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ficlets, mostly BSG.
Some of these are from ficlet battles, others are just random. I may have posted some of them before. This, for the record, is what happens when I poke through ye old Notes From Work File...
Consider these to contain spoilers through at least the midway point of season three of BSG.
Kara/Anders, marriage
It's not what she expected.
There are things she did expect, behaviors she'd seen from other married couples.
But she didn't expect the little things: adjusting to Sam's bulk in her bed, the way he possessively held her while still leaving her free to go. Him cooking, or her cooking, or the way she knows he hasn't washed the dishes just by the slightly guilty look he'll give her at lunch. Actually eating together, and looking forward to seeing him after a long day.
Kara Thrace doesn't need anyone, and yet, there's a comfort in the way her husband looks at her.
The way he smells in the morning. Kara can't put a finger on it, but there is just something about it that makes her blood heat. Possibly, it's also due to the hard-on he generally wakes up with, and his mouth on various parts of her body.
Or his last sleepy grope at night, when he's really too tired to be thinking of sex, but his hands skim over her skin.
There was a certain order to the way Sam would lay the table (or lay her on the table) for dinner. She got used to expecting to see it when she was home. Got used to him.
She misses them, now. She'd never actually admit it, but Kara misses being married, misses what it meant and felt like to always know there was someone to come home to. Even if she was abusing the hell out of his trust in her, she knew he would still be waiting for her.
Even surrounded by a briefing-room full of other pilots, or a deck full of vipers and mechanics and specialists, she feels alone. Playing cards, smirking over her cigars, is nothing but a front. Starbuck has always been a front--even before Zak. Not that she'd admit that, even now. A front, and Sam had seen right through her from day one.
That had scared the crap out of her then, and it did now, too. Possibly even more, because after everything she'd done to him, he still looked at her with the same love in his eyes.
Sometimes it was joined by hatred, or anger, or jealousy. Sometimes, it was so buried between the things she did to him, it was almost gone. But even angry, pinning her--or letting himself be pinned--as they moved against each other, there was still love there.
It's why she can't let him go.
Kate, Cadman, Girls' Night at the firing range.
"You hold it like this, right?"
Cadman looked up in time to see Kate holding her gun in a classic bad-movie pose. Arm out, gun sideways, squinting down said arm at the target. Before she could object, the psychiatrist squeezed off a round. Even through her ear protection, Cadman winced. "Not exactly," she called.
"Then how?"
Rolling her eyes, Laura held up her own pistol, turning and pointing neatly at the target set up. "Like this." She squeezed the trigger lightly, grinning when the target waved back and forth with her hit.
"Oh!" As if enlightened, Kate took up her stance next to her.
It was Dr. Weir who'd decreed that everyone needed to know how to shoot a weapon--the good doctor still wanted to use words rather than weapons. So Laura had volunteered to teach some of the civillians. After all, it meant she got to shoot things--even if they were only targets.
"Like this?" Suddenly completely professional in her movements, Dr. Heightmeyer fired.
Cadman watched the target sway, then looked at Kate. "You've done this before."
A slight grin crossed Kate's lips, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Now certain, Laura snorted, "You've fired a gun before."
Kate's grin stretched into a smirk, "My dad made sure I could shoot from an early age, I practically used a gun for a teething ring."
"And you didn't feel the need to mention this before I showed you a firing stance?"
"Nah. It was kind of funny, to let you and everyone else have your little illusions about good little psychiatrists." Kate clicked the safety on and carefully set the gun down. "I'm sure there's a nice long paper in stereotypes, even among the adventurers here in Pegasus."
"Yeah, whatever."
Sharon/Karl, rain
Lying under the canvas, listening to the rain fall, Sharon Valerii resigned herself to the fact that Kobol wasn't some great and noble planet of prophecy. It seemed to be mostly mud, really.
"You know, I never thought I'd come to hate the rain."
Sharon chuckled at the irritation in Helo's voice and turned on her side to study him in the muddy half-light, "No, you? Hate rain? Why ever would you do that?" she teased.
"Hey, now," he grinned at her, teeth a lighter blotch of color against his skin. "You can't tell me you're loving the rain."
"Oh, I don't know." She shrugged, "Maybe I like it." Maybe it made her feel human. But she didn't say that. She knew she was a cylon, she'd accepted it long ago, but that still didn't make her happy about it. And the President could still shoot her, or put her out an airlock.
"You like the strangest things."
"That explains me liking you, then."
He snorted and reached out to ruffle her hair, "Although, I do have to admit, you all soaked in rain and mud is kinda... nice."
"Nice?" Sharon raised an eyebrow.
"Nice." Karl replied, smirking.
"Just nice?" She put disappointment into her voice and sighed. "And here I was hoping for more than nice."
"Maybe a little more than nice."
"Oh?"
Karl moved, closing the distance to teasingly kiss her nose, "Maybe a lot more than nice."
A giggle escaped her, and she tilted her head back, "Yeah?"
His mouth brushed against hers, his fingers sliding into her hair as he kissed her gently. "Ok. A whole lot more than nice. It's right up there with seeing you naked."
"And you wonder," she replied, kissing him back in teasing little nips, "why I like the rain."
Dee, arms
Her father taught her to shoot when she was ten. It was a bonding thing, or so he joked. Anastasia learned to clean the rifle, dismantling it and putting it back together with clumsy ten-year-old hands. Her father had been proud, though. She was learning, he'd said. Learning to be the woman she could be.
When she was fourteen, her mother introduced her to things like makeup and dressing correctly for every occasion.
Ana took to those lessons as well as she had to the earlier ones.
Being able to fire a pistol was just one more thing she put on her application when she enlisted at seventeen. She was bright-eyed, and certain that life was full of adventure and hope.
It was the hope that she slowly started losing, as time went on.
When the world ended, there was still Billy. He was older than her, but Anastasia felt as though she had more years on him. Dee wondered, sometimes, what would have happened between them if the world hadn't ended. She knows it wouldn't have been much.
But Billy was also fear. The fear of letting someone in too close, the fear of knowing he could die, the fear of waking alone in ten years because he'd gotten tired of her.
He thought she hung the moon, and that gave her too much control over him.
Two days after he died, she stood in the firing range, pistol in hand. It was familiar, even though she hadn't used one since the cylons boarded the Galactica months before.
Lee Adama, someone who could become more than a casual flirt, someone who might want to give her the universe, is lying in a bed, recovering from a bullet.
And Billy Keikeya is dead.
Dee checks the pistol is loaded, puts on her ear protection and raises the gun, aiming with a precision that earns her six shots through the center of the target.
When it comes back, she nods at it and moves to put the gun down.
A hand on her arm stops her. "Hey, Dee."
It's Racetrack. Anastasia doesn't bother smiling--it's not that she doesn't like the other woman. She just doesn't know her, and she's really in no mood to talk. "What?"
"You look like you could use a drink."
Dee shrugs, "We all could use a big one."
"Yeah." Racetrack seems to consider a moment, then releases her. "I'll let you go." She lifted her own pistol. "Unless you wanna stay and outshoot me."
The challenge hangs in the air for a moment, then Dee flashes a grin, "You're goin' down."
"Now that's what I like to hear," replies the other woman. She raises an eyebrow, "What's the stakes?"
"That drink you mentioned. I win, I get us a bottle of ambrosia. You win..."
"I get us a jar of Chief's 'shine." Racetrack pauses, then laughs, "You're stackin' the deck, Dee."
"Not at all, Lieutenant, not at all."
They retake their places at the range, lift their weapons, and fire.
Dee wins.
The ambrosia's been in her locker a long time, she's just been waiting for an excuse to drink it.
Helo, Centurion
Boom.
It didn't take Karl long to figure out that normal rounds were shit for killing Cylons.
When he'd made Sharon leave him on Caprica he'd thought, hey, maybe it was time for that retirement people were always saying soldiers should take when they're young--before they become old and hidebound.
But then he'd encountered a patrol of centurions, shining brightly in the clouded sky, and he thought, frak that.
And since going out in a blaze of glory wasn't his style--who'd write about his glory on a dead planet, anyway?--Karl made a plan. Jogging through the forest, ignoring the pain in his leg as best he could, he mocked himself. He was a man with a plan: kill toasters, don't die, kill more toasters.
It doesn't take a hell of a lot of planning to attract their attention and get them to chase him, though.
His mother used to tease him that he'd end up blowing far too much crap up. Karl likes to think that she'd approve of the loud explosion that rocks the day.
When it starts to rain late that afternoon, he just adds it to the things that he won't miss when they finally kill him.
Sam/Vala, possession
"I've been there, you know." Sam doesn't think she's drunk, really. But she must be, to be saying stuff like this to Vala. "Tied-up, locked-down, shut in my own head and screaming for release." She burps. Definitely drunk. But not falling under the table drunk, so that's okay. And maybe she can only think about this without some vague pain when she is drunk.
This is stupid.
"You have?"
Vala doesn't even sound interested. Sam scowls into the nearly-empty glass and considers wandering over to the wet bar the Air Force provided them with for this little black tie shindig. She's probably a disgrace to the uniform she's wearing, but right now, she doesn't care. She's saved the planet far too many damned times. And all the thanks she gets is a smile and a fucking medal, and a wet bar.
"Forget it." She downs the last of the drink and climbs off her stool. Habit makes her straighten the regulation-length blue skirt, and she notices a run in one of her stockings. Dammit.
"Already packing it in, Colonel?"
"Yeah." Leaving Vala to chat up every male in her vicinity, as well as those all the way across the dance floor, Sam makes her way from the room. She stops twice to give her regards to General Hammond and Major Davis.
The hotel that the Air Force had contracted for the gathering has nice rooms. Sam makes her way down the hall to the elevator--the room she was assigned was ten floors up and even she's not that much of a health freak that she'll take the stairs--not caring if anyone else notices as she begins unbuttoning her jacket. The prim little colonel routine is getting damned old, at this point. And if she didn't know she had to do it to play politics, she wouldn't do it at all.
Riding the elevator is a little like sobering up, and Sam steps out feeling less lost in her own head.
"You're difficult to keep up with." Vala is actually panting a little, from where she's leaning against the wall.
Sam stares at her for a moment, then decides she doesn't care why the other woman followed her.
"Look, Sam--" Vala catches her at her door. "--you obviously needs some relaxing."
Shoving her keycard into the lock, Sam bumps the door open, still ignoring Vala. Her goal is the chair, and her jacket lands on it, followed by her blouse. "I do?"
"Yes. Should I put this on the other side--oh, they serve breakfast. Can we get a Continental breakfast in the morning?" Earth minutiae endlessly distracts Vala, sometimes. "I do rather feel the Air Force could spring for that, given all I've done for them." Vala wanders towards Sam, reading the menu on doorknob hanger.
"Sure." Tiredly, Sam unzips and steps out of her skirt. Standing there in her slip and underwear, she thinks she should feel odd, with Vala there.
"Good. I'll need it." Vala disappears again.
Rummaging in the suitcase she'd brought, Sam pulls out blue flannel pyjamas. It's easy to slip out of the rest of her clothes, and she's stepping into the bottoms when Vala returns.
"Now that's a nice sight," Vala says, tone approving. She comes close enough to wrap her arms around Sam from behind, hands just under her ribs and flat against her skin. "Still angry with me?"
"I wasn't angry with you." For a moment, Sam leans back against her, closing her eyes and wondering if she's still drunk or simply tired.
"Could have fooled me."
"You can be fooled?" It's an attempt at a joke, but Sam pulls away to finish dressing.
"Of course I can. Though, I'll admit, it doesn't happen often."
"Of course it doesn't." With a snort, Sam climbs into bed, cuddling up to the pillow. A sigh escapes her.
Vala asks, voice odd, "Shall I go, then?"
Admitting that she needs comfort is something Sam doesn't do often. She holds up the edge of the blanket, sleepily looking at Vala. If she doesn't ask, she won't sound weak, and Carters are never weak.
"Oh, good." Vala strips without bothering to hang or drape her clothes over a chair, then moves, naked and beautiful, to climb in next to Sam.
Sam turns, and her hands skim over Vala before she kisses her gently. Vala makes an approving noise, wriggling closer.
Unfortunately, the contact relaxes Sam enough so that the alcohol in her system has free reign. With her eyes drooping, she pulls back a little and says, "Night."
At least, she thinks she said it.
Anders, Unfinished Business
It confirms his worst fears. Watching her with Adama, Sam suddenly realizes with clarity that he never knew the woman he married. It's a defense mechanism, but he has to take it otherwise it hurts too much (it still hurts).
Staggering away from the match, he does the only thing he can do.
He tells himself this is for the better. That Kara Thrace was never really his. That she was a good lay, but nothing more.
The stark black lines on his arm put the lie to his thoughts.
Four months, he worried she was dead or worse.
Four months, and she never really cared.
He tries to understand why she married him and gives up because it hurts too much.
Blindly, he makes his way to the hold. Once there it's automatic to make his way to the right.
Jean looks up at him, Connors doesn't. The rest of the old Caprica resistance isn't there. But they'd banded together, people who knew the fight more than these silly civvies in their tin ships. "Gods, man. You look like shit. What the hell happened?"
"Nothing." And he's right. Nothing happened.
A look crosses her face--and he doesn't want her pity--she glares. "I told you to stop seeing that bitch, Sam. She's no good for you."
"Let it go, Barolay."
"Fine." She stands and tosses a canteen at him, "Go drown your sorrows then, you stupid frakker."
He wants to laugh at her, but thinks that might be a bad idea. Unscrewing the cap, he downs a huge mouthful. Fire burns down from tongue to stomach and up into his sinuses. Sam gasps, and downs another to relieve the pain. It's less fire, more mellow, this time. "What the frak is this shit?"
"Chief's rotgut."
The burn in his throat matches the burn in his heart, which is stupid. He hates that she can do this to him.
It takes another four shots and he's starting to list slightly. Jean takes the alcohol from him and shoves him onto a cot with only a slight amount of mocking. Sam thinks there was something he was supposed to do, but doesn't care.
When he wakes up, he'll be Sam Anders again, and he'll be the man who survived without Kara Thrace.
He has to be.
Kara, Unfinished Business
Sam feels like home. And Kara can't handle that; she can barely breathe without smelling the dirt and sweat and fear on him. The tang of burnt skin and gun oil and something unique to Galactica fills her nostrils and she tries to pull back. "I--" another breath, and she can feel the tension filling him. Like he's waiting for her to hit him again, to wound him worse than the cylons ever could.
It gives her a sense of power, knowing what she can do to him. Something cruel touches her, and she shoves it away. "I can't do this."
Not so cruel. More practical. If she can hurt him, he can hurt her, and she can't have that. Not now, not ever (maybe with Zak).
"Kara." His arms are still around her. Hers drop and she pushes, not hard, but it's enough. He lets go and steps back and meets her eyes. "I'm not a yo-yo."
The words are simple and she's still processing them as he turns and walks away.
And there's something careful and final about him. Something that warns her this is it--her chances are all used up and he's not going to push anymore. She'll have what she wanted: a marriage in name only. She'll never be hurt by anyone, ever again.
Kara's still staring at his back when he disappears around a raptor.
He doesn't come back.
Later, Helo tells her Sam and Jean moved to one of the civillian ships. She doesn't ask him what they're doing there. If she doesn't ask, it doesn't hurt.
Rapture, before we knew what was happening in all those promo images...
The explosion from the other side of the clearing had made Sam and the rest of the crew dive for cover. Then there was nothing but silence until a cheerful voice called mockingly, "Am I always gonna be savin' your ass, Sam?"
Hearing the voice of his wife, Sam closed his eyes for a moment, then called back, "I think it's mutually equal now, Kara."
"Yeah?"
Sam pulled himself up and around his cover. Kara was standing a few feet away, sweaty and dirty and making his heart ache. "Yeah."
"Uh-huh." Something glinted in her eyes and then she held out her arms, "C'mere and congratulate me on being awesome."
"Hey!" Called a second voice and Helo appeared, "Don't be takin' all the credit now, Starbuck."
Moving forward, Sam shifted his rifle around to his back, then gave in to the urge and grabbed her by the waist, swinging her up into the air as she yelped and then banged her fists on his shoulders. "I could drop you."
"Put me--no!" She latched her hands onto his shoulders and glared. "You drop me, Sam, and I'm going back in time and letting the cylons get your ass."
"Uh-huh." Amused, he slowly let her slide down him until she was on her own feet. "Found a time machine, did you?"
"I'd have Chief build one."
"That might take a while, sir. I'm not sure where to even start."
Sam glanced at Tyrol and raised his eyebrows, "Something you can't build, Chief? I'll lose my faith in you."
"Well," Chief shrugged, "Can't be perfect, Sam."
"Though you try," Cally mocked, then she grinned at him.
Consider these to contain spoilers through at least the midway point of season three of BSG.
Kara/Anders, marriage
It's not what she expected.
There are things she did expect, behaviors she'd seen from other married couples.
But she didn't expect the little things: adjusting to Sam's bulk in her bed, the way he possessively held her while still leaving her free to go. Him cooking, or her cooking, or the way she knows he hasn't washed the dishes just by the slightly guilty look he'll give her at lunch. Actually eating together, and looking forward to seeing him after a long day.
Kara Thrace doesn't need anyone, and yet, there's a comfort in the way her husband looks at her.
The way he smells in the morning. Kara can't put a finger on it, but there is just something about it that makes her blood heat. Possibly, it's also due to the hard-on he generally wakes up with, and his mouth on various parts of her body.
Or his last sleepy grope at night, when he's really too tired to be thinking of sex, but his hands skim over her skin.
There was a certain order to the way Sam would lay the table (or lay her on the table) for dinner. She got used to expecting to see it when she was home. Got used to him.
She misses them, now. She'd never actually admit it, but Kara misses being married, misses what it meant and felt like to always know there was someone to come home to. Even if she was abusing the hell out of his trust in her, she knew he would still be waiting for her.
Even surrounded by a briefing-room full of other pilots, or a deck full of vipers and mechanics and specialists, she feels alone. Playing cards, smirking over her cigars, is nothing but a front. Starbuck has always been a front--even before Zak. Not that she'd admit that, even now. A front, and Sam had seen right through her from day one.
That had scared the crap out of her then, and it did now, too. Possibly even more, because after everything she'd done to him, he still looked at her with the same love in his eyes.
Sometimes it was joined by hatred, or anger, or jealousy. Sometimes, it was so buried between the things she did to him, it was almost gone. But even angry, pinning her--or letting himself be pinned--as they moved against each other, there was still love there.
It's why she can't let him go.
Kate, Cadman, Girls' Night at the firing range.
"You hold it like this, right?"
Cadman looked up in time to see Kate holding her gun in a classic bad-movie pose. Arm out, gun sideways, squinting down said arm at the target. Before she could object, the psychiatrist squeezed off a round. Even through her ear protection, Cadman winced. "Not exactly," she called.
"Then how?"
Rolling her eyes, Laura held up her own pistol, turning and pointing neatly at the target set up. "Like this." She squeezed the trigger lightly, grinning when the target waved back and forth with her hit.
"Oh!" As if enlightened, Kate took up her stance next to her.
It was Dr. Weir who'd decreed that everyone needed to know how to shoot a weapon--the good doctor still wanted to use words rather than weapons. So Laura had volunteered to teach some of the civillians. After all, it meant she got to shoot things--even if they were only targets.
"Like this?" Suddenly completely professional in her movements, Dr. Heightmeyer fired.
Cadman watched the target sway, then looked at Kate. "You've done this before."
A slight grin crossed Kate's lips, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Now certain, Laura snorted, "You've fired a gun before."
Kate's grin stretched into a smirk, "My dad made sure I could shoot from an early age, I practically used a gun for a teething ring."
"And you didn't feel the need to mention this before I showed you a firing stance?"
"Nah. It was kind of funny, to let you and everyone else have your little illusions about good little psychiatrists." Kate clicked the safety on and carefully set the gun down. "I'm sure there's a nice long paper in stereotypes, even among the adventurers here in Pegasus."
"Yeah, whatever."
Sharon/Karl, rain
Lying under the canvas, listening to the rain fall, Sharon Valerii resigned herself to the fact that Kobol wasn't some great and noble planet of prophecy. It seemed to be mostly mud, really.
"You know, I never thought I'd come to hate the rain."
Sharon chuckled at the irritation in Helo's voice and turned on her side to study him in the muddy half-light, "No, you? Hate rain? Why ever would you do that?" she teased.
"Hey, now," he grinned at her, teeth a lighter blotch of color against his skin. "You can't tell me you're loving the rain."
"Oh, I don't know." She shrugged, "Maybe I like it." Maybe it made her feel human. But she didn't say that. She knew she was a cylon, she'd accepted it long ago, but that still didn't make her happy about it. And the President could still shoot her, or put her out an airlock.
"You like the strangest things."
"That explains me liking you, then."
He snorted and reached out to ruffle her hair, "Although, I do have to admit, you all soaked in rain and mud is kinda... nice."
"Nice?" Sharon raised an eyebrow.
"Nice." Karl replied, smirking.
"Just nice?" She put disappointment into her voice and sighed. "And here I was hoping for more than nice."
"Maybe a little more than nice."
"Oh?"
Karl moved, closing the distance to teasingly kiss her nose, "Maybe a lot more than nice."
A giggle escaped her, and she tilted her head back, "Yeah?"
His mouth brushed against hers, his fingers sliding into her hair as he kissed her gently. "Ok. A whole lot more than nice. It's right up there with seeing you naked."
"And you wonder," she replied, kissing him back in teasing little nips, "why I like the rain."
Dee, arms
Her father taught her to shoot when she was ten. It was a bonding thing, or so he joked. Anastasia learned to clean the rifle, dismantling it and putting it back together with clumsy ten-year-old hands. Her father had been proud, though. She was learning, he'd said. Learning to be the woman she could be.
When she was fourteen, her mother introduced her to things like makeup and dressing correctly for every occasion.
Ana took to those lessons as well as she had to the earlier ones.
Being able to fire a pistol was just one more thing she put on her application when she enlisted at seventeen. She was bright-eyed, and certain that life was full of adventure and hope.
It was the hope that she slowly started losing, as time went on.
When the world ended, there was still Billy. He was older than her, but Anastasia felt as though she had more years on him. Dee wondered, sometimes, what would have happened between them if the world hadn't ended. She knows it wouldn't have been much.
But Billy was also fear. The fear of letting someone in too close, the fear of knowing he could die, the fear of waking alone in ten years because he'd gotten tired of her.
He thought she hung the moon, and that gave her too much control over him.
Two days after he died, she stood in the firing range, pistol in hand. It was familiar, even though she hadn't used one since the cylons boarded the Galactica months before.
Lee Adama, someone who could become more than a casual flirt, someone who might want to give her the universe, is lying in a bed, recovering from a bullet.
And Billy Keikeya is dead.
Dee checks the pistol is loaded, puts on her ear protection and raises the gun, aiming with a precision that earns her six shots through the center of the target.
When it comes back, she nods at it and moves to put the gun down.
A hand on her arm stops her. "Hey, Dee."
It's Racetrack. Anastasia doesn't bother smiling--it's not that she doesn't like the other woman. She just doesn't know her, and she's really in no mood to talk. "What?"
"You look like you could use a drink."
Dee shrugs, "We all could use a big one."
"Yeah." Racetrack seems to consider a moment, then releases her. "I'll let you go." She lifted her own pistol. "Unless you wanna stay and outshoot me."
The challenge hangs in the air for a moment, then Dee flashes a grin, "You're goin' down."
"Now that's what I like to hear," replies the other woman. She raises an eyebrow, "What's the stakes?"
"That drink you mentioned. I win, I get us a bottle of ambrosia. You win..."
"I get us a jar of Chief's 'shine." Racetrack pauses, then laughs, "You're stackin' the deck, Dee."
"Not at all, Lieutenant, not at all."
They retake their places at the range, lift their weapons, and fire.
Dee wins.
The ambrosia's been in her locker a long time, she's just been waiting for an excuse to drink it.
Helo, Centurion
Boom.
It didn't take Karl long to figure out that normal rounds were shit for killing Cylons.
When he'd made Sharon leave him on Caprica he'd thought, hey, maybe it was time for that retirement people were always saying soldiers should take when they're young--before they become old and hidebound.
But then he'd encountered a patrol of centurions, shining brightly in the clouded sky, and he thought, frak that.
And since going out in a blaze of glory wasn't his style--who'd write about his glory on a dead planet, anyway?--Karl made a plan. Jogging through the forest, ignoring the pain in his leg as best he could, he mocked himself. He was a man with a plan: kill toasters, don't die, kill more toasters.
It doesn't take a hell of a lot of planning to attract their attention and get them to chase him, though.
His mother used to tease him that he'd end up blowing far too much crap up. Karl likes to think that she'd approve of the loud explosion that rocks the day.
When it starts to rain late that afternoon, he just adds it to the things that he won't miss when they finally kill him.
Sam/Vala, possession
"I've been there, you know." Sam doesn't think she's drunk, really. But she must be, to be saying stuff like this to Vala. "Tied-up, locked-down, shut in my own head and screaming for release." She burps. Definitely drunk. But not falling under the table drunk, so that's okay. And maybe she can only think about this without some vague pain when she is drunk.
This is stupid.
"You have?"
Vala doesn't even sound interested. Sam scowls into the nearly-empty glass and considers wandering over to the wet bar the Air Force provided them with for this little black tie shindig. She's probably a disgrace to the uniform she's wearing, but right now, she doesn't care. She's saved the planet far too many damned times. And all the thanks she gets is a smile and a fucking medal, and a wet bar.
"Forget it." She downs the last of the drink and climbs off her stool. Habit makes her straighten the regulation-length blue skirt, and she notices a run in one of her stockings. Dammit.
"Already packing it in, Colonel?"
"Yeah." Leaving Vala to chat up every male in her vicinity, as well as those all the way across the dance floor, Sam makes her way from the room. She stops twice to give her regards to General Hammond and Major Davis.
The hotel that the Air Force had contracted for the gathering has nice rooms. Sam makes her way down the hall to the elevator--the room she was assigned was ten floors up and even she's not that much of a health freak that she'll take the stairs--not caring if anyone else notices as she begins unbuttoning her jacket. The prim little colonel routine is getting damned old, at this point. And if she didn't know she had to do it to play politics, she wouldn't do it at all.
Riding the elevator is a little like sobering up, and Sam steps out feeling less lost in her own head.
"You're difficult to keep up with." Vala is actually panting a little, from where she's leaning against the wall.
Sam stares at her for a moment, then decides she doesn't care why the other woman followed her.
"Look, Sam--" Vala catches her at her door. "--you obviously needs some relaxing."
Shoving her keycard into the lock, Sam bumps the door open, still ignoring Vala. Her goal is the chair, and her jacket lands on it, followed by her blouse. "I do?"
"Yes. Should I put this on the other side--oh, they serve breakfast. Can we get a Continental breakfast in the morning?" Earth minutiae endlessly distracts Vala, sometimes. "I do rather feel the Air Force could spring for that, given all I've done for them." Vala wanders towards Sam, reading the menu on doorknob hanger.
"Sure." Tiredly, Sam unzips and steps out of her skirt. Standing there in her slip and underwear, she thinks she should feel odd, with Vala there.
"Good. I'll need it." Vala disappears again.
Rummaging in the suitcase she'd brought, Sam pulls out blue flannel pyjamas. It's easy to slip out of the rest of her clothes, and she's stepping into the bottoms when Vala returns.
"Now that's a nice sight," Vala says, tone approving. She comes close enough to wrap her arms around Sam from behind, hands just under her ribs and flat against her skin. "Still angry with me?"
"I wasn't angry with you." For a moment, Sam leans back against her, closing her eyes and wondering if she's still drunk or simply tired.
"Could have fooled me."
"You can be fooled?" It's an attempt at a joke, but Sam pulls away to finish dressing.
"Of course I can. Though, I'll admit, it doesn't happen often."
"Of course it doesn't." With a snort, Sam climbs into bed, cuddling up to the pillow. A sigh escapes her.
Vala asks, voice odd, "Shall I go, then?"
Admitting that she needs comfort is something Sam doesn't do often. She holds up the edge of the blanket, sleepily looking at Vala. If she doesn't ask, she won't sound weak, and Carters are never weak.
"Oh, good." Vala strips without bothering to hang or drape her clothes over a chair, then moves, naked and beautiful, to climb in next to Sam.
Sam turns, and her hands skim over Vala before she kisses her gently. Vala makes an approving noise, wriggling closer.
Unfortunately, the contact relaxes Sam enough so that the alcohol in her system has free reign. With her eyes drooping, she pulls back a little and says, "Night."
At least, she thinks she said it.
Anders, Unfinished Business
It confirms his worst fears. Watching her with Adama, Sam suddenly realizes with clarity that he never knew the woman he married. It's a defense mechanism, but he has to take it otherwise it hurts too much (it still hurts).
Staggering away from the match, he does the only thing he can do.
He tells himself this is for the better. That Kara Thrace was never really his. That she was a good lay, but nothing more.
The stark black lines on his arm put the lie to his thoughts.
Four months, he worried she was dead or worse.
Four months, and she never really cared.
He tries to understand why she married him and gives up because it hurts too much.
Blindly, he makes his way to the hold. Once there it's automatic to make his way to the right.
Jean looks up at him, Connors doesn't. The rest of the old Caprica resistance isn't there. But they'd banded together, people who knew the fight more than these silly civvies in their tin ships. "Gods, man. You look like shit. What the hell happened?"
"Nothing." And he's right. Nothing happened.
A look crosses her face--and he doesn't want her pity--she glares. "I told you to stop seeing that bitch, Sam. She's no good for you."
"Let it go, Barolay."
"Fine." She stands and tosses a canteen at him, "Go drown your sorrows then, you stupid frakker."
He wants to laugh at her, but thinks that might be a bad idea. Unscrewing the cap, he downs a huge mouthful. Fire burns down from tongue to stomach and up into his sinuses. Sam gasps, and downs another to relieve the pain. It's less fire, more mellow, this time. "What the frak is this shit?"
"Chief's rotgut."
The burn in his throat matches the burn in his heart, which is stupid. He hates that she can do this to him.
It takes another four shots and he's starting to list slightly. Jean takes the alcohol from him and shoves him onto a cot with only a slight amount of mocking. Sam thinks there was something he was supposed to do, but doesn't care.
When he wakes up, he'll be Sam Anders again, and he'll be the man who survived without Kara Thrace.
He has to be.
Kara, Unfinished Business
Sam feels like home. And Kara can't handle that; she can barely breathe without smelling the dirt and sweat and fear on him. The tang of burnt skin and gun oil and something unique to Galactica fills her nostrils and she tries to pull back. "I--" another breath, and she can feel the tension filling him. Like he's waiting for her to hit him again, to wound him worse than the cylons ever could.
It gives her a sense of power, knowing what she can do to him. Something cruel touches her, and she shoves it away. "I can't do this."
Not so cruel. More practical. If she can hurt him, he can hurt her, and she can't have that. Not now, not ever (maybe with Zak).
"Kara." His arms are still around her. Hers drop and she pushes, not hard, but it's enough. He lets go and steps back and meets her eyes. "I'm not a yo-yo."
The words are simple and she's still processing them as he turns and walks away.
And there's something careful and final about him. Something that warns her this is it--her chances are all used up and he's not going to push anymore. She'll have what she wanted: a marriage in name only. She'll never be hurt by anyone, ever again.
Kara's still staring at his back when he disappears around a raptor.
He doesn't come back.
Later, Helo tells her Sam and Jean moved to one of the civillian ships. She doesn't ask him what they're doing there. If she doesn't ask, it doesn't hurt.
Rapture, before we knew what was happening in all those promo images...
The explosion from the other side of the clearing had made Sam and the rest of the crew dive for cover. Then there was nothing but silence until a cheerful voice called mockingly, "Am I always gonna be savin' your ass, Sam?"
Hearing the voice of his wife, Sam closed his eyes for a moment, then called back, "I think it's mutually equal now, Kara."
"Yeah?"
Sam pulled himself up and around his cover. Kara was standing a few feet away, sweaty and dirty and making his heart ache. "Yeah."
"Uh-huh." Something glinted in her eyes and then she held out her arms, "C'mere and congratulate me on being awesome."
"Hey!" Called a second voice and Helo appeared, "Don't be takin' all the credit now, Starbuck."
Moving forward, Sam shifted his rifle around to his back, then gave in to the urge and grabbed her by the waist, swinging her up into the air as she yelped and then banged her fists on his shoulders. "I could drop you."
"Put me--no!" She latched her hands onto his shoulders and glared. "You drop me, Sam, and I'm going back in time and letting the cylons get your ass."
"Uh-huh." Amused, he slowly let her slide down him until she was on her own feet. "Found a time machine, did you?"
"I'd have Chief build one."
"That might take a while, sir. I'm not sure where to even start."
Sam glanced at Tyrol and raised his eyebrows, "Something you can't build, Chief? I'll lose my faith in you."
"Well," Chief shrugged, "Can't be perfect, Sam."
"Though you try," Cally mocked, then she grinned at him.
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