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padmeonpaper2009-05-01 09:51 pm
padme_kenobi) wrote in padmeonpaper2009-05-01 09:51 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" (Battlestar Galactica, Lee/Kara, 1/11)
Title: The Sound of One Hand Clapping
Author:padme_kenobi
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Lee/Kara with mentions of Lee/Dee, Sam/Kara and Zak/Kara
Status: Complete. One chapter will be posted per day.
Word Count: 3,126 this chapter
Rating: PG this chapter
Spoilers: Through S3's "Crossroads, Part 2
Summary: She hates for him to see her when she’s not in total control. What’ll he think now that she can’t even take her frakking hands off the panel?
Author's Notes: Please see this post.
When she opens her eyes, someone is screaming.
Kara doesn’t know where she is and she wants to tell them to shut the frak up, because her hands feel like they’re on fire and maybe if things can just slow down for one frakking second she’ll be okay.
She looks down.
Her hands are on fire.
And all at once she understands that she is the one screaming.
Simultaneously, she slips back into unconsciousness.
***
Her eyes snap open. The smell of something sizzling fills the air.
Where is she? What happened?
Again it hits her, and the memories replay like a gun camera filmstrip. She was doing recon on the Temple of Jupiter. A fleet of toasters appeared out of nowhere – nowhere – and ambushed her. Raptors have only light armament, and she couldn’t have fought back anyway, not even if she’d had the presence of mind to try. Then again, it’s difficult to have the presence of mind to do anything when your hands are molded to the dead control panel and it’s on fire.
Her hands.
Frak.
Kara bites her lip and forces herself to look down.
Two chunks of flesh that are only vaguely reminiscent of human body parts still cling to the panel, one around the control stick and the other around the comm switch. She tries to lift a finger, just one infinitesimal movement of her pinky, and is rewarded with a shooting, searing pain. She bites her lip again, bites until she tastes blood, and still the pain does not dissipate.
“Frak!”
She can see the Raptor’s survival kit, right by her feet. It will have disinfectant, bandages, and most importantly morpha. Oh gods, morpha. What she wouldn’t give for that right now. What she wouldn’t give to be able to fall asleep, lapse mercifully into unconsciousness again. But now she’s awake and all she can think of is getting to that kit and getting to it as quickly as possible.
Kara bats the bag with her foot. It doesn’t budge. Of course, all survival kits are attached to all Raptors, to make sure they don’t bounce around during flight. Of course, if a pilot had use of their hands there wouldn’t be a problem.
She tries to lift a finger again. Fails. The pain is worse this time and tears spring unwillingly to her eyes. She hates herself for that. Gods, Starbuck, you’re a sissy. Remember when you found the Raider on that downed moon? You walked half a godsdamned mile on a busted frakking knee. You can do better.
The tears trickle down her cheeks, unbidden. The pain continues, unbidden. Nausea begins to prickle her throat.
And then, footsteps crunch outside.
“Frakfrakfrak,” Kara mutters. Her only option is a bluff, and that’s really no option at all. “I’m warning you, I’m frakking armed!” Even the threat comes out as a whimper. Disgusting. “Come closer and I’ll blow your frakking brains out!”
“Kara! Don’t shoot!”
Relief courses through her for the first time since the crash when she hears Lee’s voice. Relief, and not a little embarrassment. She hates for him to see her when she’s not in total control. What’ll he think now that she can’t even take her frakking hands off the panel?
“Kara?” Lee peers into the cockpit, apparently fully expecting a gun to be trained on him. Spotting none, he hurries to her and kisses the top of her head in relief. “Godsdamnit, Kara, I thought you were –”
“Takes more than a coupla toasters to off me,” Kara says thickly. It helps not to move her lips so much.
“Your hands.” He sounds stricken now, gently brushing his own fingers down her arms and stopping just short of her wrists. “Okay. Let’s get those taken care of.”
Lee rummages in the survival kit and comes up with a syringe of morpha. He prepares it quickly and rolls up her sleeve; she’s in so much pain already that she doesn’t feel the needle going in. She knows what’s coming next but pretends she doesn’t. It’s easier that way.
“We’ve got to get your hands off the control panel.” Funny how he states every step as something they have to do, rather than the actual burden that falls on her shoulders. Trust Lee, the incurable romantic. “I think I can rewire it, but I’d obviously prefer not to attempt that while you’re still attached to it.”
“No, really?” Kara mutters under her breath and Lee smiles, evidently pleased to see that her sense of humour remains intact.
“Do you want my help?”
“No.” She says it immediately and firmly. Peeling her burned fingers back will be bad enough without him touching them as well, and the morpha should kick in soon anyway.
He looks for a moment like he wants to argue with her, insist that she does need his help, but backs off. Kara knows it’s like taking a bandage off a rugrat. You’ve got to be quick and sure about it and you’ve got to get it over with before you have much time to think. You’ve got to make up your mind and just do it.
So she does. Counts to three in her head, silently mouthing the words, and then just does it.
Her hands burn once more. The nausea asserts itself and suddenly it’s all she can think about. Suddenly she’s bent over, retching onto the floor. A part of her still wonders, stupidly, what Lee will think. He’s seen her sick off the effects of too much ambrosia and too little food, but she could always laugh that off even as she was running for the head. This is different. This time she is genuinely ill. Equal parts sick and petrified.
And because Lee is Lee, he doesn’t hesitate.
He’s at her side in a moment – not complicated in the small Raptor – and brushing back her hair, murmuring indecipherable words of comfort, resting a hand on her back and massaging softly.
“Sorry,” Kara whispers when she can breathe again. Why she is apologizing, she cannot say.
Lee chuckles. “Kara, you think I haven’t seen someone get sick before? Come on. Besides, algae looks the same coming up as it does going in, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
The mess sits on the floor and she has to admit, he’s right. But she doesn’t want to think about that right now.
“Don’t say that. Please,” she begs. “Not unless you want the rest of my lunch to decorate your flight suit.”
In answer he circles his hands around to her front and props her gently back on her chair. She leans her head back, feeling a gentle drowsiness steal over her – the morpha, finally – and Lee’s kiss on her lips.
“Lee?” Kara mumbles.
“You have to stay awake,” he says firmly. Kisses her again. “I’m going to start rewiring this panel and I want you to tell me … I want you to tell me what you miss most about Caprica.”
That gets her attention, even despite the high that’s making her eyelashes feel like weights. “What?”
“You heard me.” Lee pats her shoulder once and starts fiddling with the ruined panel. “What do you miss most about Caprica? Could be anything.”
Kara says the first thing that comes into her head. “My wall. The wall of my apartment.” Maybe now she’s played his stupid game, he’ll let her sleep.
“Why do you miss your wall?”
Damn. “I don’t know, Lee. I guess … I guess it was fun to paint on. Had so much room. I left it bare, didn’t have any furniture there or anything. When I was coming off a high I’d … I’d just take my paints and I’d draw whatever I felt like and … it helped me to forget. I wrote on it once. Took this black poster paint and wrote a poem. Then I passed out and couldn’t remember how it got there.”
Her words are slurring worse than when she’s drunk, but he smiles. “I didn’t know you wrote poetry.”
“Don’t. Just one. Wrote it a few months before …” Kara swallows. “A few months before Zak died.”
That sobers Lee quickly. He turns from where he’s trying to wind two wires around each other. “About the accident?”
They still call it the accident, even though she knows it was her fault.
“No. Just about …” Her eyes close, then snap open again when he touches her cheek. “About him. Watched him one night, we’d drunk way too much and he passed out next to me and I couldn’t sleep, so I just wrote something. Wasn’t any good or anything, but I must’ve liked it because I painted it on my wall later.”
Lee looks contemplative. “Would you ever show me?”
Kara laughs. “Gods, Lee, I don’t still have it. I don’t think I do, anyway. It might be in one of my old notebooks. I can’t remember.”
She closes her eyes for one second, or what she thinks is one second until they open again and she realizes Lee is shaking her.
“Kara, you can’t sleep. I’m sorry, but you can’t.”
“I didn’t!” The protest comes out as an angry retort.
“I’ve been shaking you for five minutes.” He makes her sit forward on her chair.
“Morpha makes me sleepy,” Kara mumbles, her head slumping forward.
Lee brushes her hair back from her face. “I know. I’m sorry. But if you’ve got a concussion Doc Cottle will have my head for letting you doze off. You have to stay with me, Kara.”
“Stop apologizing,” she mutters. “’S not your fault.”
“Sor-” he starts to say, then breaks off. She’d smack him if she could. If it wouldn’t hurt so much.
Lee returns to the control panel. Kara discovers she has to stay awake, if only to keep from falling off her chair. She doesn’t want to think about landing on her hands in such an instance. She doesn’t want to admit she’s scared of that happening. Scared of the pain.
“Ask me one question,” he says, his back turned. Obviously he’s still trying to make sure she doesn’t doze off. His voice sounds as though it’s coming from underwater. “One question about anything you want.”
“Don’t know …” Kara trails off as she tries to hold on to the thoughts slipping through her brain. “I, um … why did you come? Why didn’t you send Dee or Racetrack or somebody?”
“I asked Dee.” Lee’s back is still turned – he’s fiddling with one of the control panel’s knobs – but she doesn’t miss the anger that slips into his tone. “She wouldn’t. Not even after I made it a direct order.”
“What?” That’s a shock. Anastasia Dualla is nothing if not obedient.
“She holds a grudge, Kara. Oh, she tried to justify it by saying we were all needed to hold the defensive perimeter, when in fact there were almost too many of us to maintain proper cover.” He snorts bitterly. “The truth is she doesn’t want to risk her life for the woman who cost her a chance at marrying her hero, the great Apollo.” Lee says that derisively, sarcastically. “I could see it in her eyes.”
“But that was a year ago.”
“Like I said, she holds a grudge.”
“I thought you told her when you broke up with her that it didn’t have anything to do with me,” Kara says, nearly toppling off the chair again. She wishes she could reposition herself, but without her hands, she’s helpless.
“I did.” Lee toggles a switch and is rewarded with an arcing spark that makes him jump backwards. “Frak.”
She attempts a smirk. “Singed eyebrows look good on you, you know.”
“Very funny,” he mutters. “The godsdamned guidance systems are shot. If I do get this bird in the air I’m going to be flying it blind.”
“Cylons got me pretty good,” Kara acknowledges, and catches herself for a third time. “How, um … how long do you think it’ll take to fix it?”
“I still have to rewire the comm and somehow persuade the control stick to communicate with the engines,” Lee sighs. “And I figure you’ve got another hour or so before that morpha wears off and you start trying to chew off your hands again. If I don’t get it fixed before then, we walk.”
She decides not to think about walking all the way back to the command post with her hands on fire and her stomach churning.
He turns back to the control panel. Toggles more switches. This time it’s Kara who initiates the conversation.
“What did you tell Dee? Exactly?”
She feels sure that if he was facing her, one eyebrow would be raised. “Why is that so important?”
It isn’t derisive, it’s just a question.
It gets an honest answer. “I dunno. Just is.”
And because he’s Lee and because he loves her, he tells her immediately and without reservation. “Only that I didn’t think it was fair to mislead her. You were gone, but … when I went to her I knew I’d only ever be using her as a replacement for you and that if you ever walked back into my life, I wouldn’t have any self-control left.”
“That sounds really frakking weird coming from you.”
“Yeah,” Lee acknowledges. “That’s us, though.”
Kara nods. “That’s us.”
“Besides, I didn’t want to be another Billy.”
That confuses her and she knows it isn’t just the morpha. “What happened there?”
This time he glances back. “Sure you’re not too high? It’s complicated.”
Again Kara curses her inability to smack him. She has a feeling she’s going to be doing that for awhile. “Frak you,” she snaps with as much venom as she can manage.
Lee snickers in spite of himself, then abruptly sighs. “Dee likes to pretend she’s so high and mighty for surviving our breakup. But she’s a frakking hypocrite. She did the same thing to Billy a month before we started seeing each other. Only difference is, you and I’d been friends, and, well …”
“We were frak buddies, you can say it,” she sighs with a mental eyeroll. Sometimes he can still be such a prude.
“Well. Yeah.” There’s a hot blush creeping up his cheeks and she’d laugh aloud if it wouldn’t hurt so much. “But Dee … as soon as she thought she had a shot at someone better – me – she left Billy without even explaining why. Treated me like some kind of prize she’d won, especially in front of him. Did you know he proposed to her the night of the hostage-taking on Cloud Nine?”
“No. Frak. What? No! Gods!” Kara is at turns cursing her fuzzy-headedness and cursing her shipmates for not keeping her up to date on all the gossip.
“Yeah.” Lee’s fiddling with the control panel again. “Forget who told me later. I think it might’ve been Helo.”
“He always did have my best interests at heart.”
Lee snickers again. She wonders if she can get away with closing her eyes for just a moment, just a tiny moment, just until the morpha starts wearing off. She knows it will soon.
No such luck. No sooner has she slid back in her chair just a little and leaned her head against its back and slumped gratefully, exhaustedly, every bit of her crying out for rest, when she feels his kiss on her lips and his hands snaking around in back of her to prop her up again.
“You know, sometimes I think you really do have eyes in the back of your head,” she mumbles sleepily.
Lee kisses her again, just because. And again, for a reason she doesn’t bother trying to figure out. “All CAGs have eyes surgically implanted in the backs of their heads, didn’t you know?” he whispers against her mouth. “One of the perks of our job description.”
The un-morpha’d Kara would come up with some sort of smart retort, likely involving groping privileges and the Top Gun, but all she can manage under the influence is, “You have soot on your lip.”
“That’s because you have soot on your lip.” His hand comes up and he’s caressing her cheek, brushing his fingers across her mouth, and she aches to touch him and frak, this is just putting her to sleep more.
She settles for kissing his fingers, one by one.
He lets her for a moment, then brushes her hair back and props her up. Her stomach reels, but then Lee is speaking and as long as she focuses on his words she’s okay. “I’ve got two more circuits to reset and then, hopefully, this frakking crate will fly again. You have to do your part and stay awake, Kara. Can you do that for me?”
Kara’s rapidly losing the battle and she knows it. Her hands are tingling again, a tingle she hasn’t noticed since the crash. “When I get back I’m going to break ship’s record for napping.”
His hand is at her cheek again, unexpectedly tender. “Hell, I’ll nap with you. But right now we both have a job to do.”
“Did you just proposition me, Apollo?” she asks as he turns back to the control panel.
Kara didn’t know Lee’s ears could go quite that red. “Get your hearing checked. I said nap, not frak.”
“Passes for the same thing on Galactica these days,” she quips. Resolutely ignores the growing pain in her hands.
“Oh it does, does it?” He fiddles with some wires for what seems like an inordinately long time. “If I do proposition you, will you stay awake?”
She pretends to ponder the question. “Maaaaaybe. I could have a hot date, you know.”
Kara doesn’t miss the way he tenses. “You wish,” Lee says stiffly.
“Oh, gee, thanks,” she replies sarcastically, and successfully resists the urge to kick him in the ass. (It would knock her off balance, besides.) “Kidding, Apollo, kidding. If you proposition me, I’ll stay awake.”
“It’s a deal. You don’t close your eyes, not once, and you’ve earned yourself one frak.” He twists two final wires together. “That is, if this Raptor doesn’t blow us back to Caprica first.”
“If I make small talk and don’t scream when this morpha wears off, do I earn myself two fraks?” Kara asks cheerfully.
Lee’s rolling his eyes, she knows that without even looking at him. “Brat.”
“Insults will avail you not, Apollo. Do I?”
Now he’s smiling. “You drive a hard bargain, Starbuck.”
She turns his line back on him. “You wish.”
“Tell you what, if the ship doesn’t explode, I’ll make it three.” He runs his fingers nervously through his hair and only succeeds in making it point to every corner of the compass.
Kara, victorious, grins. “It’s a deal.”
Author:
padme_kenobiPrevious Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Lee/Kara with mentions of Lee/Dee, Sam/Kara and Zak/Kara
Status: Complete. One chapter will be posted per day.
Word Count: 3,126 this chapter
Rating: PG this chapter
Spoilers: Through S3's "Crossroads, Part 2
Summary: She hates for him to see her when she’s not in total control. What’ll he think now that she can’t even take her frakking hands off the panel?
Author's Notes: Please see this post.
When she opens her eyes, someone is screaming.
Kara doesn’t know where she is and she wants to tell them to shut the frak up, because her hands feel like they’re on fire and maybe if things can just slow down for one frakking second she’ll be okay.
She looks down.
Her hands are on fire.
And all at once she understands that she is the one screaming.
Simultaneously, she slips back into unconsciousness.
***
Her eyes snap open. The smell of something sizzling fills the air.
Where is she? What happened?
Again it hits her, and the memories replay like a gun camera filmstrip. She was doing recon on the Temple of Jupiter. A fleet of toasters appeared out of nowhere – nowhere – and ambushed her. Raptors have only light armament, and she couldn’t have fought back anyway, not even if she’d had the presence of mind to try. Then again, it’s difficult to have the presence of mind to do anything when your hands are molded to the dead control panel and it’s on fire.
Her hands.
Frak.
Kara bites her lip and forces herself to look down.
Two chunks of flesh that are only vaguely reminiscent of human body parts still cling to the panel, one around the control stick and the other around the comm switch. She tries to lift a finger, just one infinitesimal movement of her pinky, and is rewarded with a shooting, searing pain. She bites her lip again, bites until she tastes blood, and still the pain does not dissipate.
“Frak!”
She can see the Raptor’s survival kit, right by her feet. It will have disinfectant, bandages, and most importantly morpha. Oh gods, morpha. What she wouldn’t give for that right now. What she wouldn’t give to be able to fall asleep, lapse mercifully into unconsciousness again. But now she’s awake and all she can think of is getting to that kit and getting to it as quickly as possible.
Kara bats the bag with her foot. It doesn’t budge. Of course, all survival kits are attached to all Raptors, to make sure they don’t bounce around during flight. Of course, if a pilot had use of their hands there wouldn’t be a problem.
She tries to lift a finger again. Fails. The pain is worse this time and tears spring unwillingly to her eyes. She hates herself for that. Gods, Starbuck, you’re a sissy. Remember when you found the Raider on that downed moon? You walked half a godsdamned mile on a busted frakking knee. You can do better.
The tears trickle down her cheeks, unbidden. The pain continues, unbidden. Nausea begins to prickle her throat.
And then, footsteps crunch outside.
“Frakfrakfrak,” Kara mutters. Her only option is a bluff, and that’s really no option at all. “I’m warning you, I’m frakking armed!” Even the threat comes out as a whimper. Disgusting. “Come closer and I’ll blow your frakking brains out!”
“Kara! Don’t shoot!”
Relief courses through her for the first time since the crash when she hears Lee’s voice. Relief, and not a little embarrassment. She hates for him to see her when she’s not in total control. What’ll he think now that she can’t even take her frakking hands off the panel?
“Kara?” Lee peers into the cockpit, apparently fully expecting a gun to be trained on him. Spotting none, he hurries to her and kisses the top of her head in relief. “Godsdamnit, Kara, I thought you were –”
“Takes more than a coupla toasters to off me,” Kara says thickly. It helps not to move her lips so much.
“Your hands.” He sounds stricken now, gently brushing his own fingers down her arms and stopping just short of her wrists. “Okay. Let’s get those taken care of.”
Lee rummages in the survival kit and comes up with a syringe of morpha. He prepares it quickly and rolls up her sleeve; she’s in so much pain already that she doesn’t feel the needle going in. She knows what’s coming next but pretends she doesn’t. It’s easier that way.
“We’ve got to get your hands off the control panel.” Funny how he states every step as something they have to do, rather than the actual burden that falls on her shoulders. Trust Lee, the incurable romantic. “I think I can rewire it, but I’d obviously prefer not to attempt that while you’re still attached to it.”
“No, really?” Kara mutters under her breath and Lee smiles, evidently pleased to see that her sense of humour remains intact.
“Do you want my help?”
“No.” She says it immediately and firmly. Peeling her burned fingers back will be bad enough without him touching them as well, and the morpha should kick in soon anyway.
He looks for a moment like he wants to argue with her, insist that she does need his help, but backs off. Kara knows it’s like taking a bandage off a rugrat. You’ve got to be quick and sure about it and you’ve got to get it over with before you have much time to think. You’ve got to make up your mind and just do it.
So she does. Counts to three in her head, silently mouthing the words, and then just does it.
Her hands burn once more. The nausea asserts itself and suddenly it’s all she can think about. Suddenly she’s bent over, retching onto the floor. A part of her still wonders, stupidly, what Lee will think. He’s seen her sick off the effects of too much ambrosia and too little food, but she could always laugh that off even as she was running for the head. This is different. This time she is genuinely ill. Equal parts sick and petrified.
And because Lee is Lee, he doesn’t hesitate.
He’s at her side in a moment – not complicated in the small Raptor – and brushing back her hair, murmuring indecipherable words of comfort, resting a hand on her back and massaging softly.
“Sorry,” Kara whispers when she can breathe again. Why she is apologizing, she cannot say.
Lee chuckles. “Kara, you think I haven’t seen someone get sick before? Come on. Besides, algae looks the same coming up as it does going in, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
The mess sits on the floor and she has to admit, he’s right. But she doesn’t want to think about that right now.
“Don’t say that. Please,” she begs. “Not unless you want the rest of my lunch to decorate your flight suit.”
In answer he circles his hands around to her front and props her gently back on her chair. She leans her head back, feeling a gentle drowsiness steal over her – the morpha, finally – and Lee’s kiss on her lips.
“Lee?” Kara mumbles.
“You have to stay awake,” he says firmly. Kisses her again. “I’m going to start rewiring this panel and I want you to tell me … I want you to tell me what you miss most about Caprica.”
That gets her attention, even despite the high that’s making her eyelashes feel like weights. “What?”
“You heard me.” Lee pats her shoulder once and starts fiddling with the ruined panel. “What do you miss most about Caprica? Could be anything.”
Kara says the first thing that comes into her head. “My wall. The wall of my apartment.” Maybe now she’s played his stupid game, he’ll let her sleep.
“Why do you miss your wall?”
Damn. “I don’t know, Lee. I guess … I guess it was fun to paint on. Had so much room. I left it bare, didn’t have any furniture there or anything. When I was coming off a high I’d … I’d just take my paints and I’d draw whatever I felt like and … it helped me to forget. I wrote on it once. Took this black poster paint and wrote a poem. Then I passed out and couldn’t remember how it got there.”
Her words are slurring worse than when she’s drunk, but he smiles. “I didn’t know you wrote poetry.”
“Don’t. Just one. Wrote it a few months before …” Kara swallows. “A few months before Zak died.”
That sobers Lee quickly. He turns from where he’s trying to wind two wires around each other. “About the accident?”
They still call it the accident, even though she knows it was her fault.
“No. Just about …” Her eyes close, then snap open again when he touches her cheek. “About him. Watched him one night, we’d drunk way too much and he passed out next to me and I couldn’t sleep, so I just wrote something. Wasn’t any good or anything, but I must’ve liked it because I painted it on my wall later.”
Lee looks contemplative. “Would you ever show me?”
Kara laughs. “Gods, Lee, I don’t still have it. I don’t think I do, anyway. It might be in one of my old notebooks. I can’t remember.”
She closes her eyes for one second, or what she thinks is one second until they open again and she realizes Lee is shaking her.
“Kara, you can’t sleep. I’m sorry, but you can’t.”
“I didn’t!” The protest comes out as an angry retort.
“I’ve been shaking you for five minutes.” He makes her sit forward on her chair.
“Morpha makes me sleepy,” Kara mumbles, her head slumping forward.
Lee brushes her hair back from her face. “I know. I’m sorry. But if you’ve got a concussion Doc Cottle will have my head for letting you doze off. You have to stay with me, Kara.”
“Stop apologizing,” she mutters. “’S not your fault.”
“Sor-” he starts to say, then breaks off. She’d smack him if she could. If it wouldn’t hurt so much.
Lee returns to the control panel. Kara discovers she has to stay awake, if only to keep from falling off her chair. She doesn’t want to think about landing on her hands in such an instance. She doesn’t want to admit she’s scared of that happening. Scared of the pain.
“Ask me one question,” he says, his back turned. Obviously he’s still trying to make sure she doesn’t doze off. His voice sounds as though it’s coming from underwater. “One question about anything you want.”
“Don’t know …” Kara trails off as she tries to hold on to the thoughts slipping through her brain. “I, um … why did you come? Why didn’t you send Dee or Racetrack or somebody?”
“I asked Dee.” Lee’s back is still turned – he’s fiddling with one of the control panel’s knobs – but she doesn’t miss the anger that slips into his tone. “She wouldn’t. Not even after I made it a direct order.”
“What?” That’s a shock. Anastasia Dualla is nothing if not obedient.
“She holds a grudge, Kara. Oh, she tried to justify it by saying we were all needed to hold the defensive perimeter, when in fact there were almost too many of us to maintain proper cover.” He snorts bitterly. “The truth is she doesn’t want to risk her life for the woman who cost her a chance at marrying her hero, the great Apollo.” Lee says that derisively, sarcastically. “I could see it in her eyes.”
“But that was a year ago.”
“Like I said, she holds a grudge.”
“I thought you told her when you broke up with her that it didn’t have anything to do with me,” Kara says, nearly toppling off the chair again. She wishes she could reposition herself, but without her hands, she’s helpless.
“I did.” Lee toggles a switch and is rewarded with an arcing spark that makes him jump backwards. “Frak.”
She attempts a smirk. “Singed eyebrows look good on you, you know.”
“Very funny,” he mutters. “The godsdamned guidance systems are shot. If I do get this bird in the air I’m going to be flying it blind.”
“Cylons got me pretty good,” Kara acknowledges, and catches herself for a third time. “How, um … how long do you think it’ll take to fix it?”
“I still have to rewire the comm and somehow persuade the control stick to communicate with the engines,” Lee sighs. “And I figure you’ve got another hour or so before that morpha wears off and you start trying to chew off your hands again. If I don’t get it fixed before then, we walk.”
She decides not to think about walking all the way back to the command post with her hands on fire and her stomach churning.
He turns back to the control panel. Toggles more switches. This time it’s Kara who initiates the conversation.
“What did you tell Dee? Exactly?”
She feels sure that if he was facing her, one eyebrow would be raised. “Why is that so important?”
It isn’t derisive, it’s just a question.
It gets an honest answer. “I dunno. Just is.”
And because he’s Lee and because he loves her, he tells her immediately and without reservation. “Only that I didn’t think it was fair to mislead her. You were gone, but … when I went to her I knew I’d only ever be using her as a replacement for you and that if you ever walked back into my life, I wouldn’t have any self-control left.”
“That sounds really frakking weird coming from you.”
“Yeah,” Lee acknowledges. “That’s us, though.”
Kara nods. “That’s us.”
“Besides, I didn’t want to be another Billy.”
That confuses her and she knows it isn’t just the morpha. “What happened there?”
This time he glances back. “Sure you’re not too high? It’s complicated.”
Again Kara curses her inability to smack him. She has a feeling she’s going to be doing that for awhile. “Frak you,” she snaps with as much venom as she can manage.
Lee snickers in spite of himself, then abruptly sighs. “Dee likes to pretend she’s so high and mighty for surviving our breakup. But she’s a frakking hypocrite. She did the same thing to Billy a month before we started seeing each other. Only difference is, you and I’d been friends, and, well …”
“We were frak buddies, you can say it,” she sighs with a mental eyeroll. Sometimes he can still be such a prude.
“Well. Yeah.” There’s a hot blush creeping up his cheeks and she’d laugh aloud if it wouldn’t hurt so much. “But Dee … as soon as she thought she had a shot at someone better – me – she left Billy without even explaining why. Treated me like some kind of prize she’d won, especially in front of him. Did you know he proposed to her the night of the hostage-taking on Cloud Nine?”
“No. Frak. What? No! Gods!” Kara is at turns cursing her fuzzy-headedness and cursing her shipmates for not keeping her up to date on all the gossip.
“Yeah.” Lee’s fiddling with the control panel again. “Forget who told me later. I think it might’ve been Helo.”
“He always did have my best interests at heart.”
Lee snickers again. She wonders if she can get away with closing her eyes for just a moment, just a tiny moment, just until the morpha starts wearing off. She knows it will soon.
No such luck. No sooner has she slid back in her chair just a little and leaned her head against its back and slumped gratefully, exhaustedly, every bit of her crying out for rest, when she feels his kiss on her lips and his hands snaking around in back of her to prop her up again.
“You know, sometimes I think you really do have eyes in the back of your head,” she mumbles sleepily.
Lee kisses her again, just because. And again, for a reason she doesn’t bother trying to figure out. “All CAGs have eyes surgically implanted in the backs of their heads, didn’t you know?” he whispers against her mouth. “One of the perks of our job description.”
The un-morpha’d Kara would come up with some sort of smart retort, likely involving groping privileges and the Top Gun, but all she can manage under the influence is, “You have soot on your lip.”
“That’s because you have soot on your lip.” His hand comes up and he’s caressing her cheek, brushing his fingers across her mouth, and she aches to touch him and frak, this is just putting her to sleep more.
She settles for kissing his fingers, one by one.
He lets her for a moment, then brushes her hair back and props her up. Her stomach reels, but then Lee is speaking and as long as she focuses on his words she’s okay. “I’ve got two more circuits to reset and then, hopefully, this frakking crate will fly again. You have to do your part and stay awake, Kara. Can you do that for me?”
Kara’s rapidly losing the battle and she knows it. Her hands are tingling again, a tingle she hasn’t noticed since the crash. “When I get back I’m going to break ship’s record for napping.”
His hand is at her cheek again, unexpectedly tender. “Hell, I’ll nap with you. But right now we both have a job to do.”
“Did you just proposition me, Apollo?” she asks as he turns back to the control panel.
Kara didn’t know Lee’s ears could go quite that red. “Get your hearing checked. I said nap, not frak.”
“Passes for the same thing on Galactica these days,” she quips. Resolutely ignores the growing pain in her hands.
“Oh it does, does it?” He fiddles with some wires for what seems like an inordinately long time. “If I do proposition you, will you stay awake?”
She pretends to ponder the question. “Maaaaaybe. I could have a hot date, you know.”
Kara doesn’t miss the way he tenses. “You wish,” Lee says stiffly.
“Oh, gee, thanks,” she replies sarcastically, and successfully resists the urge to kick him in the ass. (It would knock her off balance, besides.) “Kidding, Apollo, kidding. If you proposition me, I’ll stay awake.”
“It’s a deal. You don’t close your eyes, not once, and you’ve earned yourself one frak.” He twists two final wires together. “That is, if this Raptor doesn’t blow us back to Caprica first.”
“If I make small talk and don’t scream when this morpha wears off, do I earn myself two fraks?” Kara asks cheerfully.
Lee’s rolling his eyes, she knows that without even looking at him. “Brat.”
“Insults will avail you not, Apollo. Do I?”
Now he’s smiling. “You drive a hard bargain, Starbuck.”
She turns his line back on him. “You wish.”
“Tell you what, if the ship doesn’t explode, I’ll make it three.” He runs his fingers nervously through his hair and only succeeds in making it point to every corner of the compass.
Kara, victorious, grins. “It’s a deal.”