races down her spine. Lee’s touch, abrupt though it is, is a welcome distraction, his sudden mouth fierce and biting.
There’s no tenderness, no sweet words breathed against skin; instead his hands tighten around her wrists where they have them pinned above her head, and he lowers his chin and fucks into her, hips straining and breath huffing.
It’s hot; it’s undeniably hot, Lee rough and wild and out of control. But it makes something inside her ache, too. It’s an unfamiliar sensation. She has the fleeting thought that theirfirst time wasn’t meant to be like this, but then Lee bites her neck just right, just like he’s done before, and she shudders and remembers this isn’t the first time at all.
When he’s done, when he’s made her come with fingers and bites and sucking kisses, she sighs and he lies next her. His breath is still panting, heavy against her damp skin, his fingers tracing unaware patterns against the skin of her hip.
Her own voice startles her. “It-” will be okay? Was just a signal failure? Shouldn’t mean so much to them, so far away from the big cities, even though they both know Anchorage is small potatoes compared to the rest of the planet, and if they’ve moved on to exterminating cities of its size humanity has bigger problems than the ones they are both holding close to the chest.
Lee rolls on to his side, regards her seriously. “Kara-” he starts, then shakes his head. His hand trails down her side and in, and two fingers slide into her still fluttering wetness.
“Oh,” she manages, and when his mouth finds hers she kisses him again.
[][][]
They finally make it out of bed and into the shower, but it only takes her reaching for the soap for him to press her against the cold tile wall.
“They won’t, we’re - it’s fine, it’s fine, we’re safe-” she cuts him off, brutal, with her mouth. Lies will do neither of them any good at this point.
[][][]
He makes breakfast. The portions are slightly smaller than usual. She doesn’t comment on his sudden rationing, despite her grumbling stomach.
[][][]
They run together for a lack of anything else to do. No paved roads force them to the lakeshore, and, once discovered, onto the few deer trails around Lee’s cabin.
They take turns setting the pace until the trail opens in a meadow. Lee catches up to her and bumps her shoulder.
“Tired?” he asks in a tone, and she doesn’t even have to turn her head to see his grin. “What, you too busy getting laid last night to get a decent sleep?”
She rolls her eyes and jostles him back. He laughs and she - charmed, but unwilling to admit it - pushes back hard enough that he trips, loses his footing and stumbles down into the fragrant late summer grasses.
She follows him down willingly, lips finding his as her arms wrap around his neck. “You know, I think you’re right. I could use a rest.”
He laughs until his t-shirt going over his head muffles the noise.
[][][]
They have finite supplies, and, she supposes, a finite amount of time. They’ll last one winter, but never two. She doesn’t mention it, and neither does he.
[][][]
She’d nearly been due for a new IUD when the bombs hit. There’s no way she’s still protected, but Lee never asks and she’s not sure how to bring it up. She’s gone through their supplies and there were no condoms there the first time any more than there are now.
She’s not willing to give him, or the comfort sex brings, up. She likes Lee and the way he can get under her skin with a glace, leaving her shattered and wrecked with his fingers and mouth and body. There’s not a lot she wouldn’t be willing to give up for this.
[][][]
The snow starts early this year.
“Nuclear winter . . .” Lee trails off from the porch, dusk coming earlier than any year Kara remembers.
There’s nothing to say to that, nothing at all that can refute the truth. She climbs up the steps, reaches out and finds his hand reach halfways to her already.
It’s not enough, it could never be enough, considering. But it’s close, she’s surprised to find.
[][][]
She finds him on the step one night, bottle of Johnny Walker Blue clasped loosely between his fingers.
"I didn't know you were hiding the good stuff," she says.
He doesn't look at her. "Not hiding. Just . . . saving it."
"Okay," she says, stretching her legs out in front of her. "What for?"
Lee is silent for a long time before he takes a swig and offers her the bottle.
"I don't," she says. On his look, she elaborates. "Anymore." It seems silly, maybe, at the end of the world, but she'd fought for this control, fights for it now, and no fucking alien invader is going to take it away from her.
Lee is silent through a third of the bottle, until he finally sets it down on the step next to his hip. "It's been ten years tonight since I spoke to my father. And it’s - was - whatever - today is his birthday."
She doesn't say anything; neither does he. It's something that she knows him as well as she does, but knows nothing about him.
Forty-five minutes later he's slumped against her shoulder. She half-goads, half-carries him to bed, gets him tucked in and leaves water and two of their limited aspirin on the bedside table for him.
He stumbles out of the bedroom around eleven the next morning. She sets cold toast and warm tea down in front of him, and he eats it without thanks. It's still enough.
[][][]
One morning she finds Lee in the kitchen in the middle of reconstituting eggs. The sun is shining and birds are singing outside and warm air buffets the curtains through the open window.
It's easy - so easy to pretend that this is normal, just a weekend away with a lover, a brief respite.
But it's not, it's not, and Lee turns just as the thought crosses her mind.
"Hey, hey," he says, abandoning the eggs to wrap an arm around her waist, brush a kiss against her forehead, moving his body into hers.
Her arms find his neck and she sighs into his collar. They stay like that longer than they have before, long enough that when she shifts, he shifts with her, turns it into a sway, and he's suddenly shuffling them around the kitchen, humming something tuneless.
It's so normal and wonderful and fucking perfect she can't hide her smile, even though she bites her lip with trying.
He twirls her out of his arms with a flourish, pulls her back in over the sound of her laughter. Her mouth finds his and she kisses him, lips wide and grinning.
They break both of the juice glasses and knock most of the cutlery from where he'd laid it out on the table. The powdered eggs are definitely beyond edible by the time they get to them. Neither of them cares, even though it means no breakfast for today.
[][][]
She hears the sound long before she sees any sign of life, of movement. Her hand goes for the gun no where near her hip before she thinks twice.
Lee is there, from nowhere, at her side, and his hand finds hers, squeezing tight enough to hurt as the massive chrome machines emerge from the woods.
The man walking amongst them looks almost comically tiny, feet shorter and much, much slighter. Kara has a moment of faint hope that he’s here to tell them it’s safe, that they’re being rescued.
Then he smiles. “Hello Kara,” and fear slides down her spine.
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