BSG - The Great, Tragic Man!Pain of Commander Lee Adama
This is, like, a parody. Duh.
Battlestar Galactica
Lee/Dee, Lee/Kara, Kara/Zak blah blah blah
Vague spoilers for 3:01/3.02
Rated C for cracky goodness.
The Great, Tragic Man!Pain of Commander Lee Adama
The problem with being in charge was that people always looked to you in times of stress. Normally, Lee was very good with stress, but moving the settlers to New Caprica, and having his own command, and Kara getting married, and him getting married -- but not to each other -- these were not normal types of stressful situations. These were excessively stressful situations.
Even Zak's death wasn't stressful like this.
The trouble was that when Lee was super-stressed he ate. He got that from his mother. She'd always been partial to lemon drop brownies and the butterscotch ice cream that Lee's dad brought back from Picon when he knew he'd been spending too much time cosseting his troops and not enough time cosseting his wife. Or being a father to his children. Or even calling Lee the right name. Not that Lee was bitter. No.
Lee's personal downfall were the fake chocolate bon-bons that the Pegasus chef, Bruno, made by the Raptor-load. Lee discovered them in his quarters the first week he was in command; he mentioned liking them to his XO, who mentioned it to his lieutenant and then suddenly everywhere Lee went there were bon-bons. In his quarters, in the briefing room, in the CIC, in the frakking showers, little bowls of fake chocolate bon-bons, and Lee knew bribery when he saw it, but what was the good of being a Commander if you couldn't get a few perks out of the job?
Lee knew there were probably much healthier ways to deal with his stress, like running, or sex with his wife, but -- but he didn't want to run because running these days made things chafe. The friction burn between his thighs alone was unconscionable, and sex with Dee -- well. At least she liked being on top, and she got high marks for her enthusiasm, but Lee had pretty effectively put their sex life on hiatus last week when he hadn't been able to get it up.
Actually, that was a lie. Lee could get it up just fine, but Dee had been in the mood immediately after he'd come back from the bathroom and that particular visit to the bathroom had been really disconcerting, so he'd turned her down cold.
Yes, Dee was gorgeous and young and also his wife, but she was no match for the realization that when Lee'd gone to take a leak, he'd looked down and been unable to see his dick. He'd had to lift up his stomach to make sure the Cylons hadn't come and castrated him during the night.
That was seriously traumatic.
Hell, at this point the only way he could see his feet was if he put them up when he sat down.
So, no sex with the wife, not until he got back in shape. But again with the chafing -- it was a horrible cycle of pain, pain, and more pain.
Nobody understood how much Lee suffered. He was so misunderstood. Really. Nobody was as misunderstood as he was.
And his pants were too tight.
He needed something to soothe his pain, like dessert. Who cared if it was only nine hundred hours? He was the commander, he could do whatever he wanted.
*
Once upon a time Lee Heracles Adama fell in love with a blonde woman -- but she didn't understand him because she wasn't in touch with her emotions. So he fell in love with another blonde woman -- but she didn't understand him either. Probably because she was in love with his brother.
Then his brother died, and that was really traumatic for Lee. This was compounded by the fact that the blonde woman he loved, who was also in love with his brother, refused to then seek comfort in Lee's arms. Clearly she didn't realize that was how things were supposed to go, but Kara was hard-headed and never held up her end of the bargain. So Lee decided that falling in love was stupid and pointless. It only led to heartbreak and days in the brig, so he had an affair with the President of the Twelve Colonies.
That went about as well as could be expected.
Lee repressed the whole episode with the hooker he fell in love with and that time he killed that hoodlum that ran the Black Market. Yeah, totally repressed everything about the Galactica slave trade, too. Commander Lee 'Repressed' Adama at your service.
So, Lee married one of his dad's staff and took up the family business of looting ships. No, wait, wrong family.
The long and short of it was that while Lee loved Dee he probably wasn't in love with Dee. Especially, since she still had lingering Billy-guilt that she never wanted to talk about. And that was why Lee was sitting on the prep counter in the Pegasus galley, licking a cake beater, and telling his woes to Bruno, the Pegasus chef.
"My dad never loved me," Lee said, in between licks of chocolate batter. "He always liked Zak best, just because Zak looked more like him. Or like him at all. I don't really look like my dad; for all I know I could be adopted."
Bruno made a grunting noise from the area of the deep fryer. It smelled like fake bacon. Lee hoped it was fake bacon. He loved fake bacon.
Lee took that as Bruno siding with him, since Bruno never said anything to Lee about anything. Lee figured Bruno was probably mute, which made him an excellent confidant. "You know, it wouldn't surprise me to know that I was adopted,' Lee got into it. "Or that my mom had an affair while my dad was off on some trip, because you know my dad's not really the emotionally available type. I think it's all his fault. His internalization has become my internalization."
Bruno grunted again and something sizzled. Lee picked up the other cake beater and began giving it the same tender care he'd given the first one. Long, leisurely licks around every crevice.
Every job had to be done thoroughly on the Pegasus. That's what a Commander was there to ensure.
"Absentee parents make for neurotic kids," Lee said around a mouthful of batter. "I mean, just look at me. If Zak were alive, I bet he'd be just as screwed up as me. Of course dad always loved him best anyway. So, you can see how I'd be screwed up. Absentee dad, dead brother, dead mother, ex-sister-in-law-to-be who married some stupid mercenary."
Bruno made a noise like he was coughing or choking. Lee wasn't sure which so he ignored it.
"I have to go run the ship or see my wife or something." Lee dropped the cake beater in the sink and pushed against the counter to slide off. The counter made a creaking sound of protest. It took him a little while to get down.
"Thanks for listening," he said, clapping Bruno on the back as he passed him by. "Hey, are you making the fake bacon?"
*
Lee popped another bon-bon in his mouth and looked across his quarters at his wife. Dee seemed deeply engrossed in her papers, but Lee rustled his bon-bons loudly in hopes of provoking some attention. Ever since the Cylon invasion she'd been even more withdrawn, like it was his fault his dad had sent a toaster to do a human's job. Just because he was having problems performing was no reason to freeze him out.
Lee grunted and popped a few more bon-bons in his mouth.
Dee seemed to be ignoring him, which was starting to become the norm instead of the exception. You put on a couple pounds, stopped having sex because you couldn't see your dick, and all that weight put too much pressure on your kidneys, and suddenly everybody gave you grief.
Of course Dee hadn't said anything about his expanding waistline and the double chin and the jowls, but Lee saw her sideways glances when he went for his third helping at dinner or when he unbuttoned his pants in the CIC when he thought no one was looking.
He'd thought the elastic waistband would work for sure this time, but apparently not. He would have to sneak down to the laundry again and get Agnes to give him a new set of uniforms. Not that he had to sneak anywhere -- he was the Commander of the Pegasus. Plus it was kind of hard to sneak when you could only waddle.
"Do you really think we should go back to New Caprica and save them from the Cylons?" he asked around a mouth full of fake chocolate.
Dee glanced up at him as though he were a Cylon himself. "What do you mean should we?" She pronounced each word crisply. "As opposed to leaving them to die painful, horrifying deaths at the hands of the Cylons? Hmm, let me think about that -- are you frakking serious, Lee?!"
Lee shrugged or he tried to shrug. His uniform wasn't just tight about the stomach, it was tight across the chest too. He couldn't even lift his arms the whole way. "I just mean -- I mean if we go back that's all of humanity going 'poof!' It's something to think about," he said, grabbing a handful of bon-bons and heading for the door.
"It is NOT something to think about. Suddenly you're not concerned about your precious, Starbuck? Suddenly it's all Kara who?!"
Lee just knew she was going to bring up the sex thing.
"How can we worry about humanity when we're not even procreating to help it along?" Dee hollered after him. "Lee Adama, you come back here!"
"Duty calls," he tossed over his shoulder.
Duty, a new uniform he could breathe in, second breakfast, all the same thing.
*
Agnes in the Pegasus laundry was far-sighted.
Lee knew this, because she was always telling him how handsome he was, and while she might've been speaking the truth a year ago, he knew he wasn't exactly fighting trim anymore. Okay, so he wasn't ugly or anything, but maybe the jowls weren't going to get him his third cover of Intergalactic Hotties either.
Whatever.
Agnes still made him feel like nothing had changed, and for that he adored her. He adored her so much he'd given her a staff of ten to take care of the Pegasus laundry, which was five more staff than she had when they were at full capacity.
"Agnes, how's my favorite seamstress slash laundress slash surrogate mom?" Lee said, knocking on the door of the Pegasus laundry as he entered the room.
"I'm always happier when the handsome Commander Adama comes to visit me," Agnes said. Her fire-red hair puffed around her head like a halo, and her reading glasses hung from a cord around her neck. Lee had never seen her use them.
He watched her hold a jacket at arms length as she mended a torn collar, pointedly ignoring all the thimbles on her fingers. "What can I do for the most gorgeous man alive today?" she asked, the thimbles tinkling together.
"I, uh, I think my uniform shrunk in the wash again," he said. "The waistband is a little tight."
Lee ignored the snickering from Agnes' staff. He could think up something way worse for them than laundry duty. The head had been smelling a little worse for wear lately, maybe it needed to be cleaned, by toothbrush, on hands and knees.
Yeah, that seemed like a good idea.
"Ah, that does tend to happen every now and then." Agnes made a irritated noise when she poked herself in an un-thimble-protected area of her fingers. "I'll get you another pair. Will you need another jacket too?"
Lee hesitated for a moment, and Agnes carried on. "Silly me, of course you will, the Commander of the Pegasus can't have mismatched uniforms, can he?"
"No, we can't have that."
Lee smiled gratefully as Agnes set down her mending and stood up. "My Albert, he had problems with sizing too. You would think that people would be able to size Olympian wrestlers properly, but he always had problems with the local laundry losing his underwear. I never trusted those Saggitaron cleaners he used, kinky frakkers the lot of them."
Dee was from Saggitaron, and Lee didn't think she was particularly kinky, although she did like to grab hold of his love handles during sex sometimes. Not that they'd been having sex, but back when they had been having sex -- whatever.
Lee followed Agnes' muttering into the back where the uniforms were kept; he'd never heard Agnes curse before. It was weird, like hearing his mom talk about her sex life after she'd divorced his dad. That had been so horrifying Lee had gone directly from her house to the Oracle to pray for his brain to be sucked out of his ears and cleaned thoroughly.
"So, when are we going back to New Caprica to kick some Cylon booty?" Agnes asked, slapping a new jacket into Lee's arms. Lee grabbed at the jacket haphazardly. For someone slightly blind, Agnes could be really quick sometimes.
"Well, we're still discussing-"
"I'd like to kick some Cylon booty!" Agnes punctuated this statement by karate-chopping a stack of socks and giving a box of shoes a high kick. "Hi-Ya!"
"As soon as we've devised a plan-" Lee insisted.
"Plan shman," Agnes said, making a pair of pants materialize out of thin air. "Kicking ass doesn't need a plan, it needs frakking ass kicking!"
Lee's stomach gurgled. It didn't need ass kicking, it needed lunch. Lee's stomach was very good at keeping to a regular schedule. "Yes, well, Agnes-"
"C'mon and do some high kicks with me!" Agnes said, slapping Lee's chest and displaying serious agility for a woman who was probably close to 70.
Lee couldn't believe that Agnes was picking today to crack up. He had problems of his own. "Agnes, I can't--"
"Don’t be a pussy, Commander!" Agnes snapped. "Admiral Cain could do fifty karate chops without breaking a sweat!"
It was on the tip of Lee's tongue to point out that Admiral Cain was also a mass-murdering nut job, who'd been murdered by an escaped toaster, but facts weren't really important. Plus, if he pissed off Agnes, who knew what would happen to his uniforms.
He was saved by a page.
Commander Adama to the CIC.
Lee's grin was huge and 100% fake; it wasn't like Agnes could tell. "Maybe another time," he said. "Duty calls!"
Agnes followed him out of the backroom. "Here," she said materializing a bowl of bon-bons out of thin air. "Take some for the road; it's tough being at the top!"
Lee took two handfuls. "Tell me about it!"
*
"What seems to be the problem?" Lee strode into the CIC purposefully. He'd stopped in the head and changed his uniform. It was much easier to be manly and confident when you could actually swing your arms and breathe.
The two handfuls of bon-bons hadn't hurt either.
"There's a call for you from the Galactica," one of underlings said, holding out the phone receiver. Lee didn't know this particular underling's name, but they always had names like Viper equipment or gambling addicts. It was probably something like Lt. Port Console or whatever.
Dee was there, looking over whatever it was she was always looking over. Lee threw back his shoulders and puffed out his chest as authoritatively as he could. He may've been fat, but he was still the man.
Lee took the phone. "Commander Adama," he said in precise tones.
"Admiral Adama," his father said.
All the wind went right out of Lee's sails. "Look, if this is about the last conversation we had, I'm not interested," Lee snapped.
"I'm sorry I called you fat," his father said. "I should've gone for something more politically correct like 'zaftig.'
Lee looked around at his crew, glaring at them in turn until they went back to whatever it was they did that wasn't commanding the Pegasus. He was in charge, frak it! "I am not zaftig," he hissed into the receiver in low tones. "Women are zaftig, I'm stout."
"Stout, huh?" It was clear from the old man's tone that he wasn't buying it. "Look, your weight is your issue. I understand that. I love you all the same."
"Oh, right. You can tell me you love me now, but where were you when I was eight with bloody knees and a runny nose? Where were you when I needed a father! You were off playing with your ships!"
"Son, that's not fair!"
"Yeah, well -- well -- well life's not fair either!" Lee ignored Dee's pointed look. This was way before her time; she didn't have any authority to tell him how to behave. "It's not fair when you're eleven and your dad keeps calling you by your brother's name like he's forgotten you even exist!"
"Lee, that happened twice!"
"Well that was two too many times!" Lee wasn't even trying to keep the agony out of his voice. He was mentally scarred, damnit. He was owed vindication for all the slights his dad probably didn't even know existed. If his dad was the Admiral of a fleet he should at least be able to read his only living son's mind!
"Son, you're being irrational."
"Yeah, well, you'd be irrational too if your dad said you were fat. You're lucky I'm not some impressionable teenager -- I might've developed an eating disorder or something."
Lee could hear his dad's deep inhalation down the line. "So, I guess that means you don't want to talk about the Cylon invasion today."
"You would be right," Lee snapped, hanging up the phone.
Sometimes it felt really good to channel his inner ten year-old.
He glared at the astonished looks of his crew. "What?" he snapped. "Don't even pretend like your parents didn't traumatize and scar you for life too!"
And with that he stomped off to lunch.
*
His dad thought he was a porker. Everybody liked his dead brother more. The woman he loved had nearly killed him during sex and then married some two-bit, second-team, pyramid-playing mercenary. Lee's life sucked, but at least he could hide out in the kitchen and get served personally.
"And then he said I was zaftig!" Lee complained, between mouthfuls of freeze-dried potato type thingy while sitting at Bruno's desk. Bruno grunted. "Like he's so built himself just because he whipped my ass in boxing one time. Or two times."
Bruno grunted again.
"Okay, more than two times. That doesn't change the fact that Mom left him! Or that he was a sucky parent! Or that he officiated when Kara married that no-neck loser! He's not the boss of me!"
"Actually, as the Admiral, that's exactly what he is," Bruno said. Lee's plastic fork clattered against his plate. "And if you don't like what you see and what you hear, you should stop whining, start working out, and make some changes."
Lee was completely pole-axed. "Bruno! You can talk?"
Bruno snorted. "I could always talk, I just couldn't get a word edgewise with you. No offense, Commander, but you bitch, like well, a little bitch."
Lee bristled while he extracted his fork from his peas. "I didn't give you leave to speak freely, Sergeant, did I? I could have you thrown out the airlock for your insubordination!"
"True", Bruno conceded, "but then who would make you your bon-bons?"
Lee paused.
Bruno kept talking. "We have a club, a Pegasus Men's Club, and originally we were going to invite you, but you just have too much man!pain for us. You should probably look into one of the self-help groups they have on Cloud 9."
Lee's righteous indignation died off in the face of such a hard fact. "I don't -- I mean -- okay, so I have some issues. Am I really that fat?" he asked plantively.
Bruno cocked his head to the side. "I wouldn't call you fat -- more like zaftig. I think you're carrying your man!pain in the wrong place."
Lee did not blow up at the zaftig remark, but he really really really wanted to. Instead he just stamped his foot. "So where do you keep your man!pain," he said nastily.
Bruno pushed up his sleeves and displayed the sort of biceps that Lee had once had. He'd forgotten what that much muscle looked like. "Here," Bruno said proudly showing off rippling muscles.
Lee looked down at the tray laden with his favorite food: freeze-dried beef, freeze-dried potatoes, freeze-dried peas, and bon-bons in a glass dish on the side. "I used to look like that," he said, unable to keep the maudlin tone out of his voice.
"And you can again," Bruno said, gently pulling the tray of mashed potatoes away from in front of Lee. "But you've gotta get over all these minute wrongs you think have been done to you. Life sucks, the Cylons come, life sucks some more, but we'll get through it. The human race didn't survive millions of years of stupidity to die off now."
Lee looked from the fork in his hand, to the plate in Bruno's hand, to the bushy beard that obscured most of Bruno's face. He'd never even realized how much Bruno looked like his dad. "You're right," Lee said slowly. "You're absolutely right."
Bruno rolled his eyes. "Duh."
"I have to embrace my man!pain," Lee stood up and stuck his fork back in the potatoes.
"You have to move past your man!pain," Bruno corrected. "Everybody's got issues; that's just how the Lords of Kobol ordained it. What matters is how you move on."
Lee nodded. "I'm going to get past it,' he said resolutely, "just as soon as I have one more bite of those freeze-dried potatoes."
Bruno held the plate over Lee's head. "You can only have these potatoes if you agree to stop eating the bon-bons."
"Well, I wouldn't eat them if you didn't make them."
"Funny, I don’t recall shoving then down your throat."
"Watch it, Sergeant."
"You want me to watch it the way you watch your waistline?"
"Who died and left you in charge of my fat?"
Bruno shrugged. "Well, nobody yet, but if you don’t put down the bon-bons, who knows?"
Lee did not pout. Not much. "But losing weight is hard," he pointed out.
"I didn't know the Commander of the Pegasus was afraid of a little hard work." Bruno set Lee's plate down on his desk, crouched down, and opened a drawer.
"I'm not afraid of a little hard work," Lee said obstinately. "I'll kick your ass any day!"
"I think you'd have to be able to see your shoes for that," Bruno said, looking for something in the drawer.
"When I'm skinny again, I'm so kicking your ass, and then I'm firing you," Lee snapped.
Bruno snickered and held something out to Lee. "When you can bend down here and take this carrot from me, then you can fire me."
Lee narrowed his eyes and bent over. He would've been able to get the carrot if his pants hadn't chosen that time to rip. "Frak."
Bruno snorted. Lee tried to cover the draft he could feel from behind. "I'll fire you just as soon as I get some pants that fit," he said, backing away from Bruno until he could grab a tray to cover his ass.
Bruno stood up and dropped the carrots on his desk. "The carrots and I will be waiting."
--end--
Beta by oxoniensis. Remaining fuck-ups by me. Thanks to serialkarma for audiencing and snickering when appropriate.
ETA: Courtesy of romanticalgirl Jamie Bamber on Zaftig!Lee (video)
Battlestar Galactica
Lee/Dee, Lee/Kara, Kara/Zak blah blah blah
Vague spoilers for 3:01/3.02
Rated C for cracky goodness.
The Great, Tragic Man!Pain of Commander Lee Adama
The problem with being in charge was that people always looked to you in times of stress. Normally, Lee was very good with stress, but moving the settlers to New Caprica, and having his own command, and Kara getting married, and him getting married -- but not to each other -- these were not normal types of stressful situations. These were excessively stressful situations.
Even Zak's death wasn't stressful like this.
The trouble was that when Lee was super-stressed he ate. He got that from his mother. She'd always been partial to lemon drop brownies and the butterscotch ice cream that Lee's dad brought back from Picon when he knew he'd been spending too much time cosseting his troops and not enough time cosseting his wife. Or being a father to his children. Or even calling Lee the right name. Not that Lee was bitter. No.
Lee's personal downfall were the fake chocolate bon-bons that the Pegasus chef, Bruno, made by the Raptor-load. Lee discovered them in his quarters the first week he was in command; he mentioned liking them to his XO, who mentioned it to his lieutenant and then suddenly everywhere Lee went there were bon-bons. In his quarters, in the briefing room, in the CIC, in the frakking showers, little bowls of fake chocolate bon-bons, and Lee knew bribery when he saw it, but what was the good of being a Commander if you couldn't get a few perks out of the job?
Lee knew there were probably much healthier ways to deal with his stress, like running, or sex with his wife, but -- but he didn't want to run because running these days made things chafe. The friction burn between his thighs alone was unconscionable, and sex with Dee -- well. At least she liked being on top, and she got high marks for her enthusiasm, but Lee had pretty effectively put their sex life on hiatus last week when he hadn't been able to get it up.
Actually, that was a lie. Lee could get it up just fine, but Dee had been in the mood immediately after he'd come back from the bathroom and that particular visit to the bathroom had been really disconcerting, so he'd turned her down cold.
Yes, Dee was gorgeous and young and also his wife, but she was no match for the realization that when Lee'd gone to take a leak, he'd looked down and been unable to see his dick. He'd had to lift up his stomach to make sure the Cylons hadn't come and castrated him during the night.
That was seriously traumatic.
Hell, at this point the only way he could see his feet was if he put them up when he sat down.
So, no sex with the wife, not until he got back in shape. But again with the chafing -- it was a horrible cycle of pain, pain, and more pain.
Nobody understood how much Lee suffered. He was so misunderstood. Really. Nobody was as misunderstood as he was.
And his pants were too tight.
He needed something to soothe his pain, like dessert. Who cared if it was only nine hundred hours? He was the commander, he could do whatever he wanted.
*
Once upon a time Lee Heracles Adama fell in love with a blonde woman -- but she didn't understand him because she wasn't in touch with her emotions. So he fell in love with another blonde woman -- but she didn't understand him either. Probably because she was in love with his brother.
Then his brother died, and that was really traumatic for Lee. This was compounded by the fact that the blonde woman he loved, who was also in love with his brother, refused to then seek comfort in Lee's arms. Clearly she didn't realize that was how things were supposed to go, but Kara was hard-headed and never held up her end of the bargain. So Lee decided that falling in love was stupid and pointless. It only led to heartbreak and days in the brig, so he had an affair with the President of the Twelve Colonies.
That went about as well as could be expected.
Lee repressed the whole episode with the hooker he fell in love with and that time he killed that hoodlum that ran the Black Market. Yeah, totally repressed everything about the Galactica slave trade, too. Commander Lee 'Repressed' Adama at your service.
So, Lee married one of his dad's staff and took up the family business of looting ships. No, wait, wrong family.
The long and short of it was that while Lee loved Dee he probably wasn't in love with Dee. Especially, since she still had lingering Billy-guilt that she never wanted to talk about. And that was why Lee was sitting on the prep counter in the Pegasus galley, licking a cake beater, and telling his woes to Bruno, the Pegasus chef.
"My dad never loved me," Lee said, in between licks of chocolate batter. "He always liked Zak best, just because Zak looked more like him. Or like him at all. I don't really look like my dad; for all I know I could be adopted."
Bruno made a grunting noise from the area of the deep fryer. It smelled like fake bacon. Lee hoped it was fake bacon. He loved fake bacon.
Lee took that as Bruno siding with him, since Bruno never said anything to Lee about anything. Lee figured Bruno was probably mute, which made him an excellent confidant. "You know, it wouldn't surprise me to know that I was adopted,' Lee got into it. "Or that my mom had an affair while my dad was off on some trip, because you know my dad's not really the emotionally available type. I think it's all his fault. His internalization has become my internalization."
Bruno grunted again and something sizzled. Lee picked up the other cake beater and began giving it the same tender care he'd given the first one. Long, leisurely licks around every crevice.
Every job had to be done thoroughly on the Pegasus. That's what a Commander was there to ensure.
"Absentee parents make for neurotic kids," Lee said around a mouthful of batter. "I mean, just look at me. If Zak were alive, I bet he'd be just as screwed up as me. Of course dad always loved him best anyway. So, you can see how I'd be screwed up. Absentee dad, dead brother, dead mother, ex-sister-in-law-to-be who married some stupid mercenary."
Bruno made a noise like he was coughing or choking. Lee wasn't sure which so he ignored it.
"I have to go run the ship or see my wife or something." Lee dropped the cake beater in the sink and pushed against the counter to slide off. The counter made a creaking sound of protest. It took him a little while to get down.
"Thanks for listening," he said, clapping Bruno on the back as he passed him by. "Hey, are you making the fake bacon?"
*
Lee popped another bon-bon in his mouth and looked across his quarters at his wife. Dee seemed deeply engrossed in her papers, but Lee rustled his bon-bons loudly in hopes of provoking some attention. Ever since the Cylon invasion she'd been even more withdrawn, like it was his fault his dad had sent a toaster to do a human's job. Just because he was having problems performing was no reason to freeze him out.
Lee grunted and popped a few more bon-bons in his mouth.
Dee seemed to be ignoring him, which was starting to become the norm instead of the exception. You put on a couple pounds, stopped having sex because you couldn't see your dick, and all that weight put too much pressure on your kidneys, and suddenly everybody gave you grief.
Of course Dee hadn't said anything about his expanding waistline and the double chin and the jowls, but Lee saw her sideways glances when he went for his third helping at dinner or when he unbuttoned his pants in the CIC when he thought no one was looking.
He'd thought the elastic waistband would work for sure this time, but apparently not. He would have to sneak down to the laundry again and get Agnes to give him a new set of uniforms. Not that he had to sneak anywhere -- he was the Commander of the Pegasus. Plus it was kind of hard to sneak when you could only waddle.
"Do you really think we should go back to New Caprica and save them from the Cylons?" he asked around a mouth full of fake chocolate.
Dee glanced up at him as though he were a Cylon himself. "What do you mean should we?" She pronounced each word crisply. "As opposed to leaving them to die painful, horrifying deaths at the hands of the Cylons? Hmm, let me think about that -- are you frakking serious, Lee?!"
Lee shrugged or he tried to shrug. His uniform wasn't just tight about the stomach, it was tight across the chest too. He couldn't even lift his arms the whole way. "I just mean -- I mean if we go back that's all of humanity going 'poof!' It's something to think about," he said, grabbing a handful of bon-bons and heading for the door.
"It is NOT something to think about. Suddenly you're not concerned about your precious, Starbuck? Suddenly it's all Kara who?!"
Lee just knew she was going to bring up the sex thing.
"How can we worry about humanity when we're not even procreating to help it along?" Dee hollered after him. "Lee Adama, you come back here!"
"Duty calls," he tossed over his shoulder.
Duty, a new uniform he could breathe in, second breakfast, all the same thing.
*
Agnes in the Pegasus laundry was far-sighted.
Lee knew this, because she was always telling him how handsome he was, and while she might've been speaking the truth a year ago, he knew he wasn't exactly fighting trim anymore. Okay, so he wasn't ugly or anything, but maybe the jowls weren't going to get him his third cover of Intergalactic Hotties either.
Whatever.
Agnes still made him feel like nothing had changed, and for that he adored her. He adored her so much he'd given her a staff of ten to take care of the Pegasus laundry, which was five more staff than she had when they were at full capacity.
"Agnes, how's my favorite seamstress slash laundress slash surrogate mom?" Lee said, knocking on the door of the Pegasus laundry as he entered the room.
"I'm always happier when the handsome Commander Adama comes to visit me," Agnes said. Her fire-red hair puffed around her head like a halo, and her reading glasses hung from a cord around her neck. Lee had never seen her use them.
He watched her hold a jacket at arms length as she mended a torn collar, pointedly ignoring all the thimbles on her fingers. "What can I do for the most gorgeous man alive today?" she asked, the thimbles tinkling together.
"I, uh, I think my uniform shrunk in the wash again," he said. "The waistband is a little tight."
Lee ignored the snickering from Agnes' staff. He could think up something way worse for them than laundry duty. The head had been smelling a little worse for wear lately, maybe it needed to be cleaned, by toothbrush, on hands and knees.
Yeah, that seemed like a good idea.
"Ah, that does tend to happen every now and then." Agnes made a irritated noise when she poked herself in an un-thimble-protected area of her fingers. "I'll get you another pair. Will you need another jacket too?"
Lee hesitated for a moment, and Agnes carried on. "Silly me, of course you will, the Commander of the Pegasus can't have mismatched uniforms, can he?"
"No, we can't have that."
Lee smiled gratefully as Agnes set down her mending and stood up. "My Albert, he had problems with sizing too. You would think that people would be able to size Olympian wrestlers properly, but he always had problems with the local laundry losing his underwear. I never trusted those Saggitaron cleaners he used, kinky frakkers the lot of them."
Dee was from Saggitaron, and Lee didn't think she was particularly kinky, although she did like to grab hold of his love handles during sex sometimes. Not that they'd been having sex, but back when they had been having sex -- whatever.
Lee followed Agnes' muttering into the back where the uniforms were kept; he'd never heard Agnes curse before. It was weird, like hearing his mom talk about her sex life after she'd divorced his dad. That had been so horrifying Lee had gone directly from her house to the Oracle to pray for his brain to be sucked out of his ears and cleaned thoroughly.
"So, when are we going back to New Caprica to kick some Cylon booty?" Agnes asked, slapping a new jacket into Lee's arms. Lee grabbed at the jacket haphazardly. For someone slightly blind, Agnes could be really quick sometimes.
"Well, we're still discussing-"
"I'd like to kick some Cylon booty!" Agnes punctuated this statement by karate-chopping a stack of socks and giving a box of shoes a high kick. "Hi-Ya!"
"As soon as we've devised a plan-" Lee insisted.
"Plan shman," Agnes said, making a pair of pants materialize out of thin air. "Kicking ass doesn't need a plan, it needs frakking ass kicking!"
Lee's stomach gurgled. It didn't need ass kicking, it needed lunch. Lee's stomach was very good at keeping to a regular schedule. "Yes, well, Agnes-"
"C'mon and do some high kicks with me!" Agnes said, slapping Lee's chest and displaying serious agility for a woman who was probably close to 70.
Lee couldn't believe that Agnes was picking today to crack up. He had problems of his own. "Agnes, I can't--"
"Don’t be a pussy, Commander!" Agnes snapped. "Admiral Cain could do fifty karate chops without breaking a sweat!"
It was on the tip of Lee's tongue to point out that Admiral Cain was also a mass-murdering nut job, who'd been murdered by an escaped toaster, but facts weren't really important. Plus, if he pissed off Agnes, who knew what would happen to his uniforms.
He was saved by a page.
Commander Adama to the CIC.
Lee's grin was huge and 100% fake; it wasn't like Agnes could tell. "Maybe another time," he said. "Duty calls!"
Agnes followed him out of the backroom. "Here," she said materializing a bowl of bon-bons out of thin air. "Take some for the road; it's tough being at the top!"
Lee took two handfuls. "Tell me about it!"
*
"What seems to be the problem?" Lee strode into the CIC purposefully. He'd stopped in the head and changed his uniform. It was much easier to be manly and confident when you could actually swing your arms and breathe.
The two handfuls of bon-bons hadn't hurt either.
"There's a call for you from the Galactica," one of underlings said, holding out the phone receiver. Lee didn't know this particular underling's name, but they always had names like Viper equipment or gambling addicts. It was probably something like Lt. Port Console or whatever.
Dee was there, looking over whatever it was she was always looking over. Lee threw back his shoulders and puffed out his chest as authoritatively as he could. He may've been fat, but he was still the man.
Lee took the phone. "Commander Adama," he said in precise tones.
"Admiral Adama," his father said.
All the wind went right out of Lee's sails. "Look, if this is about the last conversation we had, I'm not interested," Lee snapped.
"I'm sorry I called you fat," his father said. "I should've gone for something more politically correct like 'zaftig.'
Lee looked around at his crew, glaring at them in turn until they went back to whatever it was they did that wasn't commanding the Pegasus. He was in charge, frak it! "I am not zaftig," he hissed into the receiver in low tones. "Women are zaftig, I'm stout."
"Stout, huh?" It was clear from the old man's tone that he wasn't buying it. "Look, your weight is your issue. I understand that. I love you all the same."
"Oh, right. You can tell me you love me now, but where were you when I was eight with bloody knees and a runny nose? Where were you when I needed a father! You were off playing with your ships!"
"Son, that's not fair!"
"Yeah, well -- well -- well life's not fair either!" Lee ignored Dee's pointed look. This was way before her time; she didn't have any authority to tell him how to behave. "It's not fair when you're eleven and your dad keeps calling you by your brother's name like he's forgotten you even exist!"
"Lee, that happened twice!"
"Well that was two too many times!" Lee wasn't even trying to keep the agony out of his voice. He was mentally scarred, damnit. He was owed vindication for all the slights his dad probably didn't even know existed. If his dad was the Admiral of a fleet he should at least be able to read his only living son's mind!
"Son, you're being irrational."
"Yeah, well, you'd be irrational too if your dad said you were fat. You're lucky I'm not some impressionable teenager -- I might've developed an eating disorder or something."
Lee could hear his dad's deep inhalation down the line. "So, I guess that means you don't want to talk about the Cylon invasion today."
"You would be right," Lee snapped, hanging up the phone.
Sometimes it felt really good to channel his inner ten year-old.
He glared at the astonished looks of his crew. "What?" he snapped. "Don't even pretend like your parents didn't traumatize and scar you for life too!"
And with that he stomped off to lunch.
*
His dad thought he was a porker. Everybody liked his dead brother more. The woman he loved had nearly killed him during sex and then married some two-bit, second-team, pyramid-playing mercenary. Lee's life sucked, but at least he could hide out in the kitchen and get served personally.
"And then he said I was zaftig!" Lee complained, between mouthfuls of freeze-dried potato type thingy while sitting at Bruno's desk. Bruno grunted. "Like he's so built himself just because he whipped my ass in boxing one time. Or two times."
Bruno grunted again.
"Okay, more than two times. That doesn't change the fact that Mom left him! Or that he was a sucky parent! Or that he officiated when Kara married that no-neck loser! He's not the boss of me!"
"Actually, as the Admiral, that's exactly what he is," Bruno said. Lee's plastic fork clattered against his plate. "And if you don't like what you see and what you hear, you should stop whining, start working out, and make some changes."
Lee was completely pole-axed. "Bruno! You can talk?"
Bruno snorted. "I could always talk, I just couldn't get a word edgewise with you. No offense, Commander, but you bitch, like well, a little bitch."
Lee bristled while he extracted his fork from his peas. "I didn't give you leave to speak freely, Sergeant, did I? I could have you thrown out the airlock for your insubordination!"
"True", Bruno conceded, "but then who would make you your bon-bons?"
Lee paused.
Bruno kept talking. "We have a club, a Pegasus Men's Club, and originally we were going to invite you, but you just have too much man!pain for us. You should probably look into one of the self-help groups they have on Cloud 9."
Lee's righteous indignation died off in the face of such a hard fact. "I don't -- I mean -- okay, so I have some issues. Am I really that fat?" he asked plantively.
Bruno cocked his head to the side. "I wouldn't call you fat -- more like zaftig. I think you're carrying your man!pain in the wrong place."
Lee did not blow up at the zaftig remark, but he really really really wanted to. Instead he just stamped his foot. "So where do you keep your man!pain," he said nastily.
Bruno pushed up his sleeves and displayed the sort of biceps that Lee had once had. He'd forgotten what that much muscle looked like. "Here," Bruno said proudly showing off rippling muscles.
Lee looked down at the tray laden with his favorite food: freeze-dried beef, freeze-dried potatoes, freeze-dried peas, and bon-bons in a glass dish on the side. "I used to look like that," he said, unable to keep the maudlin tone out of his voice.
"And you can again," Bruno said, gently pulling the tray of mashed potatoes away from in front of Lee. "But you've gotta get over all these minute wrongs you think have been done to you. Life sucks, the Cylons come, life sucks some more, but we'll get through it. The human race didn't survive millions of years of stupidity to die off now."
Lee looked from the fork in his hand, to the plate in Bruno's hand, to the bushy beard that obscured most of Bruno's face. He'd never even realized how much Bruno looked like his dad. "You're right," Lee said slowly. "You're absolutely right."
Bruno rolled his eyes. "Duh."
"I have to embrace my man!pain," Lee stood up and stuck his fork back in the potatoes.
"You have to move past your man!pain," Bruno corrected. "Everybody's got issues; that's just how the Lords of Kobol ordained it. What matters is how you move on."
Lee nodded. "I'm going to get past it,' he said resolutely, "just as soon as I have one more bite of those freeze-dried potatoes."
Bruno held the plate over Lee's head. "You can only have these potatoes if you agree to stop eating the bon-bons."
"Well, I wouldn't eat them if you didn't make them."
"Funny, I don’t recall shoving then down your throat."
"Watch it, Sergeant."
"You want me to watch it the way you watch your waistline?"
"Who died and left you in charge of my fat?"
Bruno shrugged. "Well, nobody yet, but if you don’t put down the bon-bons, who knows?"
Lee did not pout. Not much. "But losing weight is hard," he pointed out.
"I didn't know the Commander of the Pegasus was afraid of a little hard work." Bruno set Lee's plate down on his desk, crouched down, and opened a drawer.
"I'm not afraid of a little hard work," Lee said obstinately. "I'll kick your ass any day!"
"I think you'd have to be able to see your shoes for that," Bruno said, looking for something in the drawer.
"When I'm skinny again, I'm so kicking your ass, and then I'm firing you," Lee snapped.
Bruno snickered and held something out to Lee. "When you can bend down here and take this carrot from me, then you can fire me."
Lee narrowed his eyes and bent over. He would've been able to get the carrot if his pants hadn't chosen that time to rip. "Frak."
Bruno snorted. Lee tried to cover the draft he could feel from behind. "I'll fire you just as soon as I get some pants that fit," he said, backing away from Bruno until he could grab a tray to cover his ass.
Bruno stood up and dropped the carrots on his desk. "The carrots and I will be waiting."
--end--
Beta by oxoniensis. Remaining fuck-ups by me. Thanks to serialkarma for audiencing and snickering when appropriate.
ETA: Courtesy of romanticalgirl Jamie Bamber on Zaftig!Lee (video)