corilannam | How I spent my work day yesterday (Reply)

It's either feast or famine at my workplace, and this week has definitely been of the famine. So how have I been spending my time?

You would be correct if you guessed any of the following:
1) bitching about it being winter
2) obsessing over Battlestar Galactica
3) whining about winter
4) writing pointless bits of BSG shipper fic
5) checking the weather report
6) wondering if I left enough space on my harddrive at home for my Cupid download (the answer to that turned out to be "no")

And now I inflict the results of my boredom on you. This is a wee bit of BSG Starbuck/Apollo fic that's going to be totally irrelevant once the season finale airs in the UK Monday night, but it eased my obsessional pangs.

SPOILERS for Ep. 1.12 -- if you read this before you see that, you'll be both spoiled and confused. And trust me, that's not something anybody wants.

The men and women of the Battlestar Galactica had learned over the last few days that it was a good idea to give Captain Lee Adama a wide berth. He had thought he was concealing his nerves well enough, but the averted eyes and muttered "Apollo"s and "sir"s indicated perhaps he hadn’t done as well as he thought. Still, he did his duty. He took care of his pilots, he flew his patrols, and if he spent his off-duty hours lurking in the CIC waiting for news about Starbuck, that was no one’s business but his own.

At least his father had been kind enough not to mention it. The old man was worried, too.

The CIC was quiet when he slipped in, although both his father and Colonel Tigh were still there, standing in the same positions by the central console as they had been when Lee left for patrol. Tigh looked up as Lee entered. "No word yet," he said.

"I figured I would have noticed a Cylon raider showing up on my patrol," Lee said, then winced when his father turned his slow, dark gaze on him. "Sorry, sir."

"That’s all right, Captain." Tigh had been a good deal mellower since his wife returned from the dead. Lee would never admit it to anyone, but he understood that feeling exactly.

Not that Kara was his wife. Not that she ever would be, or would want to be, even if he ever did let her know what she did to him, how much greater his love for her was than she ever could have suspected.

He’d loved her before Zak had even met her. He’d loved her from the first time she smart-mouthed him in the Academy hall, right after she’d given him his first defeat in the Viper simulators. Her eyes had gleamed, daring him to fight back, and he had fallen in love in that instant. But he’d turned away from her with a glib put-off, turned back to his studies because he had work to do and a name to live up to, and there would be time for romance later.

Then she met Zak, and Lee realized his time had run out. He accepted his fate and her friendship, but in the back of his mind he always wondered: she had fallen for his brother. Did that mean she could have loved Lee, too, had he let her? Or did it mean he had never had a chance to begin with?

"Sir!" Gaeta called from his station. "Cylon raider has just appeared off the port bow."

Before anyone could react, the speakers crackled and Starbuck’s excited voice filled the CIC. "Galactica, Starbuck. Please don’t shoot us."

A ripple of relief traveled around the room. Lee saw his father close his eyes briefly; suddenly he knew he was seeing the same expression Adama wore when Lee himself escaped from danger, or at least a close cousin of it. "What do you hear, Starbuck?" Adama said when he recovered his composure.

"Nothin’ but the rain, sir." She still sounded excited, but a meek note entered her voice. Yeah, she knew how much trouble she was in. She must have had long enough to think about it on the way home. "I got the gun and the cat, and we’d really like to come in now."

"Come on home, Starbuck." Adama said, then picked up his phone handset to call the President.

Lee tried to puzzle out this variation on their normal nonsense patter, but considering he’d never understood that exchange in the first place, all he could think was that a cat wouldn’t be very good company in such tight quarters as the modified Cylon raider. He shook his head in sharp annoyance at himself.

Tigh looked at him with mild sympathy, then leaned over to speak directly into Lee’s ear. "I asked the old man one time what the hell that whole cat thing meant, but he changed the subject. I think he doesn’t know, either, and he’s just too embarrassed to admit it."

He bit down on his lip to keep from laughing, finally allowing the giddy relief at Kara’s safe return to flood him.

Tigh merely smiled and passed Lee on his way to Adama’s side. "You’ll have plenty of time to ask her yourself while she’s in hack for this little stunt."

He was definitely going to have a lot to say to Kara Thrace. Most of it, however, was going to wait until after she got out of the brig.

***

She didn’t go to the brig, in the end. He didn’t know what she had whispered to Roslin as soon as she was pulled out of the raider, and he didn’t know why his father’s face had drained of color when she whispered to him as well. Lee knew he’d find out in due time, and he didn’t protest when his father ordered him to take Helo – the miraculously resurrected – to sickbay.

Helo had been silent and shaken on the slow walk, and Lee had respected his space and the distant look in his eyes. He left Helo under nominal guard in sickbay, then he went to find Kara.

She was in officers’ quarters, thankfully alone and also thankfully having just showered off the Cylon gunk from the inside of the raider. Her locker stood open, and she seemed to glimpse his reflection in the mirror as he came in, but he was in her face before she finished turning around.

"What the frack were you thinking, Starbuck?" he barked, not stopping his forward motion until her back hit the edge of the locker. "What the frack did you think you were doing?"

"My job," she snapped back, eyes ablaze. "What had to be done. For our survival."

"And what about your survival, huh? What about the next time you pull a stupid stunt like this, only you don’t come back? What then?"

"What do you care?" She was pale and shaking. He knew it wasn’t just from their confrontation; he knew he should have stopped and asked her what had happened back on Caprica, but she just kept going. "I’m just the screw-up kid who fracks everybody and fracks up everything, but you could never get rid of me because I was also fracking your brother."

He had never literally seen red before, and he wanted to hit her again, except that hitting her before hadn’t made him feel any better. "How dare you," he hissed. "How dare you talk about yourself like that. How dare you talk about me like that."

"Tell me I’m wrong," she said, and it was the plea within the challenge that shorted out his fury, pushed it over the line into something less angry, but just as fierce. "Tell me I’m wrong. I bet you can’t, Lee."

"Just your luck I’m a betting man today," he said hoarsely, then he shoved her back against her locker and brought his mouth hard against hers.

She froze, then stiffened. Then her arms locked around him as she met his kiss with equal power and fervor. They were mad, they were both mad to be doing this, but for once in his life, Lee Adama didn’t give a damn.

When he let her go, his head was swimming. Reality slowly filtered back into his brain, and he looked aside, watching her in the mirror where he could only see the back of her head. He needed a minute before he looked at her directly and faced the fact that he had just fracked up the most important friendship of his life.

But his arms were still around her, and when he felt her move against him, he looked down at her in spite of himself. As always when he looked at her, he couldn’t look away - especially not now, when she was looking at him so strangely, like he was the key to her entire world.

"Lee?" Her voice trembled; her eyes were bright and so huge they seemed to fill his world. "Lee?"

He stroked the hair he had mussed back from her forehead. "Kara."

Then he did the only thing he could do. He bent his head to kiss her again.

END