Cappie dropped his device onto his bedside table and flopped back on his bed to wait for Terry to arrive. He was fed up and he needed something - someone - to distract him from his own thoughts.
The night had started alright. He’d been looking forward to going out for a drink with Octavia all day. Before she’d left on mission, she’d accused him of avoiding her and she’d been right. He hadn’t been sure how to deal with the weird jealousy that had come over him at seeing Becker kissing her awake. He hadn’t known what to make of the whole situation. Did the kiss mean that Becker was in love with O? Did the jealousy mean that he was?
Still, while she’d been away, he’d had time to think a little, process things, and he’d decided to face up to the situation and either get back to normal or maybe shift gears into… something else. So he’d invited her out for a drink. It wasn’t an unusual thing for them to do together and, almost immediately, he had been glad to be in her company again. Being around her was easy; she was funny, tough and smart and she kept him on his toes. He liked that. A lot.
But then she’d dropped her bombshell. He’d been right when he’d said to her that Becker’s kiss had meant something more than just, ‘Wake up please’. He’d known all along that she had a thing for him and he’d suspected that there might be something more on his end than he liked to let on but, until that day in her room, he hadn’t expected either of them to ever do anything about it. Apparently he’d been wrong.
Octavia had told him how she’d come back from mission and had the ‘talk’ with Becker that Cappie had suggested she needed to have. He’d had to listen, smile and say, ‘See, I told you so’, while swallowing down the sick feeling of disappointment that was churning up his stomach.
He was glad O had someone and that she was happy. She’d had as shitty a time as he had recently, what with people from home coming and going, then lookalikes coming along to stir the pot. She was his friend, first and foremost, and he cared about her happiness. He just guessed he’d kinda hoped he’d end up being a bit more instrumental in that happiness than he’d turned out to be.
They’d parted ways not long after her little revelation (he’d teased her a little about getting home to Becker) and he’d wandered back to his tower the long way, feeling a mixture of dejection and irritation at himself for letting himself become such a complicated mess. This wasn’t who Cappie was. Cappie was fun and spontaneous and bright and uncomplicated. Cappie had a chair cushion in the shape of his ass.
By the time he’d got back to his apartment he’d decided that he didn’t want to spend the night alone. He’d thought about calling in on Rebecca and seeing if she wanted to hang out but he knew that that would have come with a load of questions that he didn’t want to answer tonight.
For a long moment he’d stood in the communal part of the flat, looking at Angelina’s bedroom door, wondering if he should knock, but that business was a whole other tin of worms that, for tonight, was definitely best left firmly closed.
Eventually, he’d let himself into his room, pulled out his device and texted the one other person in Atlantis that might actually not mind being his late night booty call. Luckily, Terry seemed as keen on the idea as he’d hoped and, although he felt like a dick for using her like this, he knew that she was absolutely the best thing for him right now.
Terry had enjoyed the last time - and first, actually -- she and Cappie had been together. It was fun; and he really knew what he was doing, which was always a plus. So when he texted her asking for the gummy bears, she didn’t hesitate. There was nothing wrong with two young people enjoying their bodies. No strings attached.
She knocked on the door, clad in a tshirt and a skirt -- easy to get rid off, she thought -- and waited for Cappie to answer the door.
Cappie pushed himself up from the bed when heard a knock outside at the apartment door. He moved quickly and quietly out of his room and through the communal area, not wanting to disturb the occupants of the other three bedrooms - he was so not in the mood for a confrontation with Rocco right now - as he opened the door to Terry.
She looked good, really good. He swallowed and ran his tongue over his lower lip, his eyes skittering hungrily over her body, before he lifted his finger in a ‘Shh’ sign and ushered her towards his room.
Once they were inside and the door shut behind them, he relaxed a little and smiled, stepping closer to her.
“Hey,” he said, looking down at her. “I’m glad you came over.”
She smiled widely and bit her bottom lip when he opened the door. He looked just as good as the last time she saw him -- with more clothes than the last time, though, but those would come off soon.
“Hi,” she said, her lips still curled in a smile. “I’m glad you asked. Is gummy bears going to be our code? Because I kind of like it,” she admitted, chuckling lightly. She closed the distance between them, resting one of her hands on his chest. “So...” she began to say, looking up at him.
Cappie cut her off by leaning down to kiss her. He didn’t really want to talk right now, not even about gummy bears.
The kiss was intense and hungry and it made no apologies. He wanted her, urgently, the need burning through him like a fire from the pit of his belly. He wrapped his arms wrapped around her narrow frame, pulling her close to him whilst simultaneously walking her backwards, towards his bed. His hands wandered over her back and downwards, tracing the willowy curves of her all the way to her ass. He thought to himself how considerate it had been of her to wear a skirt. He took advantage of it, of course, scrunching up the fabric in his palms until he could feel the soft, smooth skin at the top of her thighs beneath his fingertips. A small shudder of excitement ran through him.
Okay, so no talking. She was totally okay with that. Hell, she hadn’t come here to talk in the first place. She’d come to do exactly what they were doing now.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair and pulling at it as the need for him grew more and more. She moaned softly against his lips at the feeling of his hands roaming down her body, touching the uncovered flesh of her thighs as he pulled the skirt up. Her hands moved down and pulled his shirt up over his head to get rid of it, breaking the kiss for just a split of second before she pulled him down to continue.
Cappie let her tug off his shirt, dipping his head and wriggling his hands free so that the checked fabric didn’t catch on his bracelets or rings. As soon as it was off, his touch returned to her body and he made quick work of stripping her out of her clothes, leaving just her underwear behind. Planning to rid her of that too pretty soon, he lifted her against him so that her long, flame red hair fell down around their faces as they kissed and she could wrap her legs around his waist.
Feeling his way, he carried her to his bed and lowered her down to the mattress without as much as a break in their kiss. However, once she was beneath him, he did pull away from her mouth, kissing her neck instead, then her collarbone and sternum, keeping his lips occupied while his hands explored.
She unwrapped her legs from his waist as soon as she hit the bed, and let her thighs slid along his sides. She moaned at the feeling of his lips moved down to her neck and collarbone. He really knew what he was doing and she was loving every single second of it.
Her hands moved down to the waistband of his pants, and began to undo them, feeling he had still too many clothes on.
Cappie responded to the feel of her tugging at his pants and he pulled back from her, kneeling up on the bed to give her better access. As soon as he felt his waistband slacken, he pushed the jeans down from his hips, taking the boxers with them, and leaned back over her so he could kick them off, along with his socks.
He looked down at her for a moment, resting his weight on his elbows and using one hand to push her hair back from her face. She was a wonderful, wonderful distraction. He smiled before lowering his head to kiss her once again.
~
Cappie fell back down against the bed, panting hard but with a wide, goofy smile spread across his face. Curls of his hair stuck to his forehead in sweaty swirls and he tilted his head back, panting a little laugh as he tried to catch his breath.
“That was quite a workout,” he grinned, looking up at Terry as he lifted a hand to mess up his hair into it’s usual, less clingy style. “I clearly need to spend less time at the bar and more time at the gym. Or, you know… some time at the gym.”
Terry chuckled breathlessly, still trying to catch her breath as she straddled his hips. She pushed away some of the strands of flaming red hair that were stuck to her skin. “This workout is more fun than going to the gym,” she chuckled. She moved away and went to lie down next to him, rolling onto her side to look at him.
Cappie bit his lip through the grin as he nodded in agreement. Sex was the only reason he was in any shape at all. He very rarely did any other exercise, except the odd game of whatever it was Atlantis was championing that week. The hockey had been fun. But not this fun.
He gave a little groan as Terry climbed off him and shuddered at the sensation of their bodies parting. Rolling onto his side for a moment, with his back towards her, he reached down and quickly rid himself of the spent condom, throwing it expertly across the room so it landed in the trash can with a wet thwack. Then he turned back to face Terry, settling his head on the pillow so he could look at her and reaching out an arm to around her, his fingers playing gently against the clammy skin of her back.
“I have a confession,” he said after a moment, his brows creasing a little as he gave her a look of innocent contrition. “I never had any gummy bears tonight. I’m sorry.”
She let out a small purr when he wrapped his arm around her and felt his fingers against her skin.
“No,” she let out a shocked gasp after his confession. “You tricked me into thinking we would really enjoy some gummy bears... Tsk tsk tsk... shame on you, Cappie,” she teased, her lips curling into a smirk. “I guess I have a confession to make too,” she said, biting her lower lip. “I didn’t care about the gummy bears,” she said with a small chuckle.
Cappie chuckled at her teasing, nodding along with the joke. Their code had worked perfectly; they’d both known exactly what it was the other one wanted and had been able to skip to it without any of the awkward in-between part.
Still, now, after the fact, there was no reason why they couldn’t do a little of the talking that they’d missed out on earlier.
“You know, I really don’t know hardly anything about you,” Cappie said, narrowing his eyes a little as he studied Terry’s flushed and smiling face. “You must have led one hell of a life, if what you told me the other day is anything to judge by.” She couldn’t be that much older than him - a year or two at most - and she’d already been an alcoholic and, more importantly, set herself on the road to recovery. There had to be a story behind that. He knew she might not feel like telling him, and he’d respect her decision if that were the case, but he couldn’t help being more than a little interested.
“Well, my life isn’t boring, that’s for sure,” she said with a small chuckle. And she wasn’t just talking about her alcoholism. There was so much more than that, and she began to tell Cappie about it. “It all started when I was a baby and mom died,” she began to say. She told Cappie about her cousin/uncle Tom and how he raised her without her father knowing she was alive. How at thirteen she started drinking because she felt so alone in the boarding school despite having friends. How uncle Tom, or Black Tom as he was known, used her powers for his crimes, but when he got caught he exonerated her of responsibility for her crimes. “And that was before I even turned eighteen,” she chuckled.
Terry tried to keep a positive mind even after all that happened to her. Mainly because if she didn’t she was sure she would go down a path she didn’t want to go again.
Cappie listened, rapt, as Terry told him about her life. He hadn’t been wrong- she’d lived through more than most people could even imagine. It put his minor troubles into sharp relief.
And then there was the whole powers thing. He’d realised pretty quickly, when they’d first met, that there was something different - special - about her but he still didn’t really know what, despite her explaining how this Tom guy had used her on account of it.
“So that guy who showed up, he was your real dad?” he asked, trying to work out how she was connected within Atlantis. “And you’re both, what… super humans? I don’t know; what do you call yourself?”
She nodded. “Yup, that was my dad. But he decided not to stay, which I can understand I guess. He has important things to do back in our world,” she said. Still, she would’ve liked if he had stuck around for a little longer. “Mutants,” she told him. “We have special abilities. Mine are similar to my dad’s, but also different. I can do more things than he can. I have what we call ‘sonic scream’, which basically is a very high pitched scream that can hurt the bad guys pretty bad,” she tried to explain it the best she could. “And it also allows me to fly, among other things.”
Mutant sounded like a bit of a harsh term, in his opinion, but if that was what they called themselves who was he to argue.
He nodded as she explained her powers, secretly glowing with something like pride at the knowledge that little, old, normal him was in bed with someone who could literally fly.
“Forgive me if I don’t ask you to demonstrate that screaming thing,” he laughed, running his tongue over his lips in mock nervousness.
“This is still all kinda weird to me,” he explained. “I’ve been in Atlantis over a year now but, back home, the most mystical thing I’d ever encountered was a Gamma Psi with a deck of tarot cards and black nail polish.”
She laughed with him when he said he didn’t want her to demonstrate her powers. “It’s understandable,” she chuckled. It’d be a mood killer for sure. “But I do have other sonic powers that won’t hurt you or break everything in your room,” she mentioned.
“Over a year? Wow... And you don’t miss home?” she asked curiously.
“I do,” he replied honestly. “A lot, actually, but this place is a home to me too now. Except, if I leave here, there’s no guarantee I’ll ever get to come back. At least I know that home home will still be waiting for me, when the time does eventually come.” He’d thought about that a lot after Casey had left, when he’d been trying to work out whether to leave or stick around. He thought that his reasoning made sense and that his decision had been the right one, even if losing Casey had left a gaping great hole in his heart.
“Anyway, tell me more about these other sonic powers,” he said, moving the conversation away from himself and focusing back on her. “They sound sexy,” he added with a little smirk, running one fingertip down her back in an attempt at making little tingles run through her. He didn’t want to think about his own problems tonight. He wasn’t going to let himself.
“After a year I imagine this would feel like home to me, too,” she said. She hadn’t been here long, but she was starting to feel a little like home to her. Paige was there, which helped A LOT to the whole home vibe.
“Sexy, uh?” she said with a chuckle. “Well, I can make sort of like a field around me or whoever I want to keep conversations private,” she began to say. “I can... make people lose their balance or knock them out unconscious.” She bit her lip as she thought about what she was able to do. “Oh! I have this thing where I can influence people, sort of like hypnotize them or make them fall in love... Like the sirens from the Greek Mythology.”
Cappie’s eyebrows rose, an interested, albeit ever so slightly edgy, look falling across his face. That was certainly an interesting power she possessed there.
“Come this way, honored Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans, and stay your ship, so that you can listen here to our song,” he quoted in his best Narrator voice.
“I was a Classical Literature major for a while,” he added, by way of explanation.
“That’s pretty cool, though, huh? I imagine, teamed up with the whole unconsciousness thing, there are probably not many people who could put up much of a fight against you.” And that was almost certainly why he was feeling rather vulnerable all of a sudden. Free will was something he valued rather highly. Still, he was almost sure she hadn’t used any of her powers on him and he wasn’t so insecure that he felt the need to ask. Besides, even if she had, it wasn’t like he was a stranger to using people to satisfy his own needs now, was he?
Terry was quite impressed when Cappie quoted Homer. She didn’t know much about Cappie - actually, now that she thought about it she hardly knew anything about him - but he didn’t seem the type to have read Homer. She was glad she was wrong, though. “Impressive,” she said with a smile.
She gave him a light shrug. “I guess,” she said with a small smile. “But don’t worry, I won’t use my powers on you,” she teased.
Cappie gave a small, smug quirk of his eyebrows when she called him impressive. He knew people were often caught off guard by the depth of his eclectic knowledge base, especially as he often portrayed himself as an uninterested party boy, and he had to admit that he rather liked witnessing that first moment when people realised that there might be more to him beneath the surface.
“I am,” he agreed, smirking. “In so many ways.”
He licked his lips, watching her expression. He got the impression she was used to people being a bit freaked out by her powers and, while he couldn’t deny that they were a little intimidating, he could imagine that it could make things kind of lonely for her. He decided to make a concerted effort not to let it bother him or, at least, not to show her it did.
“Could you make field around us right now?” he asked slyly, lifting his hand so he could run a flirtatious finger down her beautifully freckled arm.
“So I am starting to find out,” she said with a matching smirk.
“Sure... But why? What do you plan to do to me, Cappie?” she asked teasingly, running her fingers up and down his torso. She could so get an idea of what he wanted to do, but teasing about it made it a little bit more fun.
Cappie’s smirk grew into a wicked grin. He loved that she was playing along with him, even though he was sure the lascivious look on his face was giving her a pretty good idea of what he had in mind.
“And give away the surprise?” he said, pushing himself up on his elbow so he could look down at her. He leant over her body to press a hot, little kiss to her collarbone. “Why don’t we just say it’s probably going to be loud enough to keep my roommates awake…”