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bantha_fodderBlood Like Holy Wine (constant in the darkness), by Pen
BSG, Lee/Dualla, Lee/Kara, and a host of other pairings, rated M.
Vague spoilers for a lot of season two, set post Resurrection Ship, and having not seen past there but having heard rumours.
I do not own these characters.
With thanks to Claira, and to Kathe, and with love to Plastix.
**
He pushes her out of the main corridor, pushes her through one hatchway, two; pushes her against the bulkhead in a darkened room. He kisses the side of her neck and runs his fingers down her side.
"Lee," she breathes, "we shouldn't do this here."
He tilts his head. "Where else would we do it?" and he's genuinely curious.
"Maybe your bunk?" she says, flirtatious, playful. Pretends that she hasn't been thinking about this for days and days.
"Oh," he kisses her mouth, "You don't want to go there. Too many pilots."
She's not welcome in a room full of pilots.
But then, no one is.
She tries not to take it personally.
*
Kara leans back in her chair. "Oh boys," she says, and wraps her lips around her cigar. "Looks like all your possessions are coming home with me tonight." She fiddles with the corner of one card, and swears to herself that she's not marking it. She doesn't need to.
Lee rests forward on his elbows. "Are you always this cocky, Starbuck?"
"If you're only just noticing, Apollo, then you're pretty frakking slow."
Hotdog calls it then, and Kara spreads out her hand on the table. Straight. "Thank you, gentlemen," she says, "It has been a pleasure."
Lee puts his hand on her arm as it settles around the pot. "Like I said," he says, voice low as he sets full colors on the table, "Always so frakking cocky."
He reaches for the cigar resting between Kara's teeth, and she lets him take it. He inhales deep, breathes out a cloud of smoke that wreathes her head.
"Frakking asshole," she says, but there is no vitriol in her words.
He puts the cigar gently back between her lips.
"Your deal," he says, and she smirks.
*
A low buzz indicates a transmission from Colonial One, and Dee reaches for her headset.
"Colonial One, this is Galactica Actual."
"Dee," says Billy, "It's me."
The familiarity in his tone jars. We were never that close, she thinks to herself.
"The President to speak to the Admiral," she says to CIC, and does not acknowledge Billy's hails again.
*
The water cascades over Lee's head, and he lathers up. It's just him and the water and half a dozen pilots, and he watches as they fight and bitch and try to wake up. Blinks his eyes.
"Up each day with the rising sun," he hears over the water, and he knows it's got to be frakking loud for him to hear it. "Gonna run all day 'til the running's done!" Lee pokes his head out of his cubicle and shakes his head. Frakking figures.
He pulls his head back into the cubicle, and hefts his soap in one hand. Thinks about throwing it. "Shut up, Kara," he yells.
"Gods, Lee," she says, and hefts herself above the cubicle divider. Her face grins down at him. "Have a little fun."
Lee meets her eyes, and watches her eyes as they trace down his chest. He smirks. "I can think of more fun things to do in the shower, Kara."
She blinks and laughs. When she drops back down to her side, he can still hear her laughter.
"I bet you can, Stud."
He rinses off, gets soap in his eyes. He blinks to clear his vision as he turns off the tap, and wraps his tiny towel around himself. He'll frakking kill Kara if she keeps exchanging his towels for these baby sized towels. One day he'll get out of the shower first, he vows, but resigns himself to his fate. He likes being clean.
"Hey, Apollo." Hotdog leans against the sink counter, brushing his teeth. "Your girlfriend wants to see you." Lee thinks of Anastasia. Thinks of Anastasia in the showers.
"My little boy," says Kara. "All grown up with a girlfriend." She sheds a fake tear, and he punches her shoulder as he walks past.
He'll kill her later. His girlfriend is waiting.
He goes to find his clothes, and find his girlfriend.
*
Felix taps her on the shoulder. "Dee," he says. "Your shift's over. Go relax."
Her fingers tighten on the sheaf of papers in her hand. "Yes, Sir. I've just got to finish off-"
He smiles at her. "Dee," he says. "You enjoy working too much."
Dee smiles back. "I do my best for the fleet, Sir."
He shakes his head. "You are impossible, Dee. At least you've got someone to go to when you finally let your hair down. Don't keep him waiting."
Dee looks around. "Not so loud, Felix," she whispers, and he laughs. She think he is perhaps the most traitorous friend she has ever had.
"Everybody knows, Dee. Worst kept secret on the fleet."
Dee smiles so hard she thinks her cheeks might hurt, but she cannot stop. "Okay," she says. "I'll go. I just have to finish this."
Felix squeezes her hand and looks over his shoulder, his attention called by Captain Kelly. "Don't let him slip away while you're busy working, Dee," he murmurs. "It's the end of the world, but you're not dead."
She watches him walk back across CIC, and she wonders what he is trying to say.
*
Lee sits in the Starlight Lounge, and can't quite believe he's on a date. He orders a fruity drink and perches daintily on the bar stool: imagines for a moment that he's not a pilot with an attitude and a reputation to maintain.
The clock ticks, and Dee's late. A commotion at the door clears, and a group of civilians walk in, jeering and happy and probably already drunk. He knows the type, cocky and sure and looking for a fight, and he looks away.
He remembers, for a moment, pulling his arm back and swinging into battle, Kara by his side, brawling through bars and pubs and on one memorable occasion, under the glowing disco ball on the Uncertain Spike's dance floor. But then there is a hand on his arm and Dee slips on the stool beside him with a kiss on his cheek and she's beautiful, and he almost stops thinking about bar room brawls and events long since past.
Almost.
When Dee excuses herself to go to the bathroom, he sips his cocktail and almost gags at the sweetness. Sees Kara's face, her mouth smiling and shining with beer and shoves his glass away with a grimace.
*
"I'll take a team down to the surface. We'll leave someone in the raptor-"
"Captain Thrace," interrupts the president. "Whilst we value your input in planning and monitoring this mission, you will not be returning to Caprica at this time."
Starbuck slams her hands down on the table. "I have to go!" she almost yells at the president. "There are people down there that I left behind!"
"That's as it may be," says Roslin, calm as always, "but you must trust the marines and your fellow officers to bring these people back for you."
When Starbuck storms out of the CIC, Dee wonders what the Old Man and Roslin were thinking, telling her out in the open.
From the way Roslin nods at the Old Man, though, she thinks maybe they planned it.
*
Lee catches his father's eye, rather than the president's. "I should," he starts, and hopes the pause indicates exactly what he wants them to think.
"Go," says his father. "Make her understand."
He catches up with her as she storms into the gym. "Get away from me."
Lee wraps his hand around her elbow, and as she shakes him off she turns, her hand in a fist heading straight for his head.
He ducks.
"Frak, Kara. Just talk to me."
"I just," she starts, and he wonders if she's actually going to talk. "I left people there, Lee. I promised I'd go back and get them."
Lee watches Kara as she takes off her jacket. Watches her face as she fumbles with the boxing gloves, and understands the look he sees there.
"You left a person behind," he says, but it's not a question.
Kara bites her lip.
"I left a person behind," she confirms, and something twists in his stomach. But then she looks up and meets his eyes, and he knows that look, too. Knew it three years ago, when she was almost his sister, and knows it now, when he has a girlfriend who loves him and makes him happy.
"Well," he's her friend and he loves her, no takebacks, "if you're going to keep your promise, you'd better get in on the planning. You're the only person I know with the brains to work this one out, Starbuck."
She smiles, finally. "More brains than you've got, that's for frakking sure."
He helps her pull the gloves from her hands, and as his fingers trace the veins in her wrist she shivers. He thinks about Dee's proud smile and puts it from his mind.
*
Starbuck swans back into CIC, no shame for yelling at the president, or for yelling at the Old Man, and pauses at the planning table. Starbuck tilts her head.
"No," she says, "you're going about it all wrong. The raptor needs to come down here." She leans across the table; starts scribbling notes and drawing arrows and Dee watches; wishes for a moment she could be such an integral part of the fleet's survival.
Then feels stupid for even thinking that, and watches Starbuck's forehead crinkle as she concentrates.
A hand grasps Starbuck's for a second, and plucks the pen away. "See, it'd be better to move these forces here first," says Lee, and Dee also watches the way Lee leans half across the table, half across Starbuck, to draw countermeasures against Starbuck's own.
Dee hadn't even noticed him return to the CIC.
Starbuck snatches the pen from Lee after three movements and thirty seconds. "And if they do that just there, the Cylons will see them a mile away."
"So this, then," says Lee, snatching the pen back and scribbling furiously.
"And then this." Starbuck steals the pen again, and Dee wonders when they ran out of pens in CIC.
"Hey," says Lee, "It's my neck on the line here. I say from which angle we enter the Cylon base," and Dee forgets to breathe at the thought of Lee going to Caprica.
She wonders if he'll come back.
She wonders why he's going.
For the good of the fleet.
*
Two raptors scream through the atmosphere, and Kara's ragtag band of survivours are just where she said they'd be.
Buccaneers, he thinks, and resolves to be nicer.
Lee realises he doesn't even know the name of Kara's person.
He hates that.
He hates the Buccaneers more.
*
The mission is threefold.
Liberate survivours. Hustle them onto the raptors and anything they can find that can fly, that might be useful to the fleet. Lee charges Racetrack with making sure the Cylon ships can't be tracked - they might be useful, but only insofar as the Cylons don't know where they've gone.
Collect supplies. The fleet grows smaller with every sortie; loses people with every jump to Cylons and disease and the petty fights that break out on the crowded passenger ships. The fleet grows smaller, but their supplies dwindle faster, and without a ship laden down with food and seeds and ideas, the fleet might not make it another month. Radiation be damned, they need the supplies, and he sends pilots out to look for cans and clothes.
Liberate hospitals. Lee leads, and takes the marines with him. Leaves the Buccaneers behind for this particular task.
Later, when he's barely conscious and his legs are on fire, he wishes that he hadn't.
*
"Shut up, Hotdog," says Kat, her voice distorted by the side band. Hotdog laughs, and Kara's grip around her joystick tightens.
"Look lively, Nuggets," Kara interrupts the frakking obvious flirting. "This is pretty frakking boring, so I want to see the two of you execute a Davies' Run."
Kat and Hotdog whine and groan but swing their vipers around.
"Starbuck," says Dee over the comms. "Dradis contact."
Kara checks her screen and swears. "We're on the wrong side of the fleet. Let's go, pilots," she says, but Kat and Hotdog are already flying, and she'd be proud but she's too busy flying.
Three carriers, she counts them and has one in her crosshairs before she's even close enough to shoot. She aims and holds and just keeps flying, and she wonders where Kat and Hotdog have got to; wonders where the rest of the squadron are, but keeps flying.
She sees the raptors at the same time as she hears the Old Man over the comm, "Starbuck, don't shoot," he says, "Starbuck, don't shoot," and she wonders how many times he had to repeat the words until she responds.
"Okay," she says, hands off her guns. "I'm cool."
"They're from Caprica," Adama says. "Our boy's coming home."
She thinks his voice breaks, but she's not sure.
She doesn't wait for his permission before she flips and returns to the Galactica. He gives it to her anyway, though, and she's grateful.
She brings her bird into land as Joker's viper shoots out to replace her. She thinks briefly of the cigar she'll drop on Joker's bed in thanks, and then she's thinking logistics. Where Sam will sleep, what Sam's place in the fleet will be, who he brought back with him. She wonders what supplies Lee managed to rummage up, and wonders if seeing Caprica so twisted broke his heart as much as it broke hers.
She's out of her viper, feet on the ground, when she sees Sam being hustled away. As she runs across the hangar deck, Tyrol puts an arm out. "Get out of my way," she snarls.
"Decontamination," he says. Kara doesn't care, and pushes past Tyrol until she reaches Sam, wraps her arms around his neck and holds him tight.
"I missed you," she breathes.
"I missed you more," he says, and he kisses her, all lips and teeth and tongue, and she does not care what the crew thinks of it; does not care what rumours go around.
"Sir," says a marine, "We have to take this man to decontamination."
Kara lets go. "Of course," she says. She'll catch up with him later.
She turns and looks for Lee. She knows he made it back, but when she cannot find him, she thinks perhaps he slipped straight out to Decontamination. She hates that he did not stop to say hello, but she knows that's what they are now.
*
Rumours do not fail Dee. When she hears how Starbuck threw her arms around Sam Anders, wrapped her arms around and kissed him hard and didn't look for Lee until he'd been spirited away to Sickbay, Dee smiles.
Dee makes her way down to Sickbay first chance she gets, but she's not Lee's first visitor. The Old Man sits there beside Lee's bed, and she turns away.
She supposes that's only right, that his father be there for him.
She'll come back later.
*
She gets herself rostered on lates, and when the corridors are empty and almost everyone is asleep she steps into Sickbay. Lee's bed is easy to find, and she holds her breath until she can see his chest rise and fall under its own power. Glad you're not dead, she thinks, over and over like a mantra, and it's not until his eyes open that she realises the words have fallen from her lips. She tries to think of excuses; make up reasons why she might be hovering by his bed, but he just reaches for her hand and squeezes.
"You think you're glad?" he whispers, and does not turn his eyes away. Kara squeezes his hand and they laugh, and when his eyes drop closed she squeezes his hand again to reassure him that she is there.
*
"Don't worry," says Cally. "Doc Cottle is the best we've got."
"That doesn't make me feel any more confident. We don't exactly have much talent left out here."
Cally slaps Dee playfully on the arm. "We're the best, Dee!" She leans forward conspiratorially. "We were only assigned to Galactica because we were the best, you know."
Dee laughs. "I think maybe you've had a little too much to drink."
Cally shakes her head. "I don't think you've had enough," she says. "Have another! Live a little! It's what the Captain would do, if you were in hospital."
"You don't think he'd be by her side, pining and worrying?" Gaeta puts a fruity drink with an umbrella in it before Dee. "Drink up, Dee."
"I don't know why you're here, Felix." Cally pouts. "This is a girl's night out."
"Hey!" he protests. "I'm a girl!"
Dee laughs, and picks up the hideous blue concoction in front of her in resignation. It doesn't taste as bad as she thought, and Felix laughs and claps her on the back when she drains her glass.
"That's our girl," he says, like she'd been missing. She wonders what that means.
*
Back on Galactica, with all the new supplies he helped to bring home, it's not long before Lee is discharged from Sickbay. Dee wraps her arm around him as he limps back to his quarters, and as she settles him into his bunk she smiles at him.
"If you need anything, just call," she says, over his protests that he doesn't need more bed rest and he's got plenty of paperwork to be getting on with.
"Yeah, Apollo," says Helo, mouth full of lollipop. "Just call, and a squadron of pilots will come to do your bidding. They'll turn your sheets, bring you soup, fluff your pillow-"
"Fluff more than just your pillow," leers Racetrack, and Helo laughs.
"So don't worry, Dee," Helo finishes. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about Captain Adama here. We'll take good care of him." He pats Lee's ankle. "Extra special care." Helo grins at Dee, and she laughs.
"Okay," she says, "Okay," and it's not until she's halfway back to the CIC that she realises the pilots have kicked her out of their quarters again.
*
Sam and everyone else are given berths on the Rose Tree, a light ship that, before the end of the worlds, transported people between Caprica and Saggiteron. The seats aren't the most comfortable Kara has ever sat on, but they recline and fold out and make for nice sleepers. Technically only room for one person though, and Kara and Sam make the most of the moments they can steal trying to squish the two of them in.
She laughs as he tickles her, and she decides she's very happy, end of the world or no, however rare the moments she has with him are.
She doesn't mind too much, even on her way back to the Galactica. There are things that make her happy there, too, and Galactica is home.
"That's a nice hickey," comments Lee as she steps out of the raptor. He taps the clipboard in his hands with his pen and grins at her. Scribbles a note. "It goes well with your uniform."
"Frak you," says Kara, cheerfully. "You just wish you were enjoying your shift so much."
Lee nods. "It's true. I wish I had time to lie down on the job."
Kara slaps him on the shoulder, and he taps her straight back.
"A CAG's work is never done," he says with a grin, ducking her next blow, and makes another note. Kara peers down at the clipboard.
"What are you doing, CAG?"
"Checking to see if you broke the raptor with all the shaking it was doing."
"Hey," Kara says, and shrugs. Gives him a grin. "If the raptor's a rocking, don't come a knocking."
Lee groans and rolls his eyes.
Kara laughs.
*
Kara lifts her spoon. Sniffs, and puts its contents into her mouth. She closes her eyes and moans, and then swallows.
"Oh, frak me," she says.
Lee's stomach lurches, and he shakes his head. "Do I have to?" he asks. "You're not really my type."
"Oh, please," says Kara, who sometimes knows more about him than he likes, and sometimes knows just enough to be comforting. "You love blondes."
"Yeah, but I like girls, Kara, not pilots."
"Oh, Lee. I'm hurt. Really, truly hurt. You've wounded me."
"Apollo," says Anders, sliding onto the bench across from Kara. "Are you hurting my girl? I know you're a tough army guy and all, but I can still take you in a fight."
Lee waits for Kara to laugh, then hit Anders and tell him she doesn't need defending, but instead she half stands, leans over the table and plants a messy kiss squarely on the other man's mouth. Kisses him thoroughly.
Lee rolls his eyes.
*
She finds Helo lying on his bunk. "Hey, Helo," she says.
"Hey, Buck." He barely acknowledges her, just waves a hand and keeps on brooding.
"What's up, Helo?"
He shrugs his shoulders and shuts his eyes. "Just hanging out," he says.
She sits on the end of the bunk. "That all?" she asks, quietly.
They stay like that, her hunched over, him with his hands over his eyes, until his voice fills the silence.
"I miss Sharon," he says, and she rests a hand on his ankle.
She's familiar with the feeling.
*
Lee swings left, and hard. "Frakking toasters!" he yells. "Can I get a little help out here?"
"On my way, Apollo." Kara's voice echoes over the comm, and he's never been so frakking happy to hear her voice.
"Not that I'm never grateful for your assistance, Starbuck, but is anyone else coming?"
"Well," she says, "You would have to pick now to be useless and unable to look after yourself."
"Frak!" he yells, and there's a spark and then there's nothing. No lights and no weapons and no signal, and he floats away into the darkness.
At least there's oxygen this time, he thinks, and watches the universe float by.
*
Kara flies and she shoots, but when she gets to Lee's last position, there's nothing but shrapnel.
She keeps looking.
*
"Apollo, are you there?" calls Dee over the comms, but in reply all she gets is static. She repeats herself over and over, and thinks, this is familiar.
She wonders if Lee likes being rescued. She imagines Lee as the damsel in distress, and she'd laugh if she weren't so worried.
She laughs anyway, quietly, under her breath. It helps.
When Starbuck yells triumphantly over the comms, Dee thinks she might cry, but when she wipes her hands across her face her eyes are dry.
*
The floor is hard, and the metal of the bunk is cold at her back. "I thought you would die," she says, quietly. "I thought you had died. I've never thought that before."
"Now you know how I feel all the time," he says, and his tone is almost bitter.
"I don't do it on purpose." She watches the closed hatch, and half hopes someone will walk in.
"I just wish you didn't take so many risks." His voice is soft, and she has to strain to hear it.
"That's what I'm here for!" she chirps. Tries to take the stress away from his voice with a smile, but he can't see it from where he's lying. Lee rolls over to look at her.
"We're pilots," insists Lee. "We don't have to be heroes."
"But you did. This time, you tried to be a hero."
"I have to try and live up to the great Starbuck," he says, and this time it's definitely bitter.
Kara shuts her eyes. "I'm glad you're not dead." She casts her words to the air, this time with intention, and Lee inhales sharply on his bunk by her head.
"I think that every time you get out of your bird," Lee says, and his voice cracks.
"I missed you when you were gone," she says. "More than I should have."
"You'd miss lots of people if they were dead. Helo. Cally. Anders."
Kara opens her eyes. Breathes in, and prepares to face the world with no yelling, no hiding and no prompting.
"Sam was right there, Lee. Right there, and I couldn't stay beside him - I had to fly, and I had to find you. All I could do was think of was you."
"All I could think of was you," Lee whispers. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and hauls her up onto his bunk. "I didn't think of Dee once," he confesses, and kisses her. It is hard and it is desperate, and it is everything and nothing like Kara ever expected it would be. Not that she ever thought about it.
Then she thinks that perhaps, she should stop fooling herself, and shifts, tilts her head and kisses Lee back.
His fingers are cold when they brush over her stomach, her back and she shivers, arches into his body and fumbles at his belt buckle as he starts unbuttoning her pants.
She hopes nobody steps through the hatch.
*
The first pilot to find them frakking is Hotdog, and he's not exactly surprised. He just rolls his eyes and keeps on walking, and assumes it's not the first time.
Tells the first pilot he sees, in hushed voices and furtive glances.
Pilots know how to keep secrets.
*
Dee strides down the corridor, hands empty and a smile on her face. Her shift finally over, her tasks at least on hold, if not finished, and she's free for eight hours. She wants to make the most of it, and she does not pause to change or shower or think, just heads for the pilots quarters.
The corridors are crowded, she thinks, and although shift changeover accounts for some of it she doesn't usually have to stop so often. The deck crew she passes stop her to enquire after her health and the health of the Old Man.
As she passes pilots, she asks them where she can find Lee. "In the Number Two head," says Kat, "he's just off shift," but when she gets there the steam is rising but the showers are empty. She passes Kat again, leaning against the wall, Hotdog's hand fisting the material at her shoulder, and Kat laughs. "Sorry," she says, as Dee passes.
"Kat's a bit flaky," Hotdog explains. "Try the ready room. I think there's a game in there." In the ready room she finds Helo lifting an upturned table.
"Was Apollo in here?" she asks.
"You just missed him. He and Starbuck went to settle their differences in the gym. Took an audience with them."
Dee shakes her head, and makes her way to the gym, but the corridors are still heavy with traffic and by the time she gets there Lee is no where to be seen. She reaches out a hand to tap Joker on the shoulder, but Joker turns first. "Yes?" the pilot asks, and for a second Dee wonders if Joker has ever been so rude to her before.
"I thought Apollo was here...?" She lets her voice trail off into a question, and wonders when she became so timid. So unsure.
"He was," says Joker shortly. "Starbuck gave him a black eye and they wandered off to cry about their poor lives."
Joker stops short, like he's said something wrong, and turns away. "Can you tell me where he's gone?" Dee asks.
"I'm not his keeper," Joker sneers. "Keep track of your boyfriend for yourself." Joker shoulders past Dee, and Dee frowns at his retreating form.
"Try quarters," says Racetrack, quietly. She smiles at Dee. "And don't mind Joker. Double CAP."
Quarters are empty, though, and Lee's rack is messy, like he jumped up and left in an emergency, and she thinks that's unlike him.
When she asks a passing pilot, he gives her a strange look and shrugs his shoulders. "Try the mess," he says, but she doesn't bother.
She thinks - she knows - the pilots are giving her the runaround, and she wonders what they're hiding.
*
It's cold, and Kara's restless. She lies on her bunk, cigar in hand, and watches as the pilots trickle in to sleep. It's late in the cycle, and they're all up later than they should be, but she's not their mother. She's just another pilot, and Kat waves goodnight as she draws her own curtain closed.
The rustles slow and stop, until all she can hear is the breathing of her fellow pilots. She swings her feet down, and pushes herself to her feet. She inspects each curtain, but doesn't really care if they're awake or asleep or frakking each other senseless.
When she draws back Lee's curtain, he blinks at her. She didn't wake him. She wouldn't care if she had. She presses two fingers to his lips, like drawing luck from the pilot in the ready room. The bunk room behind her is full of sleeping pilots, and he does not speak as she clambers into his bunk.
"We shouldn't," he breathes as she pulls her tanks over her head, but when his eyes are on her breasts and she knows it wasn't a protest. He helps draw her sweats down her legs and pushes his own off, and when she leans over him and pushes down, the only word he breathes out is Kara.
*
Lee wraps his hand around Dee's elbow. "So," he says. "Are you free this evening?"
Dee smiles at him, and her smile is soft, and loving, and Lee swallows the bile that rises from his stomach. "I wish I was," she says, "But Felix and Cally want me for a girl's night out. I can cancel!"
Lee shakes his head. "It's okay. Go."
"You're so understanding." Dee kisses his cheek. "But I'm free tomorrow."
"I'm on mids tomorrow. I won't get off until late."
She smiles at him again, and he thinks about the triad game he'll probably be able to make.
*
Kara puts her hands on the tiles. She likes the pilots' head: nobody but pilots, and if she wants to stand naked and scream under the water no one will give a frak. She does it, just for a moment: throws her head back and yells wordlessly.
"You good, Starbuck?" Helo stops, a hand on the door, ready to leave.
"Yeah, Karl," she says. "Just had to let it out."
"Well, don't let it out too long," he says, "There's a pot out there with your name on it."
"Deal me in next hand," she says, "I've still got to actually get wet."
Helo laughs, and the door swings shut behind him. She turns on the water. Lets the water warm up around her and flow down her skin, and she rests her head on the cool tiles.
"You're not making a commotion, are you, Starbuck?" asks Lee. She wonders when he entered the head.
"Never," she says, "I'd never do a thing like that." She turns to face him and he's standing there, face bare with more emotion than she's ever seen on him. Face bare, chest bare - she takes a step closer. Grins, slow and gleeful. "I heard you got trapped in the port hatch on deck C with Ellen Tigh."
Lee growls. "I did. Now, shut your mouth and make it up to me."
"Oh, what? Ellen Tigh makes you horny?"
He pushes her until she's flush against the tiles. "Wash the memory of her from my mind, Kara," he whispers into her ear, and she shivers.
Does as he asks.
*
Dee walks down the corridor, a clipboard in her hand. The Old Man asked to see her, and she's keen to oblige, but as she hears laughter from behind her she slows down. She makes a show of not looking, and suddenly, in a whirl of footsteps and laughter, Lee is upon her.
"Petty Officer Dualla," he says, suggestively. He runs a hand down her arm, and cups her hand resting on the clipboard. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Lee," snaps Starbuck as she runs past, "stop making eyes at your girlfriend. We've got two more laps before briefing."
Lee tilts an imaginary hat at Dee and takes off again.
The Admiral comes around the corner, and he smiles at Starbuck. "What do you hear, Starbuck?" he asks.
"The sound of my feet as they pound her into the floor, Sir," replies Lee. He taps Starbuck on the shoulder as he overtakes her, and she laughs and picks up speed.
Before she hands the clipboard to Admiral Adama, she looks up at him. His eyes are fixed on where Starbuck and Lee had just been, and he's frowning.
"Have they always been like that?" he asks softly, half to himself.
"They're boisterous, Sir," Dee replies, and the Old Man looks at her like he forgot she was there.
"Yes," he says, gruffly. "They are."
*
In the quiet shifts, in the dead of the night, Dee monitors the wireless programs. It's not a bad way to pass the hours when everyone else is asleep. She catches up on the latest gossip. New celebrities form in the fleet: news readers and talk show hosts and other people of note. And it's fun, and it's interesting, but her ears only perk up when they talk of the Galactica, and the persons living inside her.
"That Apollo sure is something," says Rachel.
"I'll say," says Marie. The Late Night Bitch Session is in full swing, and Dee taps her fingers idly on the comms board in front of her, proud that everyone understands how wonderful Lee is.
"And those pilots he bunks with are lucky. LUCKY, Marie, to live with a man like that."
"Do you think he bunks with them, or bunks with them?" Dee can hear the insinuation clear as frakking day, and she knows she was supposed to. Knows everyone was supposed to.
"Oh, those pilots are flying and fighting and frakking. I know you saw that little film release just like the rest of us-"
"And unlike some, Rachel, I didn't see it a dozen times."
"Oh, Marie, you wish you'd seen it a dozen times, all those lovely pilots running around in their tiny little towels, cuddling up to one another and gleaming with water. How do you think they wind down?"
"Oh, Rachel." Marie gives a little sigh. "Those pilots are clearly frakking one another in the showers after they come into land. And then they come in to land. Why do you think the water usage on Galactica is so high?"
Giggles fill Dee's headset, and she breaks a nail.
*
The long tone indicates a message over the PA. Lee looks up, even though there is nothing to look at.
"Could Captains Adama and Thrace please report to the Admiral's quarters at their earliest convenience." Gaeta's voice rings through the hangar bay, and the pilots, attempting to fix their own vipers, cheer for Starbuck and Apollo.
He turns his head, and taps his clipboard against the side of the munitions he is inspecting.
Kara raises an eyebrow.
"So, who's in trouble this time?" she asks as they walk off the hangar deck. He bumps her shoulder.
"You," he says. "I'm perfect."
*
Dee nibbles on a carrot. Such a short time ago, eating an actual vegetable made her proud of Lee, that he was so brave, so good to the fleet. Now she worries: worries her teeth on the carrot and worries her fears into the world.
"Sam," she says, unsure of the reasons for his presence on Galactica but ready to take the opportunity. "Have you noticed anything strange about Kara?"
Sam pauses mid bite. "Strange how?" he asks.
"Is she-" Dee pauses, unsure of how to proceed without sounding like an obsessive harpy. "Is she distant?"
Sam smiles, and Dee thinks it's almost patronising. "We live on different ships, Dee. Of course she's distant."
Dee shakes her head. "I mean, doesn't it seem weird that she and Lee are so involved in each other's lives?"
"You've seen their bunks, right?" Sam asks. "I'm not surprised they're so involved. All the pilots are."
"But more than usual?" she persists.
"I don't know what you're worrying about, Dee. As long as I've known her, Kara's always been this way."
As Sam makes his farewells and goes to see a man about a carburettor, Dee realises the truth of this.
For as long as she's known Kara and Lee, Starbuck and Apollo, there's been no one but themselves.
Her heart sinks.
She sits on it a while. She's quiet, and moody, and Felix wraps an arm around her shoulders. When he asks her what's wrong, she shakes her head and rests her head on his shoulder. She doesn't cry, but it's close.
She thinks about Billy, who never loved anyone but her.
*
Lee rocks back on his chair. A knock at his door and he swings down, looks like he's busy saving the world. "Come in," he says.
Dee stands in the doorway. She pauses for a moment and looks down at him, and he's never seen her look so sad. She steps into the room and shuts the door, and he knows what she's going to say.
He's probably never felt so guilty, but when she quietly asks, "Are you in love with Starbuck?" he feels brave enough to shrug, and he thinks that's probably close enough to the truth to count.
She doesn't yell. She just stands there, her face looking empty and hurt and it's worse than anything she could have said.
"Right," she says. "Well. I guess I didn't make the right choice after all."
He's grateful when she leaves.
*
"Permission to execute a Hamilton, Captain Adama, Sir." Starbuck's voice echoes over the comms.
"Permission denied, Captain Starbuck," says Lee.
"But Sir," she wheedles, "Surely a handsome man like you can understand why I'm bored."
"I'm glad you think so, Starbuck, but it's not going to happen."
A pause, and then Lee speaks again, his voice filled with laughter. "I saw that, Starbuck! Don't you flip your bird at me!"
Starbuck laughs, and it echoes through Dee's ears.
She keeps her headset on.
She tries not to think too much about all the fun she's not having.
END.
BSG, Lee/Dualla, Lee/Kara, and a host of other pairings, rated M.
Vague spoilers for a lot of season two, set post Resurrection Ship, and having not seen past there but having heard rumours.
I do not own these characters.
With thanks to Claira, and to Kathe, and with love to Plastix.
**
He pushes her out of the main corridor, pushes her through one hatchway, two; pushes her against the bulkhead in a darkened room. He kisses the side of her neck and runs his fingers down her side.
"Lee," she breathes, "we shouldn't do this here."
He tilts his head. "Where else would we do it?" and he's genuinely curious.
"Maybe your bunk?" she says, flirtatious, playful. Pretends that she hasn't been thinking about this for days and days.
"Oh," he kisses her mouth, "You don't want to go there. Too many pilots."
She's not welcome in a room full of pilots.
But then, no one is.
She tries not to take it personally.
*
Kara leans back in her chair. "Oh boys," she says, and wraps her lips around her cigar. "Looks like all your possessions are coming home with me tonight." She fiddles with the corner of one card, and swears to herself that she's not marking it. She doesn't need to.
Lee rests forward on his elbows. "Are you always this cocky, Starbuck?"
"If you're only just noticing, Apollo, then you're pretty frakking slow."
Hotdog calls it then, and Kara spreads out her hand on the table. Straight. "Thank you, gentlemen," she says, "It has been a pleasure."
Lee puts his hand on her arm as it settles around the pot. "Like I said," he says, voice low as he sets full colors on the table, "Always so frakking cocky."
He reaches for the cigar resting between Kara's teeth, and she lets him take it. He inhales deep, breathes out a cloud of smoke that wreathes her head.
"Frakking asshole," she says, but there is no vitriol in her words.
He puts the cigar gently back between her lips.
"Your deal," he says, and she smirks.
*
A low buzz indicates a transmission from Colonial One, and Dee reaches for her headset.
"Colonial One, this is Galactica Actual."
"Dee," says Billy, "It's me."
The familiarity in his tone jars. We were never that close, she thinks to herself.
"The President to speak to the Admiral," she says to CIC, and does not acknowledge Billy's hails again.
*
The water cascades over Lee's head, and he lathers up. It's just him and the water and half a dozen pilots, and he watches as they fight and bitch and try to wake up. Blinks his eyes.
"Up each day with the rising sun," he hears over the water, and he knows it's got to be frakking loud for him to hear it. "Gonna run all day 'til the running's done!" Lee pokes his head out of his cubicle and shakes his head. Frakking figures.
He pulls his head back into the cubicle, and hefts his soap in one hand. Thinks about throwing it. "Shut up, Kara," he yells.
"Gods, Lee," she says, and hefts herself above the cubicle divider. Her face grins down at him. "Have a little fun."
Lee meets her eyes, and watches her eyes as they trace down his chest. He smirks. "I can think of more fun things to do in the shower, Kara."
She blinks and laughs. When she drops back down to her side, he can still hear her laughter.
"I bet you can, Stud."
He rinses off, gets soap in his eyes. He blinks to clear his vision as he turns off the tap, and wraps his tiny towel around himself. He'll frakking kill Kara if she keeps exchanging his towels for these baby sized towels. One day he'll get out of the shower first, he vows, but resigns himself to his fate. He likes being clean.
"Hey, Apollo." Hotdog leans against the sink counter, brushing his teeth. "Your girlfriend wants to see you." Lee thinks of Anastasia. Thinks of Anastasia in the showers.
"My little boy," says Kara. "All grown up with a girlfriend." She sheds a fake tear, and he punches her shoulder as he walks past.
He'll kill her later. His girlfriend is waiting.
He goes to find his clothes, and find his girlfriend.
*
Felix taps her on the shoulder. "Dee," he says. "Your shift's over. Go relax."
Her fingers tighten on the sheaf of papers in her hand. "Yes, Sir. I've just got to finish off-"
He smiles at her. "Dee," he says. "You enjoy working too much."
Dee smiles back. "I do my best for the fleet, Sir."
He shakes his head. "You are impossible, Dee. At least you've got someone to go to when you finally let your hair down. Don't keep him waiting."
Dee looks around. "Not so loud, Felix," she whispers, and he laughs. She think he is perhaps the most traitorous friend she has ever had.
"Everybody knows, Dee. Worst kept secret on the fleet."
Dee smiles so hard she thinks her cheeks might hurt, but she cannot stop. "Okay," she says. "I'll go. I just have to finish this."
Felix squeezes her hand and looks over his shoulder, his attention called by Captain Kelly. "Don't let him slip away while you're busy working, Dee," he murmurs. "It's the end of the world, but you're not dead."
She watches him walk back across CIC, and she wonders what he is trying to say.
*
Lee sits in the Starlight Lounge, and can't quite believe he's on a date. He orders a fruity drink and perches daintily on the bar stool: imagines for a moment that he's not a pilot with an attitude and a reputation to maintain.
The clock ticks, and Dee's late. A commotion at the door clears, and a group of civilians walk in, jeering and happy and probably already drunk. He knows the type, cocky and sure and looking for a fight, and he looks away.
He remembers, for a moment, pulling his arm back and swinging into battle, Kara by his side, brawling through bars and pubs and on one memorable occasion, under the glowing disco ball on the Uncertain Spike's dance floor. But then there is a hand on his arm and Dee slips on the stool beside him with a kiss on his cheek and she's beautiful, and he almost stops thinking about bar room brawls and events long since past.
Almost.
When Dee excuses herself to go to the bathroom, he sips his cocktail and almost gags at the sweetness. Sees Kara's face, her mouth smiling and shining with beer and shoves his glass away with a grimace.
*
"I'll take a team down to the surface. We'll leave someone in the raptor-"
"Captain Thrace," interrupts the president. "Whilst we value your input in planning and monitoring this mission, you will not be returning to Caprica at this time."
Starbuck slams her hands down on the table. "I have to go!" she almost yells at the president. "There are people down there that I left behind!"
"That's as it may be," says Roslin, calm as always, "but you must trust the marines and your fellow officers to bring these people back for you."
When Starbuck storms out of the CIC, Dee wonders what the Old Man and Roslin were thinking, telling her out in the open.
From the way Roslin nods at the Old Man, though, she thinks maybe they planned it.
*
Lee catches his father's eye, rather than the president's. "I should," he starts, and hopes the pause indicates exactly what he wants them to think.
"Go," says his father. "Make her understand."
He catches up with her as she storms into the gym. "Get away from me."
Lee wraps his hand around her elbow, and as she shakes him off she turns, her hand in a fist heading straight for his head.
He ducks.
"Frak, Kara. Just talk to me."
"I just," she starts, and he wonders if she's actually going to talk. "I left people there, Lee. I promised I'd go back and get them."
Lee watches Kara as she takes off her jacket. Watches her face as she fumbles with the boxing gloves, and understands the look he sees there.
"You left a person behind," he says, but it's not a question.
Kara bites her lip.
"I left a person behind," she confirms, and something twists in his stomach. But then she looks up and meets his eyes, and he knows that look, too. Knew it three years ago, when she was almost his sister, and knows it now, when he has a girlfriend who loves him and makes him happy.
"Well," he's her friend and he loves her, no takebacks, "if you're going to keep your promise, you'd better get in on the planning. You're the only person I know with the brains to work this one out, Starbuck."
She smiles, finally. "More brains than you've got, that's for frakking sure."
He helps her pull the gloves from her hands, and as his fingers trace the veins in her wrist she shivers. He thinks about Dee's proud smile and puts it from his mind.
*
Starbuck swans back into CIC, no shame for yelling at the president, or for yelling at the Old Man, and pauses at the planning table. Starbuck tilts her head.
"No," she says, "you're going about it all wrong. The raptor needs to come down here." She leans across the table; starts scribbling notes and drawing arrows and Dee watches; wishes for a moment she could be such an integral part of the fleet's survival.
Then feels stupid for even thinking that, and watches Starbuck's forehead crinkle as she concentrates.
A hand grasps Starbuck's for a second, and plucks the pen away. "See, it'd be better to move these forces here first," says Lee, and Dee also watches the way Lee leans half across the table, half across Starbuck, to draw countermeasures against Starbuck's own.
Dee hadn't even noticed him return to the CIC.
Starbuck snatches the pen from Lee after three movements and thirty seconds. "And if they do that just there, the Cylons will see them a mile away."
"So this, then," says Lee, snatching the pen back and scribbling furiously.
"And then this." Starbuck steals the pen again, and Dee wonders when they ran out of pens in CIC.
"Hey," says Lee, "It's my neck on the line here. I say from which angle we enter the Cylon base," and Dee forgets to breathe at the thought of Lee going to Caprica.
She wonders if he'll come back.
She wonders why he's going.
For the good of the fleet.
*
Two raptors scream through the atmosphere, and Kara's ragtag band of survivours are just where she said they'd be.
Buccaneers, he thinks, and resolves to be nicer.
Lee realises he doesn't even know the name of Kara's person.
He hates that.
He hates the Buccaneers more.
*
The mission is threefold.
Liberate survivours. Hustle them onto the raptors and anything they can find that can fly, that might be useful to the fleet. Lee charges Racetrack with making sure the Cylon ships can't be tracked - they might be useful, but only insofar as the Cylons don't know where they've gone.
Collect supplies. The fleet grows smaller with every sortie; loses people with every jump to Cylons and disease and the petty fights that break out on the crowded passenger ships. The fleet grows smaller, but their supplies dwindle faster, and without a ship laden down with food and seeds and ideas, the fleet might not make it another month. Radiation be damned, they need the supplies, and he sends pilots out to look for cans and clothes.
Liberate hospitals. Lee leads, and takes the marines with him. Leaves the Buccaneers behind for this particular task.
Later, when he's barely conscious and his legs are on fire, he wishes that he hadn't.
*
"Shut up, Hotdog," says Kat, her voice distorted by the side band. Hotdog laughs, and Kara's grip around her joystick tightens.
"Look lively, Nuggets," Kara interrupts the frakking obvious flirting. "This is pretty frakking boring, so I want to see the two of you execute a Davies' Run."
Kat and Hotdog whine and groan but swing their vipers around.
"Starbuck," says Dee over the comms. "Dradis contact."
Kara checks her screen and swears. "We're on the wrong side of the fleet. Let's go, pilots," she says, but Kat and Hotdog are already flying, and she'd be proud but she's too busy flying.
Three carriers, she counts them and has one in her crosshairs before she's even close enough to shoot. She aims and holds and just keeps flying, and she wonders where Kat and Hotdog have got to; wonders where the rest of the squadron are, but keeps flying.
She sees the raptors at the same time as she hears the Old Man over the comm, "Starbuck, don't shoot," he says, "Starbuck, don't shoot," and she wonders how many times he had to repeat the words until she responds.
"Okay," she says, hands off her guns. "I'm cool."
"They're from Caprica," Adama says. "Our boy's coming home."
She thinks his voice breaks, but she's not sure.
She doesn't wait for his permission before she flips and returns to the Galactica. He gives it to her anyway, though, and she's grateful.
She brings her bird into land as Joker's viper shoots out to replace her. She thinks briefly of the cigar she'll drop on Joker's bed in thanks, and then she's thinking logistics. Where Sam will sleep, what Sam's place in the fleet will be, who he brought back with him. She wonders what supplies Lee managed to rummage up, and wonders if seeing Caprica so twisted broke his heart as much as it broke hers.
She's out of her viper, feet on the ground, when she sees Sam being hustled away. As she runs across the hangar deck, Tyrol puts an arm out. "Get out of my way," she snarls.
"Decontamination," he says. Kara doesn't care, and pushes past Tyrol until she reaches Sam, wraps her arms around his neck and holds him tight.
"I missed you," she breathes.
"I missed you more," he says, and he kisses her, all lips and teeth and tongue, and she does not care what the crew thinks of it; does not care what rumours go around.
"Sir," says a marine, "We have to take this man to decontamination."
Kara lets go. "Of course," she says. She'll catch up with him later.
She turns and looks for Lee. She knows he made it back, but when she cannot find him, she thinks perhaps he slipped straight out to Decontamination. She hates that he did not stop to say hello, but she knows that's what they are now.
*
Rumours do not fail Dee. When she hears how Starbuck threw her arms around Sam Anders, wrapped her arms around and kissed him hard and didn't look for Lee until he'd been spirited away to Sickbay, Dee smiles.
Dee makes her way down to Sickbay first chance she gets, but she's not Lee's first visitor. The Old Man sits there beside Lee's bed, and she turns away.
She supposes that's only right, that his father be there for him.
She'll come back later.
*
She gets herself rostered on lates, and when the corridors are empty and almost everyone is asleep she steps into Sickbay. Lee's bed is easy to find, and she holds her breath until she can see his chest rise and fall under its own power. Glad you're not dead, she thinks, over and over like a mantra, and it's not until his eyes open that she realises the words have fallen from her lips. She tries to think of excuses; make up reasons why she might be hovering by his bed, but he just reaches for her hand and squeezes.
"You think you're glad?" he whispers, and does not turn his eyes away. Kara squeezes his hand and they laugh, and when his eyes drop closed she squeezes his hand again to reassure him that she is there.
*
"Don't worry," says Cally. "Doc Cottle is the best we've got."
"That doesn't make me feel any more confident. We don't exactly have much talent left out here."
Cally slaps Dee playfully on the arm. "We're the best, Dee!" She leans forward conspiratorially. "We were only assigned to Galactica because we were the best, you know."
Dee laughs. "I think maybe you've had a little too much to drink."
Cally shakes her head. "I don't think you've had enough," she says. "Have another! Live a little! It's what the Captain would do, if you were in hospital."
"You don't think he'd be by her side, pining and worrying?" Gaeta puts a fruity drink with an umbrella in it before Dee. "Drink up, Dee."
"I don't know why you're here, Felix." Cally pouts. "This is a girl's night out."
"Hey!" he protests. "I'm a girl!"
Dee laughs, and picks up the hideous blue concoction in front of her in resignation. It doesn't taste as bad as she thought, and Felix laughs and claps her on the back when she drains her glass.
"That's our girl," he says, like she'd been missing. She wonders what that means.
*
Back on Galactica, with all the new supplies he helped to bring home, it's not long before Lee is discharged from Sickbay. Dee wraps her arm around him as he limps back to his quarters, and as she settles him into his bunk she smiles at him.
"If you need anything, just call," she says, over his protests that he doesn't need more bed rest and he's got plenty of paperwork to be getting on with.
"Yeah, Apollo," says Helo, mouth full of lollipop. "Just call, and a squadron of pilots will come to do your bidding. They'll turn your sheets, bring you soup, fluff your pillow-"
"Fluff more than just your pillow," leers Racetrack, and Helo laughs.
"So don't worry, Dee," Helo finishes. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about Captain Adama here. We'll take good care of him." He pats Lee's ankle. "Extra special care." Helo grins at Dee, and she laughs.
"Okay," she says, "Okay," and it's not until she's halfway back to the CIC that she realises the pilots have kicked her out of their quarters again.
*
Sam and everyone else are given berths on the Rose Tree, a light ship that, before the end of the worlds, transported people between Caprica and Saggiteron. The seats aren't the most comfortable Kara has ever sat on, but they recline and fold out and make for nice sleepers. Technically only room for one person though, and Kara and Sam make the most of the moments they can steal trying to squish the two of them in.
She laughs as he tickles her, and she decides she's very happy, end of the world or no, however rare the moments she has with him are.
She doesn't mind too much, even on her way back to the Galactica. There are things that make her happy there, too, and Galactica is home.
"That's a nice hickey," comments Lee as she steps out of the raptor. He taps the clipboard in his hands with his pen and grins at her. Scribbles a note. "It goes well with your uniform."
"Frak you," says Kara, cheerfully. "You just wish you were enjoying your shift so much."
Lee nods. "It's true. I wish I had time to lie down on the job."
Kara slaps him on the shoulder, and he taps her straight back.
"A CAG's work is never done," he says with a grin, ducking her next blow, and makes another note. Kara peers down at the clipboard.
"What are you doing, CAG?"
"Checking to see if you broke the raptor with all the shaking it was doing."
"Hey," Kara says, and shrugs. Gives him a grin. "If the raptor's a rocking, don't come a knocking."
Lee groans and rolls his eyes.
Kara laughs.
*
Kara lifts her spoon. Sniffs, and puts its contents into her mouth. She closes her eyes and moans, and then swallows.
"Oh, frak me," she says.
Lee's stomach lurches, and he shakes his head. "Do I have to?" he asks. "You're not really my type."
"Oh, please," says Kara, who sometimes knows more about him than he likes, and sometimes knows just enough to be comforting. "You love blondes."
"Yeah, but I like girls, Kara, not pilots."
"Oh, Lee. I'm hurt. Really, truly hurt. You've wounded me."
"Apollo," says Anders, sliding onto the bench across from Kara. "Are you hurting my girl? I know you're a tough army guy and all, but I can still take you in a fight."
Lee waits for Kara to laugh, then hit Anders and tell him she doesn't need defending, but instead she half stands, leans over the table and plants a messy kiss squarely on the other man's mouth. Kisses him thoroughly.
Lee rolls his eyes.
*
She finds Helo lying on his bunk. "Hey, Helo," she says.
"Hey, Buck." He barely acknowledges her, just waves a hand and keeps on brooding.
"What's up, Helo?"
He shrugs his shoulders and shuts his eyes. "Just hanging out," he says.
She sits on the end of the bunk. "That all?" she asks, quietly.
They stay like that, her hunched over, him with his hands over his eyes, until his voice fills the silence.
"I miss Sharon," he says, and she rests a hand on his ankle.
She's familiar with the feeling.
*
Lee swings left, and hard. "Frakking toasters!" he yells. "Can I get a little help out here?"
"On my way, Apollo." Kara's voice echoes over the comm, and he's never been so frakking happy to hear her voice.
"Not that I'm never grateful for your assistance, Starbuck, but is anyone else coming?"
"Well," she says, "You would have to pick now to be useless and unable to look after yourself."
"Frak!" he yells, and there's a spark and then there's nothing. No lights and no weapons and no signal, and he floats away into the darkness.
At least there's oxygen this time, he thinks, and watches the universe float by.
*
Kara flies and she shoots, but when she gets to Lee's last position, there's nothing but shrapnel.
She keeps looking.
*
"Apollo, are you there?" calls Dee over the comms, but in reply all she gets is static. She repeats herself over and over, and thinks, this is familiar.
She wonders if Lee likes being rescued. She imagines Lee as the damsel in distress, and she'd laugh if she weren't so worried.
She laughs anyway, quietly, under her breath. It helps.
When Starbuck yells triumphantly over the comms, Dee thinks she might cry, but when she wipes her hands across her face her eyes are dry.
*
The floor is hard, and the metal of the bunk is cold at her back. "I thought you would die," she says, quietly. "I thought you had died. I've never thought that before."
"Now you know how I feel all the time," he says, and his tone is almost bitter.
"I don't do it on purpose." She watches the closed hatch, and half hopes someone will walk in.
"I just wish you didn't take so many risks." His voice is soft, and she has to strain to hear it.
"That's what I'm here for!" she chirps. Tries to take the stress away from his voice with a smile, but he can't see it from where he's lying. Lee rolls over to look at her.
"We're pilots," insists Lee. "We don't have to be heroes."
"But you did. This time, you tried to be a hero."
"I have to try and live up to the great Starbuck," he says, and this time it's definitely bitter.
Kara shuts her eyes. "I'm glad you're not dead." She casts her words to the air, this time with intention, and Lee inhales sharply on his bunk by her head.
"I think that every time you get out of your bird," Lee says, and his voice cracks.
"I missed you when you were gone," she says. "More than I should have."
"You'd miss lots of people if they were dead. Helo. Cally. Anders."
Kara opens her eyes. Breathes in, and prepares to face the world with no yelling, no hiding and no prompting.
"Sam was right there, Lee. Right there, and I couldn't stay beside him - I had to fly, and I had to find you. All I could do was think of was you."
"All I could think of was you," Lee whispers. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and hauls her up onto his bunk. "I didn't think of Dee once," he confesses, and kisses her. It is hard and it is desperate, and it is everything and nothing like Kara ever expected it would be. Not that she ever thought about it.
Then she thinks that perhaps, she should stop fooling herself, and shifts, tilts her head and kisses Lee back.
His fingers are cold when they brush over her stomach, her back and she shivers, arches into his body and fumbles at his belt buckle as he starts unbuttoning her pants.
She hopes nobody steps through the hatch.
*
The first pilot to find them frakking is Hotdog, and he's not exactly surprised. He just rolls his eyes and keeps on walking, and assumes it's not the first time.
Tells the first pilot he sees, in hushed voices and furtive glances.
Pilots know how to keep secrets.
*
Dee strides down the corridor, hands empty and a smile on her face. Her shift finally over, her tasks at least on hold, if not finished, and she's free for eight hours. She wants to make the most of it, and she does not pause to change or shower or think, just heads for the pilots quarters.
The corridors are crowded, she thinks, and although shift changeover accounts for some of it she doesn't usually have to stop so often. The deck crew she passes stop her to enquire after her health and the health of the Old Man.
As she passes pilots, she asks them where she can find Lee. "In the Number Two head," says Kat, "he's just off shift," but when she gets there the steam is rising but the showers are empty. She passes Kat again, leaning against the wall, Hotdog's hand fisting the material at her shoulder, and Kat laughs. "Sorry," she says, as Dee passes.
"Kat's a bit flaky," Hotdog explains. "Try the ready room. I think there's a game in there." In the ready room she finds Helo lifting an upturned table.
"Was Apollo in here?" she asks.
"You just missed him. He and Starbuck went to settle their differences in the gym. Took an audience with them."
Dee shakes her head, and makes her way to the gym, but the corridors are still heavy with traffic and by the time she gets there Lee is no where to be seen. She reaches out a hand to tap Joker on the shoulder, but Joker turns first. "Yes?" the pilot asks, and for a second Dee wonders if Joker has ever been so rude to her before.
"I thought Apollo was here...?" She lets her voice trail off into a question, and wonders when she became so timid. So unsure.
"He was," says Joker shortly. "Starbuck gave him a black eye and they wandered off to cry about their poor lives."
Joker stops short, like he's said something wrong, and turns away. "Can you tell me where he's gone?" Dee asks.
"I'm not his keeper," Joker sneers. "Keep track of your boyfriend for yourself." Joker shoulders past Dee, and Dee frowns at his retreating form.
"Try quarters," says Racetrack, quietly. She smiles at Dee. "And don't mind Joker. Double CAP."
Quarters are empty, though, and Lee's rack is messy, like he jumped up and left in an emergency, and she thinks that's unlike him.
When she asks a passing pilot, he gives her a strange look and shrugs his shoulders. "Try the mess," he says, but she doesn't bother.
She thinks - she knows - the pilots are giving her the runaround, and she wonders what they're hiding.
*
It's cold, and Kara's restless. She lies on her bunk, cigar in hand, and watches as the pilots trickle in to sleep. It's late in the cycle, and they're all up later than they should be, but she's not their mother. She's just another pilot, and Kat waves goodnight as she draws her own curtain closed.
The rustles slow and stop, until all she can hear is the breathing of her fellow pilots. She swings her feet down, and pushes herself to her feet. She inspects each curtain, but doesn't really care if they're awake or asleep or frakking each other senseless.
When she draws back Lee's curtain, he blinks at her. She didn't wake him. She wouldn't care if she had. She presses two fingers to his lips, like drawing luck from the pilot in the ready room. The bunk room behind her is full of sleeping pilots, and he does not speak as she clambers into his bunk.
"We shouldn't," he breathes as she pulls her tanks over her head, but when his eyes are on her breasts and she knows it wasn't a protest. He helps draw her sweats down her legs and pushes his own off, and when she leans over him and pushes down, the only word he breathes out is Kara.
*
Lee wraps his hand around Dee's elbow. "So," he says. "Are you free this evening?"
Dee smiles at him, and her smile is soft, and loving, and Lee swallows the bile that rises from his stomach. "I wish I was," she says, "But Felix and Cally want me for a girl's night out. I can cancel!"
Lee shakes his head. "It's okay. Go."
"You're so understanding." Dee kisses his cheek. "But I'm free tomorrow."
"I'm on mids tomorrow. I won't get off until late."
She smiles at him again, and he thinks about the triad game he'll probably be able to make.
*
Kara puts her hands on the tiles. She likes the pilots' head: nobody but pilots, and if she wants to stand naked and scream under the water no one will give a frak. She does it, just for a moment: throws her head back and yells wordlessly.
"You good, Starbuck?" Helo stops, a hand on the door, ready to leave.
"Yeah, Karl," she says. "Just had to let it out."
"Well, don't let it out too long," he says, "There's a pot out there with your name on it."
"Deal me in next hand," she says, "I've still got to actually get wet."
Helo laughs, and the door swings shut behind him. She turns on the water. Lets the water warm up around her and flow down her skin, and she rests her head on the cool tiles.
"You're not making a commotion, are you, Starbuck?" asks Lee. She wonders when he entered the head.
"Never," she says, "I'd never do a thing like that." She turns to face him and he's standing there, face bare with more emotion than she's ever seen on him. Face bare, chest bare - she takes a step closer. Grins, slow and gleeful. "I heard you got trapped in the port hatch on deck C with Ellen Tigh."
Lee growls. "I did. Now, shut your mouth and make it up to me."
"Oh, what? Ellen Tigh makes you horny?"
He pushes her until she's flush against the tiles. "Wash the memory of her from my mind, Kara," he whispers into her ear, and she shivers.
Does as he asks.
*
Dee walks down the corridor, a clipboard in her hand. The Old Man asked to see her, and she's keen to oblige, but as she hears laughter from behind her she slows down. She makes a show of not looking, and suddenly, in a whirl of footsteps and laughter, Lee is upon her.
"Petty Officer Dualla," he says, suggestively. He runs a hand down her arm, and cups her hand resting on the clipboard. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Lee," snaps Starbuck as she runs past, "stop making eyes at your girlfriend. We've got two more laps before briefing."
Lee tilts an imaginary hat at Dee and takes off again.
The Admiral comes around the corner, and he smiles at Starbuck. "What do you hear, Starbuck?" he asks.
"The sound of my feet as they pound her into the floor, Sir," replies Lee. He taps Starbuck on the shoulder as he overtakes her, and she laughs and picks up speed.
Before she hands the clipboard to Admiral Adama, she looks up at him. His eyes are fixed on where Starbuck and Lee had just been, and he's frowning.
"Have they always been like that?" he asks softly, half to himself.
"They're boisterous, Sir," Dee replies, and the Old Man looks at her like he forgot she was there.
"Yes," he says, gruffly. "They are."
*
In the quiet shifts, in the dead of the night, Dee monitors the wireless programs. It's not a bad way to pass the hours when everyone else is asleep. She catches up on the latest gossip. New celebrities form in the fleet: news readers and talk show hosts and other people of note. And it's fun, and it's interesting, but her ears only perk up when they talk of the Galactica, and the persons living inside her.
"That Apollo sure is something," says Rachel.
"I'll say," says Marie. The Late Night Bitch Session is in full swing, and Dee taps her fingers idly on the comms board in front of her, proud that everyone understands how wonderful Lee is.
"And those pilots he bunks with are lucky. LUCKY, Marie, to live with a man like that."
"Do you think he bunks with them, or bunks with them?" Dee can hear the insinuation clear as frakking day, and she knows she was supposed to. Knows everyone was supposed to.
"Oh, those pilots are flying and fighting and frakking. I know you saw that little film release just like the rest of us-"
"And unlike some, Rachel, I didn't see it a dozen times."
"Oh, Marie, you wish you'd seen it a dozen times, all those lovely pilots running around in their tiny little towels, cuddling up to one another and gleaming with water. How do you think they wind down?"
"Oh, Rachel." Marie gives a little sigh. "Those pilots are clearly frakking one another in the showers after they come into land. And then they come in to land. Why do you think the water usage on Galactica is so high?"
Giggles fill Dee's headset, and she breaks a nail.
*
The long tone indicates a message over the PA. Lee looks up, even though there is nothing to look at.
"Could Captains Adama and Thrace please report to the Admiral's quarters at their earliest convenience." Gaeta's voice rings through the hangar bay, and the pilots, attempting to fix their own vipers, cheer for Starbuck and Apollo.
He turns his head, and taps his clipboard against the side of the munitions he is inspecting.
Kara raises an eyebrow.
"So, who's in trouble this time?" she asks as they walk off the hangar deck. He bumps her shoulder.
"You," he says. "I'm perfect."
*
Dee nibbles on a carrot. Such a short time ago, eating an actual vegetable made her proud of Lee, that he was so brave, so good to the fleet. Now she worries: worries her teeth on the carrot and worries her fears into the world.
"Sam," she says, unsure of the reasons for his presence on Galactica but ready to take the opportunity. "Have you noticed anything strange about Kara?"
Sam pauses mid bite. "Strange how?" he asks.
"Is she-" Dee pauses, unsure of how to proceed without sounding like an obsessive harpy. "Is she distant?"
Sam smiles, and Dee thinks it's almost patronising. "We live on different ships, Dee. Of course she's distant."
Dee shakes her head. "I mean, doesn't it seem weird that she and Lee are so involved in each other's lives?"
"You've seen their bunks, right?" Sam asks. "I'm not surprised they're so involved. All the pilots are."
"But more than usual?" she persists.
"I don't know what you're worrying about, Dee. As long as I've known her, Kara's always been this way."
As Sam makes his farewells and goes to see a man about a carburettor, Dee realises the truth of this.
For as long as she's known Kara and Lee, Starbuck and Apollo, there's been no one but themselves.
Her heart sinks.
She sits on it a while. She's quiet, and moody, and Felix wraps an arm around her shoulders. When he asks her what's wrong, she shakes her head and rests her head on his shoulder. She doesn't cry, but it's close.
She thinks about Billy, who never loved anyone but her.
*
Lee rocks back on his chair. A knock at his door and he swings down, looks like he's busy saving the world. "Come in," he says.
Dee stands in the doorway. She pauses for a moment and looks down at him, and he's never seen her look so sad. She steps into the room and shuts the door, and he knows what she's going to say.
He's probably never felt so guilty, but when she quietly asks, "Are you in love with Starbuck?" he feels brave enough to shrug, and he thinks that's probably close enough to the truth to count.
She doesn't yell. She just stands there, her face looking empty and hurt and it's worse than anything she could have said.
"Right," she says. "Well. I guess I didn't make the right choice after all."
He's grateful when she leaves.
*
"Permission to execute a Hamilton, Captain Adama, Sir." Starbuck's voice echoes over the comms.
"Permission denied, Captain Starbuck," says Lee.
"But Sir," she wheedles, "Surely a handsome man like you can understand why I'm bored."
"I'm glad you think so, Starbuck, but it's not going to happen."
A pause, and then Lee speaks again, his voice filled with laughter. "I saw that, Starbuck! Don't you flip your bird at me!"
Starbuck laughs, and it echoes through Dee's ears.
She keeps her headset on.
She tries not to think too much about all the fun she's not having.
END.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 04:28 pm (UTC)Things that made me very happy:
- Banter and loving mockage: "My little boy," says Kara. "All grown up with a girlfriend." She sheds a fake tear. , and he punches her shoulder as he walks past.
He'll kill her later. His girlfriend is waiting. (er, and you left a period after "fake tear".)
- conspiratorial other pilots. With Heloooo being awesome.
- Dee as an observer/outsider when it comes to Lee and Kara's relationship and to everything pilot-y, really.
- And of course, joyful PILOTS.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:24 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it all. And Helo! And pilots. Some of my favourite things.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 07:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 07:44 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed this. A treatment of Lee/Dualla and Kara/Anders that made me happy, what a lovely thought.
Also making me happy tonight: watching the mini and recalling fondly a time when the world was ending and characters made sense.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 07:56 pm (UTC)My favorite part: He's probably never felt so guilty, but when she quietly asks, "Are you in love with Starbuck?" he feels brave enough to shrug, and he thinks that's probably close enough to the truth to count.
I loved the comraderie in the pilots, the 'pilots know how to keep secrets' thing, the run-around they give Dee.
Anyway, lovely. Your writing always has that quality that...it doesnt always make you feel good and perfect and sometimes you cringe when you read because it hurts a lot and you dont want to keep reading but you do because it makes you feel.so.damn.much.
I don't know if that was coherent, but I loved this piece, especially in light of recent episodes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 08:02 pm (UTC)I like the Dee you've written here. She's not completely naive. She's aware of what's going on but doesn't have the will? to confront it. She's relieved when she thinks the competition is gone (when Kara kisses Sam madly before looking for Lee) but she's satifisied with the way things are and didn't want to rock the boat.
For as long as she's known Kara and Lee, Starbuck and Apollo, there's been no one but themselves.
I love that it is Sam's unsuspecting comment that makes Dee face the reality that that L/K are a pair and they can't be separated regardless of who they're having a relationship with.
In the end, it is Dee who has the courage to end the triad (I guess it's really four sided, but Anders is barely there). That is something I can admire. It hurts, its painful but once she's faced the truth she went and did something abou it. It hurts to admit you made a mistake and Dee did that.
Can you go send a mental image of your Dee to RM please? I like her much better.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 08:08 pm (UTC)She's so do that. Hee.
I love the pilots looking out for their own. Don't we all wish we had buddies like that.
"Right," she says. "Well. I guess I didn't make the right choice after all."
Well, after this week...
Meep.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:29 pm (UTC)I love the pilots. They do care, competitiveness aside, so.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 08:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-11 10:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:30 pm (UTC)A shrug is all it takes - it's so clear all the time how much he loves her.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 04:11 am (UTC)HAHAHAHHA.
She hates that he did not stop to say hello, but she knows that's what they are now.
Ouch.
"Petty Officer Dualla," he says, suggestively. He runs a hand down her arm, and cups her hand resting on the clipboard. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Lee," snaps Starbuck as she runs past, "stop making eyes at your girlfriend. We've got two more laps before briefing."
Lee tilts an imaginary hat at Dee and takes off again.
Oh if only it were that natural and cute and not FUCKING BIZARRE on the show.
It is so sad that I like, like, EVERYTHING so much better in fic.
And then I was too involved to quote more lines!
I love this. Which is good since you were writing it FOREVER OMG.
I think my very favorite thing is Lee just shrugging. Because...yes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:34 pm (UTC)I am theoretically behind Lee/Dualla. Theoretically it could have worked. Note I said COULD HAVE, because it can't now, THANKS, RON.
I think it was Ingrid who commented that Dualla, as a minor character pushed into love interest of major character, has really got no where left to go.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 06:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:35 pm (UTC)I want so much more for Dee than what the show is going to give her.
And so much more for pilots, obviously.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 07:30 am (UTC)This is way cool.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:35 pm (UTC)Nice bunny.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 08:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 10:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 10:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 03:29 pm (UTC)Did you get the "blood like holy wine" from the song "A Case of You"? Just curious because I've been listening to Diana Krall lately and think of Lee and Kara when I hear that song...
Again, fantastic fic as usual!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-12 09:41 pm (UTC)"That's our girl," he says, like she'd been missing. She wonders what that means.
Class differences in the fleet are fascinating, no?
Thanks for sharing it with us.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-13 06:19 pm (UTC)Actually my personal little favourite thing in this had nothing to do with pilots. I love how Gaeta councils Dee not to let Lee slip away and looks over at Captain Kelly, that is so sweet!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:41 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm mostly about the pilots, and how they close ranks, and how they act as a group.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:09 am (UTC)I feel the gravitas of this piece is inherent in the subject matter: the complicated relationship between Lee and Kara, Apollo and Starbuck, and the inevitable second-fiddle place their respective SO would have in their lives. Though you touched upon the angst, the story never got bogged down by it. The dialogue is sharp, light-hearted, and humorous. The characters all seem to gradually mature as the story progresses.
I am very impressed by your characterization of Dee in this piece. Having a secondary character like her sharing stage with the heavy-hitters is not an easy thing to do, and here you've managed to give her a very distinct voice. I am especially struck by how young she came across -- in a way, this extremely consistent with what actually transpired on the show.
Thank you for sharing your talent. I hope you write more, because I really like what I've read.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:44 pm (UTC)I wanted this to be serious at the same time as not, if that makes sense. Because that's what life is, and that's what THEIR life is - it's serious, running from the cylons, but if they stop and get bogged down on it, they'll die. So, yeah. And so much of fandom is just all about pilots, but there's everyone else in their lives too, even if they (the pilots) try to forget that and close ranks,
When you say you hope I write more, I wonder what you mean, though, because I have written quite a lot of BSG fic. Were you referencing a specific theme, or just saying in general?
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 09:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:45 pm (UTC)Hello, mostly silent person.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 09:51 pm (UTC)I do not think I will evereverEVER get sick of infideliciousness. And oh. Pilots. PILOTS. Keeping secrets. Keeping things normal, right until they aren't.
You have so much more patience than me for teasing things out through dialogue and implication, which I admire heartily. And your Dee is great. I kind of want her to meet my Anders. They could get thoroughly sloshed together.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 10:46 pm (UTC)When you posted your Anders fic last week I FREAKED OUT at Claira. I was like, "see what happens when you take two weeks to beta me? I GET SUPERSEEDED!" and she was like, "Shut up and stop panicking." Because yours was AWESOME, you see, so I got all sad.
Hokay, enough about you, let's talk about MY awesome fic. INFIDELICIOUS PILOTS ARE AWESOME, THE END.
I want my Dee to meet your Anders, too. They could be happy together. Not in the sex way. Just in the not depressed way. Or something.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:27 pm (UTC)(Truly, I'd like to know - I don't like the thought of having something out in the world that isn't as good as I can make it)
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:A Little Late to the Party
Date: 2006-02-20 09:10 am (UTC)Excellent characterization, the banter was awesome, and the angst was delicious.
Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-26 11:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 04:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-04 09:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 04:35 am (UTC)But glad you enjoyed!