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fic: BSG, Where Does the Ocean Go, Kara/Sam
disclaimer: not mine
length: 1400
pairing: Kara Thrace/Sam Anders
rating: ...PG?
spoilers: eh. Set on New Caprica, possible allusions to future events.
notes: I was going to write up prompts for the porn battle, and the first two paragraphs were in the top of my pornprompts file. iirc, the premise was something about Sam Anders also being a painter... Title stolen from Yoko Kanno.
Where Does the Ocean Go
by ALC Punk!
He never paints, because that's Kara's thing. Like Pyramid is his (even if there's no league left and she can kick his ass half the time). It's not like he was ever much good at it, anyway. Just bits and pieces, sometimes landscapes or portraits. Didn't have much time for it, either, what with training and being captain. And it's not like he misses it, the way Kara does when she goes too long without getting her fingers streaked and her eyes distant with thought (or not-thought, he's not sure if it's like alcohol with her).
Maybe it's not that he doesn't miss it. Maybe it's that he has other things to occupy him--Kara and working, the building that's going to turn this crappy planet into something real they can use.
So it's sort of a lie that he never thinks of it, but when he does, he thinks Kara's and leaves it at that. Kara is down here, living with him, pulled from her normal reality and world, and he feels like he should leave her a part of it to make her own mark (her own space) on. So painting is that. Because they both have drinking and frakking.
And arguing, and he's never going to be able to apologize to their neighbor to the south enough for the pot of flaming noodles Kara hurled at his head once. Nor for the glass that shatters every other week.
Sam pretends he's clumsy when doing the dishes and Kara doesn't pretend anything, just tells him flatly that there's no point in more dishes because they both cook like shit (one less thing to share in the evening hours and she sparkles and cracks too many jokes when they eat in the nearest bar, even though the food is crap).
The brushes turn up the first week they're in their tent, and Sam doesn't ask what happened to his fourth pair of socks.
He comes home sometime during the next month (days blur together after a while, the result of too much physical labor on too little sleep and protein), and her hands are shaking as she slashes crimsons and gold and black against canvas scraped a little too much, and the colors bleed through in the back.
Don't.
She doesn't have to say the word, it's there in the glance she shoots at him and he pretends his hands aren't shaking as he makes the one thing neither of them frak up: stew.
But he finds more colors for her, and two different kinds of paint (which earns him a blistering lecture about keeping her brushes clean and how there's not enough turpentine left in the universe for his frak-ups), and Chief barters some labor and Sam helps him drag the easel into their tent with silent thanks (he brushes it off with mumbling about a wedding present, his eyes straying back to Cally, laughing up at something Hilliard is saying about Anders and his prowess with a ball).
The next week, she throws a closed paint can at him, and he catches it, just as angry as she is. They glare in silence before she stomps off, her boots making squelching noises in the mud outside their tent.
Sam waits for two hours before he goes looking for her.
She finds him in the little 'coffee house' that sprang up near the 'union hall' and far away from Colonial One as it can get (Gaeta sometimes complains about the length of his trips for the President's pleasure, but too many people laugh for him to do more than mumble). After letting her steal his mug to warm her hands, he pulls her down on his lap and sets his chin on the top of her head.
There's a joke about men being annoying and too-tall, but she doesn't mean it, her nose cold and pressed up into his throat.
A week after and she bubbles with glee, telling him he's a star and awesome, and frakking him until they're both exhausted.
He finds half-burned canvasses the next morning when he takes the weekly trash to the recycling dump.
They play pyramid in an open field until Hilliard and Barolay help him do the layout in a spot closer to their tents (Chief complains about the scrap going to waste, but helps hold things steady as they weld goals). Cally dares visiting pilots to frak with the planet-bound team, and it's on.
The mud gets everywhere, but by the end of the game everyone is exhausted and pleased. Sam lets Kara call him an idiot and basks in the return of Starbuck, brash and baiting the pilots until they're all drunk and exchanging stories they've told a thousand times before (Sam isn't tired of hearing them yet) until the sun is coming back around and Tigh stumps up to the tables, growling about lazy pilots and their lack of fealty to their duties.
Racetrack chases her crews back to their ships, and Sam and Kara stagger back to their tent, barely awake enough to shed their boots.
They're lucky it's a rest day.
Kara gives him a small painting for his birthday, splashes of color overlaying the still-itchy and pink tattoos they're both now sporting. He can't frame it, but it goes on the trunk containing all their worldly possessions, propped against a pair of boots she doesn't wear anymore.
He likes to watch her paint, fingers itching to slide through slick paint. When she lets him, anyway. She chases him out of the tent with glares and words, most of the time. But there are some mornings he wakes, her warmth gone from his side and she's standing at the easel, brush in one hand, open pot in the other. They haven't much for a palette, but she usually makes do with whatever's to hand (Chief never let him borrow a set of plates again).
At times, he thinks she's the most beautiful, arching above him, her skin slick with sweat and breath coming in gasps. Other times, he knows it's when she's unaware of anything but the canvas in front of her. Still, he thinks he likes her best when she's smiling and carefree, happier than he'd ever expected her to be, stuck on the mud ball of New Caprica.
She never tells him she regrets it, but he's seen the vipers and stars on her canvasses before angry slashes wipe them away. In a way, he wants to tell her that he gave up just as much, but he knows it isn't completely true. He's always been good at rolling with what life threw at him, of being happy with what he's got.
Even cold and starving, hands cramping around a rifle he still wasn't sure how to use, he'd been all right (as all right as he could be, his world destroyed and radiation killing people silently).
It scares him to think the war is over, on New Caprica. That they can just stop fighting and the Cylons won't ever come back. But as the weeks drag into months and the months drag into a year, he starts relaxing. Maybe they won't come. Maybe that frakking sleeper agent was telling the truth.
Maybe the things that tug at his subconscious, that make him wonder if this is all there is are just wisps of nightmares.
He finds himself drawing wings and circles on scraps of paper, figures he needs an outlet, and concentrates on drawing Kara. Just the once, and when she's staring out of the piece of scrap at him, he gives her a smile and drops her in the cooking fire.
Kara slams into the tent not long after, and he kisses her long and hard, hands demanding. She kisses back for a while before shoving him away, hope you've got dinner ready, Sammy.
It's stew again. He dishes it out while she rearranges her paints, complaining about the broken stub of a pencil he used, attributing its destruction to neighborhood kids, since she can't imagine Sam using it.
There's no point in correcting her.
-f-
length: 1400
pairing: Kara Thrace/Sam Anders
rating: ...PG?
spoilers: eh. Set on New Caprica, possible allusions to future events.
notes: I was going to write up prompts for the porn battle, and the first two paragraphs were in the top of my pornprompts file. iirc, the premise was something about Sam Anders also being a painter... Title stolen from Yoko Kanno.
Where Does the Ocean Go
by ALC Punk!
He never paints, because that's Kara's thing. Like Pyramid is his (even if there's no league left and she can kick his ass half the time). It's not like he was ever much good at it, anyway. Just bits and pieces, sometimes landscapes or portraits. Didn't have much time for it, either, what with training and being captain. And it's not like he misses it, the way Kara does when she goes too long without getting her fingers streaked and her eyes distant with thought (or not-thought, he's not sure if it's like alcohol with her).
Maybe it's not that he doesn't miss it. Maybe it's that he has other things to occupy him--Kara and working, the building that's going to turn this crappy planet into something real they can use.
So it's sort of a lie that he never thinks of it, but when he does, he thinks Kara's and leaves it at that. Kara is down here, living with him, pulled from her normal reality and world, and he feels like he should leave her a part of it to make her own mark (her own space) on. So painting is that. Because they both have drinking and frakking.
And arguing, and he's never going to be able to apologize to their neighbor to the south enough for the pot of flaming noodles Kara hurled at his head once. Nor for the glass that shatters every other week.
Sam pretends he's clumsy when doing the dishes and Kara doesn't pretend anything, just tells him flatly that there's no point in more dishes because they both cook like shit (one less thing to share in the evening hours and she sparkles and cracks too many jokes when they eat in the nearest bar, even though the food is crap).
The brushes turn up the first week they're in their tent, and Sam doesn't ask what happened to his fourth pair of socks.
He comes home sometime during the next month (days blur together after a while, the result of too much physical labor on too little sleep and protein), and her hands are shaking as she slashes crimsons and gold and black against canvas scraped a little too much, and the colors bleed through in the back.
Don't.
She doesn't have to say the word, it's there in the glance she shoots at him and he pretends his hands aren't shaking as he makes the one thing neither of them frak up: stew.
But he finds more colors for her, and two different kinds of paint (which earns him a blistering lecture about keeping her brushes clean and how there's not enough turpentine left in the universe for his frak-ups), and Chief barters some labor and Sam helps him drag the easel into their tent with silent thanks (he brushes it off with mumbling about a wedding present, his eyes straying back to Cally, laughing up at something Hilliard is saying about Anders and his prowess with a ball).
The next week, she throws a closed paint can at him, and he catches it, just as angry as she is. They glare in silence before she stomps off, her boots making squelching noises in the mud outside their tent.
Sam waits for two hours before he goes looking for her.
She finds him in the little 'coffee house' that sprang up near the 'union hall' and far away from Colonial One as it can get (Gaeta sometimes complains about the length of his trips for the President's pleasure, but too many people laugh for him to do more than mumble). After letting her steal his mug to warm her hands, he pulls her down on his lap and sets his chin on the top of her head.
There's a joke about men being annoying and too-tall, but she doesn't mean it, her nose cold and pressed up into his throat.
A week after and she bubbles with glee, telling him he's a star and awesome, and frakking him until they're both exhausted.
He finds half-burned canvasses the next morning when he takes the weekly trash to the recycling dump.
They play pyramid in an open field until Hilliard and Barolay help him do the layout in a spot closer to their tents (Chief complains about the scrap going to waste, but helps hold things steady as they weld goals). Cally dares visiting pilots to frak with the planet-bound team, and it's on.
The mud gets everywhere, but by the end of the game everyone is exhausted and pleased. Sam lets Kara call him an idiot and basks in the return of Starbuck, brash and baiting the pilots until they're all drunk and exchanging stories they've told a thousand times before (Sam isn't tired of hearing them yet) until the sun is coming back around and Tigh stumps up to the tables, growling about lazy pilots and their lack of fealty to their duties.
Racetrack chases her crews back to their ships, and Sam and Kara stagger back to their tent, barely awake enough to shed their boots.
They're lucky it's a rest day.
Kara gives him a small painting for his birthday, splashes of color overlaying the still-itchy and pink tattoos they're both now sporting. He can't frame it, but it goes on the trunk containing all their worldly possessions, propped against a pair of boots she doesn't wear anymore.
He likes to watch her paint, fingers itching to slide through slick paint. When she lets him, anyway. She chases him out of the tent with glares and words, most of the time. But there are some mornings he wakes, her warmth gone from his side and she's standing at the easel, brush in one hand, open pot in the other. They haven't much for a palette, but she usually makes do with whatever's to hand (Chief never let him borrow a set of plates again).
At times, he thinks she's the most beautiful, arching above him, her skin slick with sweat and breath coming in gasps. Other times, he knows it's when she's unaware of anything but the canvas in front of her. Still, he thinks he likes her best when she's smiling and carefree, happier than he'd ever expected her to be, stuck on the mud ball of New Caprica.
She never tells him she regrets it, but he's seen the vipers and stars on her canvasses before angry slashes wipe them away. In a way, he wants to tell her that he gave up just as much, but he knows it isn't completely true. He's always been good at rolling with what life threw at him, of being happy with what he's got.
Even cold and starving, hands cramping around a rifle he still wasn't sure how to use, he'd been all right (as all right as he could be, his world destroyed and radiation killing people silently).
It scares him to think the war is over, on New Caprica. That they can just stop fighting and the Cylons won't ever come back. But as the weeks drag into months and the months drag into a year, he starts relaxing. Maybe they won't come. Maybe that frakking sleeper agent was telling the truth.
Maybe the things that tug at his subconscious, that make him wonder if this is all there is are just wisps of nightmares.
He finds himself drawing wings and circles on scraps of paper, figures he needs an outlet, and concentrates on drawing Kara. Just the once, and when she's staring out of the piece of scrap at him, he gives her a smile and drops her in the cooking fire.
Kara slams into the tent not long after, and he kisses her long and hard, hands demanding. She kisses back for a while before shoving him away, hope you've got dinner ready, Sammy.
It's stew again. He dishes it out while she rearranges her paints, complaining about the broken stub of a pencil he used, attributing its destruction to neighborhood kids, since she can't imagine Sam using it.
There's no point in correcting her.
-f-
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And that is one of my favorite Yoko Kanno songs.
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It is ouchie, and not as ouchie as it could be, but.
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Kara does when she goes too long without getting her fingers streaked and her eyes distant with thought (or not-thought, he's not sure if it's like alcohol with her).
I can see painting being like that for Kara, even before the Demetruis. I mean, look what she did to her apartment!
Don't.
She doesn't have to say the word, it's there in the glance she shoots at him and he pretends his hands aren't shaking as he makes the one thing neither of them frak up: stew.
I just really like this image.
Heh - and the snarky quotation marks around coffee house and union hall. ;)
Sam lets Kara call him an idiot and basks in the return of Starbuck, brash and baiting the pilots until they're all drunk and exchanging stories they've told a thousand times before (Sam isn't tired of hearing them yet) until the sun is coming back around and Tigh stumps up to the tables, growling about lazy pilots and their lack of fealty to their duties.
This definitely happened. Well, ykwim. ;)
but she usually makes do with whatever's to hand (Chief never let him borrow a set of plates again).
*snerk* And oh, the painting for his birthday! <3
And the moments where she's happy and carefree, but still keeps drawing vipers. <3 And this part:
Maybe the things that tug at his subconscious, that make him wonder if this is all there is are just wisps of nightmares.
Oh, subtle foreshadowing , how do I love you?
And the end! Not quite sure how to read it, but the ambiguity works really well Angsty sweetness FTW!
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*curls up on feedback and wonders where to start*
I can see painting being like that for Kara, even before the Demetrius. I mean, look what she did to her apartment!
Sometimes, I figure it must have been. Especially if she wasn't flying--frakking and pyramid and triad and yelling at Sam can only go so far (heck, if painting is anything for her like writing is for me...)
Heh - and the snarky quotation marks around coffee house and union hall
TENTS, Allie. BALTAR GAVE THEM TENTS. Bah. He was a awful president even before the Cylons showed up. (I'm sorry, Cylon!Jesus, but you know it's true, man)
Oh, subtle foreshadowing , how do I love you?
Of course! I mean, looking back, you have think Sam occasionally.... there must have been something. I like to think he mostly ignored it or chalked it up to weird dreams, but, damn. There had to be more than just getting switched on like a light bulb at the nebula. *pouts*
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Does that make any sense?
Given that it's present tense, it's probably just my brain malfunctioning. But it's beautifully done any way you look at it.
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It does make sense, given it was written with the sensibilities of Sometimes a Great Notion.. So it was almost a memory, for me.
Also, to help in your fic-delving, here's a list of most of the fic written for them: http://community.livejournal.com/pyramidofdreams/73151.html
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I can see the next few evenings being fairly unproductive... ;)