BSG ficlet: untitled Kara/Anders piloty story thing
Title: [too lazy for one]
Pairing: Kara/Anders; with Lee, Hotdog, Racetrack, and Tyrol
Rating: PG-13 for language and sexual situations
Summary: Starbuck's so charmingly cranky on the flight deck. 2300 words.
Note: This is in no way, shape, or form spec. It's pure wish fulfillment. So sue me. And it's a bit rough; just trying to get it out there before canon crushes it in celebration of the S4 premiere. Also, I don't get all this military stuff. I'm bullshitting. Y'all know that by now, yes?
He beats her in. Just barely. Just enough time to get down and out of his viper before the inevitable shitstorm starts.
She's grousing at him at top volume before they completely get her helmet off her. As if he's just going to stand there and take it. Well, of course he is. It's frakkin' fascinating, a new side of Kara he's still, after these weeks, not quite used to seeing.
He thought he'd seen Starbuck before, but nothing prepared him for being out there with her, or here on her flight deck-their flight deck. Of course, according to some sources, when he's in his viper Starbuck likes him about as much as she used to like Hotdog. But Sam watches Costanza fly all the time now, knows how good he is, so he doesn't worry. Doesn't worry a hell of a lot about anything anymore now that she's back. The newness of that hasn't quite worn off either.
Okay, so maybe there's a little worry about the future sometimes, especially his future with her, but it takes a backseat most of the time. Especially to flying, which is why there's actually a little worry here, too, as he waits for her to come to him. No telling what kind of bruising his ego's going to take no matter what kind of high he's still on-both things because of the same brilliant but ill-advised thing he'd just done to take out the last straggling raider before the major called them back in so the fleet could jump. Maybe he should worry: Apollo doesn't look much happier than Starbuck.
But then again, the knuckledraggers-at least the ones who aren't scurrying to avoid the scene-seem amused. Tyrol, especially. When he'd helped him out of his bird, he'd shaken his head even as he grinned at him.
"You're crazy, you know that?" Tyrol said.
"Yeah. I know."
As Starbuck hauls herself down out of her viper and to the flight deck, she's mostly sputtering curses, some at him and some, maybe, at the world in general. But once she finally puts boots on the ground, she's all business. She's utterly silent, and if there's fury there in her stride across the deck-and he has to admit there might be, just a bit-she's focusing it pretty well, all down to her eyes on him. He thanks to gods he's been married to her long enough that he might, might have a chance holding his own when she starts speaking again, no longer the blindly enraged fellow pilot but the former CAG turned squadron leader. Not his squadron leader, of course. Doesn't matter. It was hard to miss the stunt he'd pulled. Hell, everyone in the frakkin' CIC probably knows about it; certainly, too, everyone here on the flight deck, standing around and waiting for the Starbuck Show to start.
"What the frak were you thinking?" she says, voice all nasal and sharp as she closes the gap between them, stepping just inside his personal space in a way that normally wouldn't bother him in the least. Except when she wants it to, and right now, whether she knows it or not-and he suspects she does-she's getting to him. He can smell her, that warm familiar scent of her body, as she jerks down the zipper on her flight suit, exposing sweat-soaked tanks.
She shakes her head, pushing her hair back as she barks at him:
"Could've got half your squad killed with that crazy shit. I don't know where your head was-and that's being frakkin' generous and assuming you actually have a brain swimming around in there in all that testosterone and overconfidence-but I'm guessing it was shoved so far up your ass it might never come out again. But you better frakkin' hope you find a way to dislodge it, because until you do, you're not going out there again. Got that?"
Well.
So that's what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of Starbuck's rants.
All in all, he thinks… Well, it's halfway humiliating, halfway infuriating, but more than a little…invigorating? He's vibrating with energy now, aggression he didn't take out in the cockpit and this added tension from having her this close to him. But when he realizes she's waiting for him to respond, practically daring him to, he cocks his head to the side and says in a voice as low and firm as he can manage:
"I don't believe it's your call, sir." He swings his gaze to the major, the CAG, standing there watching the scene stoically.
Apollo just lifts one eyebrow. "She's not wrong," he says.
But then Apollo turns to Starbuck and adds: "But you know he's Costanza's problem, not yours."
Everyone's eyes turn to the other side of the deck, where his squadron leader is still disentangling himself from his viper. When Hotdog finally notices that all the attention on the deck is focused on him, Lee catches his eyes and gives him a solemn look. Then Lee goes off in the direction of the ready room, and Sam's sure he sees a hint of a grin warming his face.
Hotdog looks annoyed and tired already as he heads over to them, maybe because he knows what everyone else watching this scene knows: that there's no reason for a squadron leader to be giving lecturers or doling out punishments. They're not like superiors, just team leaders-good for morale and general advice, perhaps effective for sorting out petty squabbles. That's maybe the point, that this is ridiculous, something unworthy of the CAG's time. Sam isn't actually so sure about that, but it makes him perversely amused to see Starbuck cast black glances in the general direction of Lee's retreating form. The ones, that is, that she can spare from what she's casting at him.
When Hotdog finally reaches them, he ruffles a hand through his hair, frowns at Sam, and sighs.
He lets a pause hang in the air for a moment before he says, "Risky shit, Anders."
"No kidding," Starbuck huffs.
But Hotdog adds, "But, hell, I guess it's no riskier than anybody else, put in that kind of-"
"Gods," Starbuck says in a high, nasal exhalation of air, rolling her eyes, rolling her whole head, actually. "This place really did go to shit when I was gone. Lee's gone soft and sometimes you"-she glares pointedly at Hotdog-"seem to forget you're not one of my nuggets anymore."
At that, Hotdog's upper lip twitches. He steps up to her and half growls: "Sometimes you seem to forget that, too."
When Hotdog turns to Sam again, his voice sounds just as irritated, but his expression is morphing into something more like playful amusement as he asks, "So, Anders, do you want we should have two scary-ass Thraces in the air at once?"
Well, chalk him up for the first person to say what they're all thinking. Starbuck, for her part, seems amused. As if she doesn't know all this being pissed at Sam for ballsy flying is hypocritical in the extreme. Of course she does.
Hotdog's smirking at him now, where Starbuck can't quite see.
Sam just clenches his teeth and attempts to smile as he replies: "Got the job done, didn't I?"
Starbuck just huffs out a sardonic laugh at that, swinging away from them like the anger is falling away, taking most of the bad tension with it and leaving behind a spirit of companionable bickering-somewhat treacherous but entirely manageable, as long as you're used to her.
"You managed not to fly into anybody," she says sarcastically as she walks toward the ready room, perhaps to vent the rest of her spleen on Apollo. "Fantastic," she says with a wave of her hand. "Stellar job not wrecking anybody on a routine CAP, nugget."
"So, raiders are routine now, Captain?" Sam retorts calmly.
Okay, maybe not entirely calmly. She doesn't stop, but he sees her shoulders hunch.
He adds, "And I'm a rook now." As she well knows. He hasn't been a nugget since pretty soon after she got back, long before they let her back in a viper again. "A rook who took down his first raider today. Sir."
She stops, finally, and turns. As she stalks back over to him, she somehow doesn't look in the slightest like she's losing control-probably because she's not, not even as her eyes fix on him again and make his chest tighten and his heart pound. Hotdog backs up and lets her come right into his personal space again.
Starbuck presses her finger into his chest as she locks eyes with him, and he struggles not to close his hand over hers and pull her to him. She might be Starbuck when they're in the air, and she might've been Starbuck just a minute ago, but she's suddenly looking exactly like his wife, before she…
Holy frak.
"Well, then," she says with a tap to his chest, "you better get your rook ass to the showers, Ensign, before the CAG reconsiders handing you that ass for the stunt you pulled." She leans in, then, and says so only he can hear-or at least not caring if anyone else does-"And before I climb you like a frakkin' pole right here."
She gives him a long, hot look and he's suddenly just a little unsteady on his feet, the adrenaline really catching him now as longing and just plain frakkin' lust wash over him. But he forces his legs to move, and he can feel the heat radiating off her as he bumps his shoulder against hers just a little harder than he meant to, and he can feel her eyes on him as he walks off the deck. He hopes like hell she's following, that it wasn't a tease. He doesn't think it was, but he can never be sure about Starbuck.
He's nearly off the deck when she calls out to him, "Hey, Anders. Been a long time since I saw the Hollstein Maneuver."
He smiles, recognizing the question in her voice. He does a lazy, showy turn. "The what?" he says with a grin, walking backwards so he can watch her face.
Her grin is just as wide as his, even though she shakes her head at him. "I frakkin' thought so."
"I do all right on the execution, Captain?"
She raises her eyebrows. "Remember that party trick Barolay used to do, how she'd close her eyes and lob a pyramid ball at you back over her shoulder and manage smack you square in the face with it."
"That good, huh?"
Starbuck just snorts. "As good as she does it when she's drunk."
Hotdog cuts in, grumbling, "Frak me, will the two of you get the frak off the deck before we have to hose it off."
Suddenly, Racetrack's voice cuts in from far on the other side of the hangar, where she's still in her raptor, watching the show as she pulls off a boot. She shakes something loose, looking for all the world bored.
She retorts, "Like he's the first rook to try impressing the Captain with an unncessary hard burn in formation. We shoulda renamed it the Costanza Maneuver, from what I can remember."
Hotdog glares at her and mumbles, "Aw, shut the frak up." Then he suddenly comes alive, bellowing out over the hangar like the Chief on a bad day: "I wish you'd all get your asses where they're supposed to be and away from me before I decide I'm tired of all this bullshit swagger."
As he stalks off toward the ready room-trying real hard to look like he's not stalking-his energy pushes them all into motion, back to what they were doing before this whole thing started.
Starbuck's on Sam shockingly fast, falling into step beside him. She nudges his shoulder and says, "Gods, you'd think that loudmouthed motherfrakker was the ranking officer on deck or something."
"Or frakkin' CAG," Sam replies with a snort.
This? he thinks. This being a pilot with Kara? This he can definitely do.
"Hey, Anders," Racetrack suddenly hollers out, and the deck quickly goes quiet and still again. Out of the corner of his eyes, Sam even sees Hotdog stop. But since Starbuck's still moving forward, he keeps walking.
"Yeah?" he calls back.
"I think you just earned yourself a callsign," she says.
He comes to a dead halt, suddenly nervous. More nervous than he probably ought to be. Starbuck's still walking on, but she turns and starts walking backward.
Kara now-eyes wide open, warm and mocking. "What?" she calls out. "Dumbass?"
It's Tyrol who chimes in with it. Sam had almost forgotten he was there, but he's glad it's him who says it:
"I think she means Hard Burn."
Sam just grins, nodding his head as he listens to the affirmative murmurs and congratulations from the flight deck. Hard Burn. Badass enough and not too goofy. He'll take it. Not that he has a choice, but still, he'll take it. He looks at Kara-or is it Starbuck again?-and she's smiling fondly.
As she nudges his shoulder again, herding him back toward the group, she says, "You know you're gonna have to drink enough rotgut to literally rot your gut now, don't you?"
He just lets his grin grow wider.
She adds, "But thank the gods you can still get it up when you're sauced, because your ass is mine later."
"Yes, sir."
"Accidental Hollstein," she mutters. "Dumbass."
"But I'm your dumbass."
"Wouldn’t have you any other way, Hard Burn.
~
Pairing: Kara/Anders; with Lee, Hotdog, Racetrack, and Tyrol
Rating: PG-13 for language and sexual situations
Summary: Starbuck's so charmingly cranky on the flight deck. 2300 words.
Note: This is in no way, shape, or form spec. It's pure wish fulfillment. So sue me. And it's a bit rough; just trying to get it out there before canon crushes it in celebration of the S4 premiere. Also, I don't get all this military stuff. I'm bullshitting. Y'all know that by now, yes?
He beats her in. Just barely. Just enough time to get down and out of his viper before the inevitable shitstorm starts.
She's grousing at him at top volume before they completely get her helmet off her. As if he's just going to stand there and take it. Well, of course he is. It's frakkin' fascinating, a new side of Kara he's still, after these weeks, not quite used to seeing.
He thought he'd seen Starbuck before, but nothing prepared him for being out there with her, or here on her flight deck-their flight deck. Of course, according to some sources, when he's in his viper Starbuck likes him about as much as she used to like Hotdog. But Sam watches Costanza fly all the time now, knows how good he is, so he doesn't worry. Doesn't worry a hell of a lot about anything anymore now that she's back. The newness of that hasn't quite worn off either.
Okay, so maybe there's a little worry about the future sometimes, especially his future with her, but it takes a backseat most of the time. Especially to flying, which is why there's actually a little worry here, too, as he waits for her to come to him. No telling what kind of bruising his ego's going to take no matter what kind of high he's still on-both things because of the same brilliant but ill-advised thing he'd just done to take out the last straggling raider before the major called them back in so the fleet could jump. Maybe he should worry: Apollo doesn't look much happier than Starbuck.
But then again, the knuckledraggers-at least the ones who aren't scurrying to avoid the scene-seem amused. Tyrol, especially. When he'd helped him out of his bird, he'd shaken his head even as he grinned at him.
"You're crazy, you know that?" Tyrol said.
"Yeah. I know."
As Starbuck hauls herself down out of her viper and to the flight deck, she's mostly sputtering curses, some at him and some, maybe, at the world in general. But once she finally puts boots on the ground, she's all business. She's utterly silent, and if there's fury there in her stride across the deck-and he has to admit there might be, just a bit-she's focusing it pretty well, all down to her eyes on him. He thanks to gods he's been married to her long enough that he might, might have a chance holding his own when she starts speaking again, no longer the blindly enraged fellow pilot but the former CAG turned squadron leader. Not his squadron leader, of course. Doesn't matter. It was hard to miss the stunt he'd pulled. Hell, everyone in the frakkin' CIC probably knows about it; certainly, too, everyone here on the flight deck, standing around and waiting for the Starbuck Show to start.
"What the frak were you thinking?" she says, voice all nasal and sharp as she closes the gap between them, stepping just inside his personal space in a way that normally wouldn't bother him in the least. Except when she wants it to, and right now, whether she knows it or not-and he suspects she does-she's getting to him. He can smell her, that warm familiar scent of her body, as she jerks down the zipper on her flight suit, exposing sweat-soaked tanks.
She shakes her head, pushing her hair back as she barks at him:
"Could've got half your squad killed with that crazy shit. I don't know where your head was-and that's being frakkin' generous and assuming you actually have a brain swimming around in there in all that testosterone and overconfidence-but I'm guessing it was shoved so far up your ass it might never come out again. But you better frakkin' hope you find a way to dislodge it, because until you do, you're not going out there again. Got that?"
Well.
So that's what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of Starbuck's rants.
All in all, he thinks… Well, it's halfway humiliating, halfway infuriating, but more than a little…invigorating? He's vibrating with energy now, aggression he didn't take out in the cockpit and this added tension from having her this close to him. But when he realizes she's waiting for him to respond, practically daring him to, he cocks his head to the side and says in a voice as low and firm as he can manage:
"I don't believe it's your call, sir." He swings his gaze to the major, the CAG, standing there watching the scene stoically.
Apollo just lifts one eyebrow. "She's not wrong," he says.
But then Apollo turns to Starbuck and adds: "But you know he's Costanza's problem, not yours."
Everyone's eyes turn to the other side of the deck, where his squadron leader is still disentangling himself from his viper. When Hotdog finally notices that all the attention on the deck is focused on him, Lee catches his eyes and gives him a solemn look. Then Lee goes off in the direction of the ready room, and Sam's sure he sees a hint of a grin warming his face.
Hotdog looks annoyed and tired already as he heads over to them, maybe because he knows what everyone else watching this scene knows: that there's no reason for a squadron leader to be giving lecturers or doling out punishments. They're not like superiors, just team leaders-good for morale and general advice, perhaps effective for sorting out petty squabbles. That's maybe the point, that this is ridiculous, something unworthy of the CAG's time. Sam isn't actually so sure about that, but it makes him perversely amused to see Starbuck cast black glances in the general direction of Lee's retreating form. The ones, that is, that she can spare from what she's casting at him.
When Hotdog finally reaches them, he ruffles a hand through his hair, frowns at Sam, and sighs.
He lets a pause hang in the air for a moment before he says, "Risky shit, Anders."
"No kidding," Starbuck huffs.
But Hotdog adds, "But, hell, I guess it's no riskier than anybody else, put in that kind of-"
"Gods," Starbuck says in a high, nasal exhalation of air, rolling her eyes, rolling her whole head, actually. "This place really did go to shit when I was gone. Lee's gone soft and sometimes you"-she glares pointedly at Hotdog-"seem to forget you're not one of my nuggets anymore."
At that, Hotdog's upper lip twitches. He steps up to her and half growls: "Sometimes you seem to forget that, too."
When Hotdog turns to Sam again, his voice sounds just as irritated, but his expression is morphing into something more like playful amusement as he asks, "So, Anders, do you want we should have two scary-ass Thraces in the air at once?"
Well, chalk him up for the first person to say what they're all thinking. Starbuck, for her part, seems amused. As if she doesn't know all this being pissed at Sam for ballsy flying is hypocritical in the extreme. Of course she does.
Hotdog's smirking at him now, where Starbuck can't quite see.
Sam just clenches his teeth and attempts to smile as he replies: "Got the job done, didn't I?"
Starbuck just huffs out a sardonic laugh at that, swinging away from them like the anger is falling away, taking most of the bad tension with it and leaving behind a spirit of companionable bickering-somewhat treacherous but entirely manageable, as long as you're used to her.
"You managed not to fly into anybody," she says sarcastically as she walks toward the ready room, perhaps to vent the rest of her spleen on Apollo. "Fantastic," she says with a wave of her hand. "Stellar job not wrecking anybody on a routine CAP, nugget."
"So, raiders are routine now, Captain?" Sam retorts calmly.
Okay, maybe not entirely calmly. She doesn't stop, but he sees her shoulders hunch.
He adds, "And I'm a rook now." As she well knows. He hasn't been a nugget since pretty soon after she got back, long before they let her back in a viper again. "A rook who took down his first raider today. Sir."
She stops, finally, and turns. As she stalks back over to him, she somehow doesn't look in the slightest like she's losing control-probably because she's not, not even as her eyes fix on him again and make his chest tighten and his heart pound. Hotdog backs up and lets her come right into his personal space again.
Starbuck presses her finger into his chest as she locks eyes with him, and he struggles not to close his hand over hers and pull her to him. She might be Starbuck when they're in the air, and she might've been Starbuck just a minute ago, but she's suddenly looking exactly like his wife, before she…
Holy frak.
"Well, then," she says with a tap to his chest, "you better get your rook ass to the showers, Ensign, before the CAG reconsiders handing you that ass for the stunt you pulled." She leans in, then, and says so only he can hear-or at least not caring if anyone else does-"And before I climb you like a frakkin' pole right here."
She gives him a long, hot look and he's suddenly just a little unsteady on his feet, the adrenaline really catching him now as longing and just plain frakkin' lust wash over him. But he forces his legs to move, and he can feel the heat radiating off her as he bumps his shoulder against hers just a little harder than he meant to, and he can feel her eyes on him as he walks off the deck. He hopes like hell she's following, that it wasn't a tease. He doesn't think it was, but he can never be sure about Starbuck.
He's nearly off the deck when she calls out to him, "Hey, Anders. Been a long time since I saw the Hollstein Maneuver."
He smiles, recognizing the question in her voice. He does a lazy, showy turn. "The what?" he says with a grin, walking backwards so he can watch her face.
Her grin is just as wide as his, even though she shakes her head at him. "I frakkin' thought so."
"I do all right on the execution, Captain?"
She raises her eyebrows. "Remember that party trick Barolay used to do, how she'd close her eyes and lob a pyramid ball at you back over her shoulder and manage smack you square in the face with it."
"That good, huh?"
Starbuck just snorts. "As good as she does it when she's drunk."
Hotdog cuts in, grumbling, "Frak me, will the two of you get the frak off the deck before we have to hose it off."
Suddenly, Racetrack's voice cuts in from far on the other side of the hangar, where she's still in her raptor, watching the show as she pulls off a boot. She shakes something loose, looking for all the world bored.
She retorts, "Like he's the first rook to try impressing the Captain with an unncessary hard burn in formation. We shoulda renamed it the Costanza Maneuver, from what I can remember."
Hotdog glares at her and mumbles, "Aw, shut the frak up." Then he suddenly comes alive, bellowing out over the hangar like the Chief on a bad day: "I wish you'd all get your asses where they're supposed to be and away from me before I decide I'm tired of all this bullshit swagger."
As he stalks off toward the ready room-trying real hard to look like he's not stalking-his energy pushes them all into motion, back to what they were doing before this whole thing started.
Starbuck's on Sam shockingly fast, falling into step beside him. She nudges his shoulder and says, "Gods, you'd think that loudmouthed motherfrakker was the ranking officer on deck or something."
"Or frakkin' CAG," Sam replies with a snort.
This? he thinks. This being a pilot with Kara? This he can definitely do.
"Hey, Anders," Racetrack suddenly hollers out, and the deck quickly goes quiet and still again. Out of the corner of his eyes, Sam even sees Hotdog stop. But since Starbuck's still moving forward, he keeps walking.
"Yeah?" he calls back.
"I think you just earned yourself a callsign," she says.
He comes to a dead halt, suddenly nervous. More nervous than he probably ought to be. Starbuck's still walking on, but she turns and starts walking backward.
Kara now-eyes wide open, warm and mocking. "What?" she calls out. "Dumbass?"
It's Tyrol who chimes in with it. Sam had almost forgotten he was there, but he's glad it's him who says it:
"I think she means Hard Burn."
Sam just grins, nodding his head as he listens to the affirmative murmurs and congratulations from the flight deck. Hard Burn. Badass enough and not too goofy. He'll take it. Not that he has a choice, but still, he'll take it. He looks at Kara-or is it Starbuck again?-and she's smiling fondly.
As she nudges his shoulder again, herding him back toward the group, she says, "You know you're gonna have to drink enough rotgut to literally rot your gut now, don't you?"
He just lets his grin grow wider.
She adds, "But thank the gods you can still get it up when you're sauced, because your ass is mine later."
"Yes, sir."
"Accidental Hollstein," she mutters. "Dumbass."
"But I'm your dumbass."
"Wouldn’t have you any other way, Hard Burn.
~