Hold.
Personal Freak-Out Session: Oh my frakking gods school starts in a week and I've only done half of my summer homework! Holy frak!!! *panics*
Notes: Okay, so pretty much I am in LOVE with this fic. Like you wouldn't even believe. Rating... is a PG13, but be warned that there is death and angst and angsty!pilots and crying!pilots and showering!pilots and loving!pilots. (Though nothing explicitly sexual at all.) This is from number 64, hold. X-posted to
64damn_prompts,
beyond_insane, and
bsg2003fics, because I'm that frakking proud of it. Also, dedicated to
i_am_girlfriday - because she's my fic-writing soul-sister. Hee. Mmm... yeah, can't think of much else to tell you. Enjoy.
A Note On Style: This fic is TOTALLY mixed-up and crazy, so, to help you better understand the story, I've numbered the sections. Read it straight-through first, but then, if you like, go back and read the sections in numerical order (because the numerical order, not the actual physical placement, is chronological). And, oh yes, the lyrics are from The Killers. Hot Fuss is the best album to listen to while writing about angsty!crying!showering!loving!pilots. Okay I'm going to shut up now.
//
She said she loved me, but she had somewhere to go
She couldn’t scream while I held her close
I swore I’d never let her go
//
(.09)
He feels as though he has lost touch with all sense of time and space.
Space, ha. His last CAP ever. Yes, he’s truly lost touch with space. But time…
How long has he been in the damn shower? Five seconds? Five minutes? Five hours? Five days? Five years? Five lifetimes?
He closes his eyes and lifts his face to the spray. What he wouldn’t give to have his life back…
A cool, calloused hand on his shoulder shatters his reverie. “Don’t drown, flyboy,” says a disembodied voice (though he quickly decides that the voice goes with the hand, somehow). “Gotta leave some for the fishes, you know?” The hand has a twin, he discovers. They drag soothing patterns along his arms, shoulders, back, chest - and, quite suddenly, he realizes who they belong to.
“Yeah…” He turns so he can look at her. With a jolt the thought enters his head: She hasn’t frakking spoken to me in a week. His eyes go wide.
She takes a step closer to him, her fingertips clinging to his neck and shoulders like water droplets. “You gotta get back in the game, beautiful.” She traps his face in both hands and kisses him, gingerly, as if he is made of expensive, fragile porcelain. His body wakes up and remembers how to breathe, how to hold her, how to slide his palms over her bare hipbones, how to drink her in like so many Caprican rainstorms. Her head fits into the spaces of his clavicle like a custom-made puzzle piece.
Her voice is so quiet that he has to strain and struggle to hear it. “Lee, it’s hard. It’s hard for you, for me… Hell, it’s frakking hard for the whole damn ship.” She licks her lips (even though the showerhead is beating down on them still) out of nervous habit. The tip of her tongue touches the skin of his neck ever so slightly, and he bites back a moan because he needs to hear her. “But we have to move on. As much as neither of us want to, we have to.” She sighs and the hairs on his arms stand up.
He thinks for a very long moment, savoring her body against his. He’d honestly thought he’d never get to do this again. His last, his last, his last…
//
(.02)
He is on CAP when the call comes. “Apollo, Starbuck has instructed me to tell you, and I quote sir, to ‘Get your sorry frakking bastard ass the frak back on ship ASAP,’ sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“There’s been a problem with your father, sir.”
The muffled sound over the line is his hand slapping the nearest hard surface it can find. “Dammit!” He sighs loudly. “Tell her my ETA’s ten minutes, and if I push it it’ll be more like six and a half.”
“Will do, sir.”
//
(.07)
She hasn’t spoken to him in a week.
(Outside work, that is.)
He damn well knows why, but he wishes…
Well. He wishes a lot of things. Most of them haven’t yet come true, and probably never will. His grandmother used to tell him that ‘if wishes were horses, every beggar would ride,’ and he was never sure if beggars riding would be a good thing or a bad thing. Well, it doesn’t matter. Frak his grandmother. She’s dead anyway. Just like…
Well.
So really it takes him by surprise when a message comes for him. It reads:
There’s a spot on CAP with your name on it, Admiral, if you want it. We both know you may never get to fly again, and we both know how much you love it. Don’t do something stupid and squander the chance. Skids up in 47 minutes.
-Buck
He grins for the first time in at least a week. (Tigh shoots him a dubious glance.)
//
(.03)
Actually, it took him more like five and a half minutes. Another 98 seconds to sprint to sickbay, and the first question that he asks, panting, is evidently the wrong one. “What happened?”
A million voices, it seems (though really there are only two of them) hit him with a barrage of answers, not all of which he needs to hear at the moment.
“Passed out…”
“It hit too fast…”
“Damn fool, I told him…”
“The meds and the cancer and his heart just…”
“Should’ve been resting…”
“Lee, it’s not your fault for not being here…”
From somewhere, out of the middle of the chaos, a blonde blur throws itself into his arms, and his lungs tell him to breathe, Lee, for frak’s sake, and finally he comes to the realization that there have only ever been two voices, one belonging to her and the other (equally as scared, though muffled by gruff bravado) to Doc Cottle. He tries to think of something to say, but the only thing he can think is: Zak Adama. Sam Anders. Karl Agathon. He glances down at her and mentally repeats the list three more times before his body remembers how to kiss her forehead and start asking coherent questions.
//
(.08)
By this point - twelve years away from New Caprica, thank the Gods - she is the second-most experienced hand on the entire frakking deck (first obviously being the Chief), and everyone knows it.
Cally thinks she has seen everything, but she has never seen Commander - no, Admiral, now - Adama cry like a small child, which is exactly what he is doing when he hands her his helmet. It throws her so off that anything she would say sticks in her throat. She’s seen pilots cry, but this is Lee Frakking Adama. He doesn’t cry.
She stands frozen at the top of the ladder for four long heartbeats. His small, stifled sob jerks the words back to her lips. “Sir…?” She lays a wary, slender hand on his upper arm. “Are you okay, Sir?” And she berates herself for asking a stupid question, because the answer is quite obviously no. But, honestly, she has no idea what to do.
If anyone had told her this morning that she would see something today on her deck that she didn’t know how to deal with, she would have laughed in that person’s face and told them in her sweetest voice possible that she’s not a nugget, thanks - she is a mother and a soldier, and between the two, she has seen everything. She has a solution for every problem, from a stripped screw to a teething toddler. Most importantly, she is unflappable.
But never before has she seen anyone in the state that Apollo is in. Certainly, she’s never seen it on her deck. Something is broken here, and she is wholly unable to fix it, and that fact scares her.
But she’s forgotten that she is his favorite, his Little Cally with miniscule hands that can work miracles (their running joke for the last fourteen years) - that he sometimes tells her things, things he can’t tell anyone else - but things he feels he can tell her. He has kept some secrets just between her and him and his bird, and it makes her proud. Over the last twelve years, their friendship has become comfortable enough that she is sometimes able to return the favor. Tell a secret, keep a secret. It works well between Apollo and his favorite deckhand - Little Cally, his Little Cally with the hands that work miracles - and no one has ever questioned their easy, quiet talks. His bird, who he won’t let anyone but her touch these days, has been the silent witness to these confession sessions.
“You know, Cal,” he whispers, “my last CAP, ever - the last time I’ll ever get to fly a Viper, in my life - and…” He sighs, not bothering to attempt to check his tears. Not yet, at least. He’s not finished. “And I didn’t even enjoy it because I was so busy thinking about how I have nothing left. Nothing. I just have a bunch of duties and responsibilities that shouldn’t ever have been mine in the first place, and that’s all.” He blinks. “I have nothing.”
“Stop beating yourself up, sir.”
But he’s too quick for her and he catches the insinuated question that dances in her eyes, and he shakes his head. “She refuses to marry me. Hasn’t even frakking talked to me in a week… I bet she hates me.” He glances over at his shaken-up little miracle worker. “So that leaves me with nothing.”
“Give her some time, sir,” she says, and it’s all she knows to say - and she hopes to the Gods that she’s not wrong. “We all know how she gets.”
He nods and kneads his forehead with the heels of his hands. “Yeah.” He shakes his head a little, scrubbing his tears from his cheeks, and Cally knows they’re done.
“Anything off with your bird today, sir?” she asks him, the standard question in the standard sweet voice.
“Not really,” he says - the answer she loves to hear. “Just don’t let those nuggets of yours get their greasy palms on her,” he finishes with a smile. Or, at least, his mouth is trying valiantly to smile. It’s close enough. She climbs down the ladder and he goes after her. But he lingers, running his hand over the hull of his Viper, and when he turns to her his whole face flashes dead serious, if for only a fleeting moment. “Work your miracles, Little Cally,” and this time it’s really a smile and not just a brave attempt.
“Yes, sir!” she answers brightly, throwing a cheery salute in his direction.
Unlike their usual routine, he too comes to attention, and he salutes her slowly and purposefully. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Specialist,” he says, offering her his hand.
She grips it firmly. “It’s been a pleasure working with you too, Admiral Apollo, sir.”
He snorts softly and walks away.
//
(.04)
This is it, he realizes. This is the great William Adama on his deathbed, put there by cancer and stress and lack of proper medicine and the years. And the Gods, he adds grimly, though he knows that if he ever dared to tell Kara that last part, she’d give him a black eye - or something equally as bad. But, this is it, and he has no idea what to say to this great legend in front of him. To his father.
But of course the Admiral is still giving orders, even now. “Come here,” he growls, holding out two gnarled hands. “Both of you.” They comply, taking his hands on opposite sides of the bed, and he beams. “My two kids,” he sighs, every word lavished with pride. They all three fall silent and still for a long minute, before he glances sharply at his son. “Ask her.”
Lee’s face blanches white. “Dad, I…”
“Do it.” It’s half an order and half a question. “I know it’s not perfect like you wanted, but I have some things to say.”
Lee sighs and glances across the bed, cataloguing for future reference the fact that this is about to become the most surreal moment of his life. “Kara, I’d been planning on asking you to marry me tonight, but I…”
Now it is her turn to lose the color from her cheeks.
The Old Man sighs. “Listen,” he says. “Both of you listen.” He looks at Kara first. “Your job is to take care of my son and my pilots.” He looks at Lee. “Your job is to take care of this hell-bird and my ship… and my XO,” he grins. Saul Tigh clears his throat from somewhere behind Lee, and Lee wonders for a moment when the hell he materialized, but that’s not really what’s important right now. His father is lifting his hands into the air, putting them together - putting Lee’s hand together with Kara’s. “And your collective job is to be frakking happy.” He pauses for a moment. “And that’s an order, you hear?”
Kara and Lee glance at one another warily before she bursts out laughing, and her breaths sound like sobs, and maybe they are; and she grins and says, “Okay, sir… Launching Operation Bright, Shiny Future ASAP…” Lee rolls his eyes.
He doesn’t really remember much past that, oddly. It’s like his brain has shut down and everything turns into a blur, a roar of voices and faces. He remembers his father’s still-strong hug, and he remembers him kissing Kara on the cheek with an anguished look, and he remembers Saul Tigh’s yelp when the machines indicate that Zeus is rising - but, really? He doesn’t really remember much.
//
(.05)
And Saul Tigh, who yelped with his best friend died, is the only person with the bravery and right to interrupt the cocoon of grief and sex and ambrosia and memory that Bill Adama’s two kids have woven around themselves, in the sacred hallows of Bill Adama’s office, the one place on-ship that’s acceptable for them to commandeer for a few days.
He bears an octagonal piece of paper, and he gives Lee (in boxers and tanks and nothing more, with messy hair and bloodshot eyes) a funny look and doesn’t ask where Kara is, though he considers it. Instead, he says in a strange, choked voice, “Commander Lee Adama - promoted to Admiral of the Colonial Fleet and Commander of Galactica. Major Kara Thrace - promoted to Colonel of the Colonial Fleet and CAG of Galactica.” He puts the paper down on the Old Man’s desk, and keeps giving Lee that funny look, and finally says, “You can’t hide forever, boy,” and walks away.
Lee dogs the hatch, and the clanking echoes off the walls of the room equally as strongly as, “… and my XO” - but he decides that the XO can wait until the hell-bird can fly again.
//
(.01)
It’s just another boring CAP, just another routine day, and he thanks the Gods that the crises decided to sleep today, because he’s a bundle of frakking nerves, and he can’t stop frakking grinning, and he’s honestly not sure if he should really even be flying his Viper today. He knows that if a crisis decided to waltz into his airspace in this very moment, he might not be able to react the way he should.
Tonight he is going to have dinner with his father and Saul Tigh and Kara, because it’s what they have done once a week for the last twelve years. (His father jokingly calls it ‘family time,’ and Kara calls it ‘the lonely hearts club,’ and Tigh often calls it ‘a frakking nuisance,’ but Lee just calls it ‘beautiful and familiar and important.’)
Oh no, but tonight it’s going to be special.
Tonight he is going to ask her to marry him, and he is on frakking pins and needles. He has never felt this joltingly alive, ever - and he’s had his fair share of stims and booze and sex and adrenaline, and this is every one of those times twenty.
He knows just how it’s going to happen, too - he’s going to get down on one knee, and say, “Kara Maria Thrace, I’ve loved you for more years than I can count. You’re ingrained in my soul…”
He is so terrified, and yet so elated.
Nineteen years he’s known her now. Nineteen, he thinks, is a very big number. But only within the last twelve have they really begun to painstakingly cultivate a solid, lasting friendship - and only within the last year or so have they been unofficially together. (Never mind the fact that the whole ship knew, twelve years ago, that they would be unofficially together until the day they both died.) And, now? Now, tonight, he’s going to ask her to hold her breath and leap. To be official. To love him as much as he loves her - and not be afraid to show it.
He takes a deep breath and tries to concentrate on the friendly banter the nuggets he’s flying with are throwing at one another, and tries not to concentrate on the ring in the box on the top shelf of his locker.
His mother gave it to him, the last time he saw her, and she told him that it was the one his father had given her, and that he mustn’t ever marry a woman who he wasn’t certain that he loved, or else it would end up hurting both of them.
Well, he loves Kara Thrace. No frakking take-backs.
He wants to scream it out, and laughs at the idea of doing so, right now - what would those damn nuggets say to that? The smile stays playing around his lips for the remainder of his flight. What would the repercussions of yelling, “I’m in love with my deputy CAG!” be, he wonders?
(At this point, he’s not quite sure he cares.)
//
(.06)
In the dazed stillness after the funeral, he holds her and regrets that he’s getting pretty good at doing so (this being the fourth time since they’ve known each other; the third since the end of the worlds); and her fingers seek out his pulse point in the silk hollow of his sorrow-soft collarbone and stay there for two excruciatingly long minutes, at the end of which she pulls away, tears in her eyes, and informs him that even though one of the Old Man’s last requests was that his two kids marry each other and be happy, she can’t marry him, she really can’t, because she has buried enough men she’s loved, thanks.
//
(.10)
If it is really, truly his last time ever, he supposes that he can’t possibly frak it up any more than he seems to have already done, so he whispers, “Marry me, Kara.” It’s a plead - he’s begging and he doesn’t even try to cover it up. Not now. He just can’t.
She looks at him and bites her lip, hard. It bleeds. He kisses it and waits.
And he waits until he can’t wait any longer.
(The showerhead has long since run out of hot water, but neither of them appear to notice.)
“Kara,” he begs again. He waits until she is looking him in the eye, and he says, “I said it. I mean it.”
And, for some reason - Gods know why - it cracks her, and she snaps her eyes shut and pressed her face as close to his chest as physically possible, and holds to him for a very long time as if she will drift away and drown if she lets go, and finally she breathes, “Lee.”
//
I’m dreaming ‘bout those dreamy eyes
I never knew, I never knew
But it’s alright…
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright
Notes: Okay, so pretty much I am in LOVE with this fic. Like you wouldn't even believe. Rating... is a PG13, but be warned that there is death and angst and angsty!pilots and crying!pilots and showering!pilots and loving!pilots. (Though nothing explicitly sexual at all.) This is from number 64, hold. X-posted to
64damn_prompts,
beyond_insane, and
bsg2003fics, because I'm that frakking proud of it. Also, dedicated to
i_am_girlfriday - because she's my fic-writing soul-sister. Hee. Mmm... yeah, can't think of much else to tell you. Enjoy.
A Note On Style: This fic is TOTALLY mixed-up and crazy, so, to help you better understand the story, I've numbered the sections. Read it straight-through first, but then, if you like, go back and read the sections in numerical order (because the numerical order, not the actual physical placement, is chronological). And, oh yes, the lyrics are from The Killers. Hot Fuss is the best album to listen to while writing about angsty!crying!showering!loving!pilots. Okay I'm going to shut up now.
//
She said she loved me, but she had somewhere to go
She couldn’t scream while I held her close
I swore I’d never let her go
//
(.09)
He feels as though he has lost touch with all sense of time and space.
Space, ha. His last CAP ever. Yes, he’s truly lost touch with space. But time…
How long has he been in the damn shower? Five seconds? Five minutes? Five hours? Five days? Five years? Five lifetimes?
He closes his eyes and lifts his face to the spray. What he wouldn’t give to have his life back…
A cool, calloused hand on his shoulder shatters his reverie. “Don’t drown, flyboy,” says a disembodied voice (though he quickly decides that the voice goes with the hand, somehow). “Gotta leave some for the fishes, you know?” The hand has a twin, he discovers. They drag soothing patterns along his arms, shoulders, back, chest - and, quite suddenly, he realizes who they belong to.
“Yeah…” He turns so he can look at her. With a jolt the thought enters his head: She hasn’t frakking spoken to me in a week. His eyes go wide.
She takes a step closer to him, her fingertips clinging to his neck and shoulders like water droplets. “You gotta get back in the game, beautiful.” She traps his face in both hands and kisses him, gingerly, as if he is made of expensive, fragile porcelain. His body wakes up and remembers how to breathe, how to hold her, how to slide his palms over her bare hipbones, how to drink her in like so many Caprican rainstorms. Her head fits into the spaces of his clavicle like a custom-made puzzle piece.
Her voice is so quiet that he has to strain and struggle to hear it. “Lee, it’s hard. It’s hard for you, for me… Hell, it’s frakking hard for the whole damn ship.” She licks her lips (even though the showerhead is beating down on them still) out of nervous habit. The tip of her tongue touches the skin of his neck ever so slightly, and he bites back a moan because he needs to hear her. “But we have to move on. As much as neither of us want to, we have to.” She sighs and the hairs on his arms stand up.
He thinks for a very long moment, savoring her body against his. He’d honestly thought he’d never get to do this again. His last, his last, his last…
//
(.02)
He is on CAP when the call comes. “Apollo, Starbuck has instructed me to tell you, and I quote sir, to ‘Get your sorry frakking bastard ass the frak back on ship ASAP,’ sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“There’s been a problem with your father, sir.”
The muffled sound over the line is his hand slapping the nearest hard surface it can find. “Dammit!” He sighs loudly. “Tell her my ETA’s ten minutes, and if I push it it’ll be more like six and a half.”
“Will do, sir.”
//
(.07)
She hasn’t spoken to him in a week.
(Outside work, that is.)
He damn well knows why, but he wishes…
Well. He wishes a lot of things. Most of them haven’t yet come true, and probably never will. His grandmother used to tell him that ‘if wishes were horses, every beggar would ride,’ and he was never sure if beggars riding would be a good thing or a bad thing. Well, it doesn’t matter. Frak his grandmother. She’s dead anyway. Just like…
Well.
So really it takes him by surprise when a message comes for him. It reads:
There’s a spot on CAP with your name on it, Admiral, if you want it. We both know you may never get to fly again, and we both know how much you love it. Don’t do something stupid and squander the chance. Skids up in 47 minutes.
-Buck
He grins for the first time in at least a week. (Tigh shoots him a dubious glance.)
//
(.03)
Actually, it took him more like five and a half minutes. Another 98 seconds to sprint to sickbay, and the first question that he asks, panting, is evidently the wrong one. “What happened?”
A million voices, it seems (though really there are only two of them) hit him with a barrage of answers, not all of which he needs to hear at the moment.
“Passed out…”
“It hit too fast…”
“Damn fool, I told him…”
“The meds and the cancer and his heart just…”
“Should’ve been resting…”
“Lee, it’s not your fault for not being here…”
From somewhere, out of the middle of the chaos, a blonde blur throws itself into his arms, and his lungs tell him to breathe, Lee, for frak’s sake, and finally he comes to the realization that there have only ever been two voices, one belonging to her and the other (equally as scared, though muffled by gruff bravado) to Doc Cottle. He tries to think of something to say, but the only thing he can think is: Zak Adama. Sam Anders. Karl Agathon. He glances down at her and mentally repeats the list three more times before his body remembers how to kiss her forehead and start asking coherent questions.
//
(.08)
By this point - twelve years away from New Caprica, thank the Gods - she is the second-most experienced hand on the entire frakking deck (first obviously being the Chief), and everyone knows it.
Cally thinks she has seen everything, but she has never seen Commander - no, Admiral, now - Adama cry like a small child, which is exactly what he is doing when he hands her his helmet. It throws her so off that anything she would say sticks in her throat. She’s seen pilots cry, but this is Lee Frakking Adama. He doesn’t cry.
She stands frozen at the top of the ladder for four long heartbeats. His small, stifled sob jerks the words back to her lips. “Sir…?” She lays a wary, slender hand on his upper arm. “Are you okay, Sir?” And she berates herself for asking a stupid question, because the answer is quite obviously no. But, honestly, she has no idea what to do.
If anyone had told her this morning that she would see something today on her deck that she didn’t know how to deal with, she would have laughed in that person’s face and told them in her sweetest voice possible that she’s not a nugget, thanks - she is a mother and a soldier, and between the two, she has seen everything. She has a solution for every problem, from a stripped screw to a teething toddler. Most importantly, she is unflappable.
But never before has she seen anyone in the state that Apollo is in. Certainly, she’s never seen it on her deck. Something is broken here, and she is wholly unable to fix it, and that fact scares her.
But she’s forgotten that she is his favorite, his Little Cally with miniscule hands that can work miracles (their running joke for the last fourteen years) - that he sometimes tells her things, things he can’t tell anyone else - but things he feels he can tell her. He has kept some secrets just between her and him and his bird, and it makes her proud. Over the last twelve years, their friendship has become comfortable enough that she is sometimes able to return the favor. Tell a secret, keep a secret. It works well between Apollo and his favorite deckhand - Little Cally, his Little Cally with the hands that work miracles - and no one has ever questioned their easy, quiet talks. His bird, who he won’t let anyone but her touch these days, has been the silent witness to these confession sessions.
“You know, Cal,” he whispers, “my last CAP, ever - the last time I’ll ever get to fly a Viper, in my life - and…” He sighs, not bothering to attempt to check his tears. Not yet, at least. He’s not finished. “And I didn’t even enjoy it because I was so busy thinking about how I have nothing left. Nothing. I just have a bunch of duties and responsibilities that shouldn’t ever have been mine in the first place, and that’s all.” He blinks. “I have nothing.”
“Stop beating yourself up, sir.”
But he’s too quick for her and he catches the insinuated question that dances in her eyes, and he shakes his head. “She refuses to marry me. Hasn’t even frakking talked to me in a week… I bet she hates me.” He glances over at his shaken-up little miracle worker. “So that leaves me with nothing.”
“Give her some time, sir,” she says, and it’s all she knows to say - and she hopes to the Gods that she’s not wrong. “We all know how she gets.”
He nods and kneads his forehead with the heels of his hands. “Yeah.” He shakes his head a little, scrubbing his tears from his cheeks, and Cally knows they’re done.
“Anything off with your bird today, sir?” she asks him, the standard question in the standard sweet voice.
“Not really,” he says - the answer she loves to hear. “Just don’t let those nuggets of yours get their greasy palms on her,” he finishes with a smile. Or, at least, his mouth is trying valiantly to smile. It’s close enough. She climbs down the ladder and he goes after her. But he lingers, running his hand over the hull of his Viper, and when he turns to her his whole face flashes dead serious, if for only a fleeting moment. “Work your miracles, Little Cally,” and this time it’s really a smile and not just a brave attempt.
“Yes, sir!” she answers brightly, throwing a cheery salute in his direction.
Unlike their usual routine, he too comes to attention, and he salutes her slowly and purposefully. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Specialist,” he says, offering her his hand.
She grips it firmly. “It’s been a pleasure working with you too, Admiral Apollo, sir.”
He snorts softly and walks away.
//
(.04)
This is it, he realizes. This is the great William Adama on his deathbed, put there by cancer and stress and lack of proper medicine and the years. And the Gods, he adds grimly, though he knows that if he ever dared to tell Kara that last part, she’d give him a black eye - or something equally as bad. But, this is it, and he has no idea what to say to this great legend in front of him. To his father.
But of course the Admiral is still giving orders, even now. “Come here,” he growls, holding out two gnarled hands. “Both of you.” They comply, taking his hands on opposite sides of the bed, and he beams. “My two kids,” he sighs, every word lavished with pride. They all three fall silent and still for a long minute, before he glances sharply at his son. “Ask her.”
Lee’s face blanches white. “Dad, I…”
“Do it.” It’s half an order and half a question. “I know it’s not perfect like you wanted, but I have some things to say.”
Lee sighs and glances across the bed, cataloguing for future reference the fact that this is about to become the most surreal moment of his life. “Kara, I’d been planning on asking you to marry me tonight, but I…”
Now it is her turn to lose the color from her cheeks.
The Old Man sighs. “Listen,” he says. “Both of you listen.” He looks at Kara first. “Your job is to take care of my son and my pilots.” He looks at Lee. “Your job is to take care of this hell-bird and my ship… and my XO,” he grins. Saul Tigh clears his throat from somewhere behind Lee, and Lee wonders for a moment when the hell he materialized, but that’s not really what’s important right now. His father is lifting his hands into the air, putting them together - putting Lee’s hand together with Kara’s. “And your collective job is to be frakking happy.” He pauses for a moment. “And that’s an order, you hear?”
Kara and Lee glance at one another warily before she bursts out laughing, and her breaths sound like sobs, and maybe they are; and she grins and says, “Okay, sir… Launching Operation Bright, Shiny Future ASAP…” Lee rolls his eyes.
He doesn’t really remember much past that, oddly. It’s like his brain has shut down and everything turns into a blur, a roar of voices and faces. He remembers his father’s still-strong hug, and he remembers him kissing Kara on the cheek with an anguished look, and he remembers Saul Tigh’s yelp when the machines indicate that Zeus is rising - but, really? He doesn’t really remember much.
//
(.05)
And Saul Tigh, who yelped with his best friend died, is the only person with the bravery and right to interrupt the cocoon of grief and sex and ambrosia and memory that Bill Adama’s two kids have woven around themselves, in the sacred hallows of Bill Adama’s office, the one place on-ship that’s acceptable for them to commandeer for a few days.
He bears an octagonal piece of paper, and he gives Lee (in boxers and tanks and nothing more, with messy hair and bloodshot eyes) a funny look and doesn’t ask where Kara is, though he considers it. Instead, he says in a strange, choked voice, “Commander Lee Adama - promoted to Admiral of the Colonial Fleet and Commander of Galactica. Major Kara Thrace - promoted to Colonel of the Colonial Fleet and CAG of Galactica.” He puts the paper down on the Old Man’s desk, and keeps giving Lee that funny look, and finally says, “You can’t hide forever, boy,” and walks away.
Lee dogs the hatch, and the clanking echoes off the walls of the room equally as strongly as, “… and my XO” - but he decides that the XO can wait until the hell-bird can fly again.
//
(.01)
It’s just another boring CAP, just another routine day, and he thanks the Gods that the crises decided to sleep today, because he’s a bundle of frakking nerves, and he can’t stop frakking grinning, and he’s honestly not sure if he should really even be flying his Viper today. He knows that if a crisis decided to waltz into his airspace in this very moment, he might not be able to react the way he should.
Tonight he is going to have dinner with his father and Saul Tigh and Kara, because it’s what they have done once a week for the last twelve years. (His father jokingly calls it ‘family time,’ and Kara calls it ‘the lonely hearts club,’ and Tigh often calls it ‘a frakking nuisance,’ but Lee just calls it ‘beautiful and familiar and important.’)
Oh no, but tonight it’s going to be special.
Tonight he is going to ask her to marry him, and he is on frakking pins and needles. He has never felt this joltingly alive, ever - and he’s had his fair share of stims and booze and sex and adrenaline, and this is every one of those times twenty.
He knows just how it’s going to happen, too - he’s going to get down on one knee, and say, “Kara Maria Thrace, I’ve loved you for more years than I can count. You’re ingrained in my soul…”
He is so terrified, and yet so elated.
Nineteen years he’s known her now. Nineteen, he thinks, is a very big number. But only within the last twelve have they really begun to painstakingly cultivate a solid, lasting friendship - and only within the last year or so have they been unofficially together. (Never mind the fact that the whole ship knew, twelve years ago, that they would be unofficially together until the day they both died.) And, now? Now, tonight, he’s going to ask her to hold her breath and leap. To be official. To love him as much as he loves her - and not be afraid to show it.
He takes a deep breath and tries to concentrate on the friendly banter the nuggets he’s flying with are throwing at one another, and tries not to concentrate on the ring in the box on the top shelf of his locker.
His mother gave it to him, the last time he saw her, and she told him that it was the one his father had given her, and that he mustn’t ever marry a woman who he wasn’t certain that he loved, or else it would end up hurting both of them.
Well, he loves Kara Thrace. No frakking take-backs.
He wants to scream it out, and laughs at the idea of doing so, right now - what would those damn nuggets say to that? The smile stays playing around his lips for the remainder of his flight. What would the repercussions of yelling, “I’m in love with my deputy CAG!” be, he wonders?
(At this point, he’s not quite sure he cares.)
//
(.06)
In the dazed stillness after the funeral, he holds her and regrets that he’s getting pretty good at doing so (this being the fourth time since they’ve known each other; the third since the end of the worlds); and her fingers seek out his pulse point in the silk hollow of his sorrow-soft collarbone and stay there for two excruciatingly long minutes, at the end of which she pulls away, tears in her eyes, and informs him that even though one of the Old Man’s last requests was that his two kids marry each other and be happy, she can’t marry him, she really can’t, because she has buried enough men she’s loved, thanks.
//
(.10)
If it is really, truly his last time ever, he supposes that he can’t possibly frak it up any more than he seems to have already done, so he whispers, “Marry me, Kara.” It’s a plead - he’s begging and he doesn’t even try to cover it up. Not now. He just can’t.
She looks at him and bites her lip, hard. It bleeds. He kisses it and waits.
And he waits until he can’t wait any longer.
(The showerhead has long since run out of hot water, but neither of them appear to notice.)
“Kara,” he begs again. He waits until she is looking him in the eye, and he says, “I said it. I mean it.”
And, for some reason - Gods know why - it cracks her, and she snaps her eyes shut and pressed her face as close to his chest as physically possible, and holds to him for a very long time as if she will drift away and drown if she lets go, and finally she breathes, “Lee.”
//
I’m dreaming ‘bout those dreamy eyes
I never knew, I never knew
But it’s alright…
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright