Title: Frozen Holidaze
Author: afrakaday
Word Count: 1420
Rating: M (advanced drug use)
A/N: As the fabulous
miabicicletta once said, there needs to be more weed!fic in life. What better day for that than today, f-list, I ask you?
Bill re-read the note that Racetrack had delivered to him after arriving back from her shuttle run.
Admiral-
I’ve made a new discovery that I’d like to share with you. Get to the surface while this deep freeze is going on. It’ll be worth your while.
L.
He pulled out the duty schedule and started rearranging shifts. With Helo’s cooperation, Bill would be down in Laura’s tent before Galactica completed another orbit around the frozen rock.
* * *
She met him at the Raptor, throwing herself into his arms as he stepped off his ship and wrapping her legs around his waist. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered between giggly kisses.
He eased her back to the ground. “You had something to show me?" From the glassy look in her eyes, he had a pretty good guess as to what Laura’s discovery had involved.
She nodded vigorously. “It’s the best thing ever! C’mon.” She tugged him toward the settlement at an insistent pace.
Sheets of ice glistened in the once-muddy thoroughfares and off the tops of tents. He vaguely wondered how the people were showering down here, but looking around at the bundled-up residents of New Caprica, he figured it didn’t pose much of a problem.
Laura pulled him into her utilitarian abode, indistinguishable to Bill from all the others. She pushed him onto her cot and leaned over him to impart a promising kiss before reaching underneath and grabbing a carved wooden box. She handed it to him wordlessly and walked to the coldest corner, furthest from the currently dormant stove, to retrieve a tin tumbler.
“Bill, when was the last time you had a milkshake?”
He tried to remember. “The boys were teenagers. I took them out for burgers and we saw an action movie. Their mom got mad because they wanted to spend the night at my apartment afterward.”
Laura’s face scrunched sympathetically, her lips pouting on his behalf, before turning devious. “We’ve figured out a way to make very special milkshakes here on New Caprica.” She took the box from him, removing a cardboard disc with a hole in the center of it and placing that atop the tin cup. Its circumference was just slightly larger than that of the rim of the tumbler. It reminded Bill of a coaster; in fact, maybe it had been once. He couldn’t see any need for such things here on New Caprica. Formerly familiar objects served different purposes in this unforgiving environment.
Laura sat next to him on the cot and set the cup down on the whiteboard that she now used in conjunction with a pair of cinder blocks as a coffee table, then took a joint out of the box and lit it with a match she’d apparently had hidden in her sleeve.
“Are you sure, Laura? This stuff is nice, but don’t you remember what happened that night...”
She laughed as she exhaled clouds of sweet smoke. “Yes, Bill, of course I remember you falling asleep beneath me. But I also seem to recall you waking me up very pleasantly later on. Anyway, you’re not all liquored up this time.” She sniffed near his face suspiciously. “Are you?” She answered her own question. “Nope. So come on, try the local delicacy.”
Bill watched as she picked up the cup and placed the disc on his thigh, letting her fingers linger briefly. Her touch, paired with the sight of the joint hanging so casually from her red lips, stirred him even as he tried to relax. He wished they had a music player; some mellow tunes always helped in making him less uptight when doing this sort of thing. Even “that night” there’d been music playing in the distance after they retreated to their semi-private pile of sandbags.
Laura showed him the inside of the cup. “A little frozen water. That’s the first ingredient of the milkshake.”
“What’s the other ingredient?”
“Weed.”
The joint had cherried nicely, its orange tip flaring in the relative darkness of the windowless tent. Laura pulled it from her lips and turned it around in her fingers, bringing it back toward her mouth with the lit end leading. Bill gasped.
“What are you doing!?”
Halting the joint’s journey, Laura patted his knee reassuringly. “Bill, don’t worry.” She took a purposeful breath before confidently wrapping her lips around the joint, the lit end in the cavity of her mouth. Bill watched, simultaneously horrified and aroused, as she took the disc from his leg, placed it firmly against the top of the tumbler, and proceeded to blow smoke through the hole in the center of the disc. She placed a finger over the hole so no smoke would escape and, with her other hand, carefully removed the joint from her mouth.
“It needs a moment to freeze.”
“Of course.” Bill tried to adopt her nonchalant attitude and leaned back, unbuttoning his overcoat.
Laura reached under her cot again, this time pulling out a primitive clay ashtray. She gently tamped out the joint, her eyes sparkling at him. “Ready for your frozen treat?”
He warily accepted the tumbler from her and removed the top. It felt cold and heavy in his hand, more so than if it had just been water or some other liquid beverage. The smoke had a milky hue to it and wasn’t swirling the way the smoke lingering in clouds at the top of the tent was. It was static, grainy and particulate.
Laura looked on with barely repressed glee as he tipped the concoction back. Some of the smoke had indeed liquefied, sliding easily down his throat yet going straight to his head. After a long draught, he lowered the cup and looked in it with interest. There was still some smoke at the bottom; not liquid, because it wouldn’t pour.
Laura handed him a straw-really a piece of tubing of the type used in Viper avionics systems, he registered hazily. “You’ve gotta suck up the rest of the smoke.”
He did as ordered, quickly dispatching the remainder. “The ice is gone,” he observed, poking the straw against the bottom of the cup.
Laura took the cup from him and placed it on the ground before gently pushing him back into a reclining position and snuggling into him, the contact of their bodies flush, fuzzy, and warm despite the frigid air.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a one-use thing,” she agreed. “I’ve only got the one cup. It takes a couple of hours for the water to freeze again.”
Bill closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her, enjoying the pressure of his limbs against her many layers of clothing sinking down to her body. In his stoned state, he could believe and even feel that they were skin to skin, notwithstanding the thick textile reality. “But you didn’t get to have any of it.”
“Mmmm. There are other ways for me to get high.”
“Yeah.” He thought of the number of hits she’d taken to get the joint going.
“Apparently I need to teach you how to shotgun.”
His eyes flew open. “That thing with the-putting the lit end of the joint-in my mouth?
She burrowed deeper against his chest; he could feel her smile, the blinding essence of it enveloping him. He relaxed.
“It’s very sexy, you know.” She pushed herself up slightly so she could kiss the tip of his nose, then drew back and pursed her lips at him, pushing a puff of air that reached his lips in an emulation of the act. His eyes crossed as he tried to focus on her and suddenly there were two, then four, Lauras crowding his field of vision. He kept that thought as he closed his eyes once more and her hands wandered across his body, everywhere at once; eight delicate hands setting his senses on fire.
* * *
Three days later, Bill was reluctantly gathering his things in anticipation of catching his Raptor back to Galactica while Laura lounged on her cot, reading one of the books he’d brought for her. He picked up the icy tumbler ruefully, feeling a dull ache in his frontal lobe.
"One more for the road?" Laura asked without looking up.
Bill shook his head. "I'm on duty as soon as I get back." He came to the cot and lowered himself beside her, reaching under the bed for the wooden box containing the seemingly inexhaustible supply of the native leaf. "But I'd be happy to demonstrate my newly acquired shotgunning skill again, if you'd like."