Our Stars Scattered Like Dust (5/11)
Title: Our Stars Scattered Like Dust (5/11)
Authors: icedteainthebag and wishflsinfl
Characters/pairings: Adama/Roslin, Kara/Lee, Gaius/Caprica, other assorted affairs, ensemble cast
Rating: MA (graphic sex)
Warnings: AU, Character death
Spoilers: through Daybreak
Summary: As the new bartender on the cruise ship Galactica Bill Adama is hoping for an uneventful first voyage, but his life is irrevocably changed when he meets cruise director Laura Roslin.
A/N: As AU as AU can get. Thank you to fragrantwoods and somadanne for their invaluable beta assistance. Also thanks to the folks at bsg_checkin for cheerleading.
Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven
DAY FOUR: Cabo San Awesome
Technically, Laura should have been back on board Galactica coordinating the shore excursions, not wandering the streets of Cabo San Lucas. But what were they gonna do-fire her?
She laughed a little, the thought of screwing over corporate giving her a thrill. The dockyard was thronged with tourists browsing the tents and tables that sprang up on days when a ship was in port. Laura elbowed her way through the crowd, thankful for the anonymity that her sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat afforded her.
Here she was just another American with a few hours to kill before setting sail again.
She made her way to the pedicab stand, ignoring the protests of the drivers at the front of the queue when she approached a battered orange cab near the back of the line.
"Cómo está, Miguel?"
"Ah, Doña Laura! I thought you say no more visits?"
Laura stepped into the cab as Miguel threw his leg over the bike seat. "Just one more. For old times' sake."
"Si, si. For old times."
Miguel pedaled hard, weaving through traffic around the port area, and Laura only relaxed when they emerged on the quieter village side streets. As they climbed the narrow switchbacked lanes, she watched the village recede below them.
Soon they were up high enough to see Galactica where she sat at anchor. There were a few people on deck-mostly crew, she suspected. After three days at sea, the passengers couldn't get off the boat fast enough.
Laura didn't blame them. Being at sea did strange things to you. Like last night with Bill. Or more precisely every one of the last three nights with Bill. They'd gone from flirty to kinky to old married couple in record time.
She was surprised how much his rejection bothered her. She tried telling herself he was just tired but maybe he was one of those men who needed things to be really kinky to get it up.
If that was the case, it would be hard to top ass frakking a near stranger over the bar. She wasn't sure she wanted to try. Maybe it was best if they just let things be. She'd be back on shore-permanently-in a few days and Bill would be at sea, gone more than he was home. That was no way to start a relationship.
The halting of the pedicab jolted Laura from her thoughts. She steeled herself before turning her eyes to the familiar spot by the side of the road.
The three simple white crosses stood just as she remembered them. The one marked "Dad" in the middle, one with each of her sisters' names on either side. A few clumps of flowers bloomed half-heartedly in the shade of the roadside trees.
"I come up once a week," Miguel offered. "Make sure everything looks bueno."
"Thank you, Miguel."
He nodded and walked off across the road to smoke. He knew that she liked her privacy on these visits while she said a few words of prayer for her family.
This would be her last visit for a long time. Perhaps ever. Her sisters and father were buried near her home. Miguel would tend the descanso, using the money Laura wired each month. He was a good man and their spirits would be well-tended, even in her absence.
In some ways, she was relieved that there would be no more days at anchor in Cabo San Lucas, that she would no longer feel the guilty pull of this place.
Each time she stood here, she promised herself she wouldn't look, but each time she did. The trees below the road still bore deep scars from where the minivan had torn alongside their trunks. If she looked closely enough, she could make out bits of rusted wreckage farther down the cliff.
Laura said her goodbyes and turned back to the pedicab and to Miguel, who was squatting in the shade.
"Vamanos, Miguel."
He stubbed out his cigarette and wiped the sweat from his face with a rag he carried in his pocket. The trip down the hill always went faster and they were both relieved to get started.
*
Bill had come up on deck looking for Laura. According to Tory, she was supposed to be at the excursions information desk, but all he found there was a couple of her minions conspiring over clipboards.
He'd really frakked things up the night before-he'd been moody with combined fatigue, pain, and stubbornness. He hadn't come on this joyride in order to fall in love; that hadn't been in his life plan. And he wasn't sure it was love, but it was feeling like a lot more than a fling. The easy thing to do would be to push Laura away. She was an incredible woman, but an incredible woman didn't need a man like him, in the state he was in.
He had no idea what Laura wanted. He'd thought from the way she came at him in the bar that she wanted to get laid, no strings attached. Because, seriously, who wants to tell their grandkids that kind of "how we met" story?
But then last night, he'd felt blindsided by her concern and by how quickly she'd shut him down when he refused to share things that he had every right to keep private. When had hooking up with a woman gotten so hard?
He was about to go down below to grab a nap when the roar of a boat engine drew him to the railing. Lee's boat was powering across the mouth of the bay, shooting a spray of water into the air hundreds of feet behind it. The winged horse airbrushed on the side of the boat looked like it was about to take flight each time Lee gunned the boat, pointing its nose up out of the surf.
Bill watched as his son took the boat in tight circles, drawing screams of excitement from the passengers.
"People eat that shit up."
Turning toward the voice, Bill found Kara standing beside him. She was in her dress whites, her cap perched on her head, looking every inch the professional. Seeing her made him stand up a little straighter.
"He's good," Bill conceded. The kid knew how to handle a boat.
"You ever seen him race?"
"Not yet."
It wasn't like Lee hadn't invited him. Bill just hadn't gotten around to going to a race. He'd barely gotten over Lee mustering out of the Coast Guard early. Bill had expected his son to make a career of it, rise through the ranks, retire with a nice pension. Maybe they'd even set up a charter business down in the Keys together.
Either way, that dream was frakked. It was stupid to place the blame on Lee now.
"The boats they race are-you gotta see it."
Bill glanced back at Kara. The way she felt about his son was written all over her face. "You go watch him often?"
She shrugged. "Once in a while. We should go together some time. Make a date of it."
Bill frowned. Before he could open his mouth to ask what she meant by that, she punched him in the shoulder.
"Psych. Had you going for a minute there didn't I, Old Man?"
Laughing, Bill shook his head. "You're a handful, Thrace."
She looked out over the bay, eyes tracking Pegasus. "That I am."
*
"Mas cerveza, señor?"
Galactica crewman Sam Anders, with wind-tousled hair and Oakley sunglasses, was enjoying the Cabo sun at a roadside bar that was little more than four barstools and a wooden counter. "Si, por favor," he said, finishing off the last bit in his current bottle. After cruising Mexico for almost a year, he'd developed the enlightened view that American beer was shit, so he got as much Mexican brew as he could before he headed back to the U.S.
Sam loved Cabo. He loved the weather, the food, the women. Every eight hours he had there, he decimated the place, like Hurricane Sam. And he enjoyed every last minute of it. He'd even thought of retiring in Cabo San Awesome once but decided that it would somehow take the shine off it.
This stop was different. There'd been a new woman in the crew-Laura Roslin's new assistant, who seemed to do nothing other than sit at a desk and play Space Angry Birds all day. Her name was Tory and she rocked out a bathing suit like Sam had never seen. He'd been courting her, but keeping it gentlemanly-unlike the women he usually entertained in port, Tory would sail away with him at the end of the day. That, and she seemed more conservative, which Sam respected in a lady.
When Tory asked him to take her out on Cabo, Sam had a crisis of faith.
When she told him she'd let him do body shots off her if he found a good bar, his crisis was wiped away.
So far, no body shots. Disappointing, but the day was still young. Tory sat next to him, nursing the last few sips of a margarita on the rocks and taking in the bustling tourist street activity around them.
"When do we, um, do the body shots?" Sam asked, aligning the bottle cap with the edge of the counter and cracking it off with one smack of his hand.
"When I'm drunk enough not to care." Tory adjusted her sunglasses, leaning back against the bar with both elbows. She swung one foot with prettily painted toes back and forth. "So is this what you do all day in port?"
Telling her he usually ate, drank, and engaged in group sex with college co-eds probably wasn't the right response. "Sometimes I look at the shops. You know, uh … for things."
"Things." He watched her head move as she scanned the row of stores and independent vendors in tents hawking hundreds of Mexican tchotchkes.
Gods, he wanted to bang her.
"You know. Souvenirs." He chugged the rest of his beer, then tapped the counter so he could close his tab. "You want anything to send home to your family?"
"I'm not close to them." Tory drained her margarita. "So we're going to shop, then what?"
"Umm, we hit the beach, maybe?" High hopes for a bikini spotting there-either hers or others.
"Oh yeah. I brought something you might like."
"Score," he breathed. He probably should have contained himself, but she was already off the barstool while he busied himself paying for their drinks.
He caught up with her just as she was entering a very festive-looking tent. "You probably shouldn't walk away without me."
Tory took off her sunglasses in time for him to see her eye roll. "You gonna protect me?"
This woman was nearly too hot to handle.
Sam debated responding until he realized no response was necessary. Instead, he browsed the shelves of the store, filled with painted wood vases and carved rocks. He noticed there was one shelf that had a canvas curtain in front of it and, of course, it sparked his interest. He pulled back the curtain and saw a variety of small musical instruments.
He was particularly drawn to a small guitar. Reaching in, he hesitantly plucked the strings.
Open your mind and hear what your heart wants to deny, end of line.
The voice in his head was deafening, the words garbled and nonsensical. He picked up the guitar and strummed a few chords, then a few more.
*
Galactica ship engineer Galen Tyrol, looking at postcards in a rack outside a very festive-looking tent, suddenly heard music. At first he thought it was inside his head, but he realized it was coming from inside the tent. He followed it and barely noticed the musician was one Sam Anders from his own ship. Instead he grabbed a tambourine and began to play rhythm with the sweet sound of the guitar, the tune filling the tent just as the woman next to Sam-Laura Roslin's assistant with the beautiful hair-began singing.
"Nibblin' on sponge cake … watchin' the sun bake, all of those tourists covered with oil …"
*
The uproarious sound of applause shocked Sam back into consciousness. He was holding a guitar, he was standing next to ship engineer Tyrol, and someone had handed Tory a bouquet of roses. And people were clapping. And throwing more roses.
"La flash mob! La canción es buena!" somebody cried.
"Let's get out of here," Sam said to Tory, grabbing her by the arm.
"Sam, wait," Tyrol said. Sam looked back and saw Galen was trying to make his way after them, but the crowd surrounded him, cheering and attempting to lift him off the ground.
Sam and Tory ran through the city streets until they ended up in a small patch of trees overlooking a white-sand beach. "What the frak was that?" Tory yelled, visibly shaken. "Do you even know how to play guitar? Do you know that song? Something happened back there, Sam. I don't even remember most of it. It was like something took me over."
Sam shook his head, unable to speak, unable to explain. Instead, he grabbed Tory and kissed her hard. She returned the kiss, grabbing his polo shirt and dragging him down in the sand with her. Tory lifted her shirt over her head, straddling his hips.
"Perfection," Sam said, cupping her bare breasts.
He'd take an asscrack full of sand for this one.
*
Laura arrived back on Galactica with the last of the passengers. She was exhausted from her shore excursion and in no mood for the Fun with Scrapbooking! class she was scheduled to lead in a mere fifteen minutes. Hopefully Gaius was already in the craft room setting up various papers, Martha Stewart decorative punchers, and border materials.
She took a quick trip back to her room to freshen up, brushing her hair and washing her face of the bit of city dust that always seemed to stick. She'd left her flask on the counter-she learned once to never drink before or on shore excursions-and now it called her name. Just one hit before she faced a roomful of hell.
Bill's words at the pool echoed in her head again. Sobered up. She'd been stunned that he'd pinned her as an alcoholic so quickly. Was it that obvious to everyone? She knew she hadn't been exactly hiding it, but she was holding her job, doing it well, completely functional. Definitely not passing out in the hallways like the thousands of binge-drinking co-eds she encountered every year.
It never seemed like an addiction to her, but she'd never contemplated why she didn't feel inclined to go about her life without something alcoholic within arm's reach. She hated that she drank, because it was drinking that caused such destruction in her family. Yet it was drinking that led her through that labyrinth of depression and helped her emerge on the other side. It was a way to cope with it all, and it was a habit that had stuck since the accident.
Bill knew nothing of this. He just saw her, tasted the liquor on her tongue, and that was normal to him. Her normal.
She glanced at her watch and ignored the urge to take a hit of her flask. This time.
With minutes to spare, she hoofed it up the stairs to the craft room. Out of breath, she was relieved to see Gaius handing out the booklets Tory had printed that described the basics of page layout and design. Walking into the room, she scanned the sparse crowd. Your typical scrapbookers-a couple moms in their thirties, a couple of grandmothers, and Bill Adama.
Wait.
Laura did a double take as Gaius handed him a page layout book. Her mouth fell open and then Bill looked up, catching her eye and smiling. He flipped open the book and began to read, or pretended to read. She had no idea. Heartbeat racing, she realized everyone in the room was looking at her, expecting her to do something.
Anything.
"Welcome, welcome." Realizing her voice sounded faint, like her head felt, she cleared her throat and tried to blame it on the frog stuck there. "Welcome to Fun with Scrapbooking! I'm happy to see we've had a fine turnout today. How many of you have scrapbooked before?"
Everyone raised their hands but Bill.
"Oh, we have a new scrapper today! How are you today, Mister …"
"Adama. Bill Adama." He put the book down with a sigh. "I have to admit, I feel pretty scrapped."
The ladies in the room tittered with laughter. He was, indeed, a charmer.
"Well, then, Bill. I feel your fortune's about to change. Because scrapbooking is … fun!"
She wanted to kill herself for a brief moment. The women laughed again and he grinned at her, causing her to blush.
"All right, then, ladies and gentleman," Laura said, grabbing her book. "Why don't we move in an orderly fashion to the paper and decorative materials table, where Associate Cruise Director Gaius has, may I note, masterfully arranged what we'll be working with today."
"Thank you, Laura," Gaius said, beaming.
They all walked over to the table and Laura joined them, moving beside Bill. "Of all the hobbies I'd imagined you having, this wasn't one of them," she said in a low murmur.
"Maybe I'm not who you think I am," he replied, picking up several pieces of textured paper.
Laura handed him two lace doilies. "For your cover."
"These will be perfect." He took them and grabbed a red glitter pen. "Don't judge me for how this thing looks when I'm done."
She raised her eyebrows. "Sometimes the best things aren't pretty at all."
Leaving him to ponder that, she turned back to the room. "Please open your books to page one, and we'll start," she said as everyone settled in. "If anyone needs extra help at any time, just let me know and Gaius will assist you."
The look of disappointment on Bill's face was priceless.
"Don't worry," Laura said, settling into the empty chair next to him. "I always give the scrapbooking virgins a little extra help getting started."
He ducked his head and grinned at her suggestively. "You do, huh?"
Flattered and surprised by his flirty tone, she couldn't help smiling back. Maybe last night really had been a fluke. He was anything but disinterested this afternoon.
"You'll have to at least pretend you're here to scrapbook, Bill, or Mrs. Phillips over there will be broadcasting our impending marriage over the PA within the hour."
Bill blew out a breath and studied the supplies scattered on the table. "So how does this work?"
"Most people start with a theme. Cruise memories is a popular one."
Picking up the bright red glitter marker, Bill scrawled across the cover: My First Cruise by William Adama.
"That's … great."
"Hey, I'm just getting started." He reached for the doilies and a scissor, a look of intense concentration on his face as he folded the first doily in half and cut out a little paper man. Rotating the second doily under the quick snip-snip of the scissors, he produced a woman to match. "Glue?"
Laura squirted thin lines of glue on the back of the little paper couple and watched Bill glue them to the cover of his book so they were holding hands. Except that they didn't have hands. "Cute."
After admiring his work for a moment, he turned to the first page and wrote in big loopy script: DAY 1. "Pass me that dark blue tissue paper?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
"I don't do things halfway, Laura. Once I'm in"-he held her eyes for a moment as he reached past her for the tissue paper brushing his arm against hers-"I'm all in."
Annoyed at the pointed tone of his words, she squirted a stream of glue on the page just a little too hard, making a gloppy mess of it. But she held her tongue. She wasn't going to let him get to her again.
With the tissue paper stuck in place, Bill started punching out stars from a sheet of silver paper. "Something you want to ask me? Go ahead." His voice was eerily calm now. "Just know that you may not like the answer very much."
The stars fell across the dark blue of the page, and Laura was reminded of their meeting on deck that first night, the feel of his arm around her in the chilly night air. She opened a glue stick and silently began gluing the bits of silver to the page, dozens of them, as many as they'd seen in the sky and more. She was surprised to see Orion emerge on the page and then Scorpius.
Beside her Bill studied the stars, lost in thought, and Laura studied him. She was surprised to find herself wondering what he looked like when he slept. If the sadness that seemed to be always just below the surface disappeared and left his face peaceful as he dreamed of better times.
When he finally turned to her, she had to stifle the impulse to kiss him. Gods she wanted to kiss him right now. And he wanted to kiss her. She could tell by the way he was staring at her lips and edging closer.
Mindful of cruise director protocol, she looked back down at their handiwork.
"Is this what you had in mind?" she asked, poking the last of the stars into place with the tip of her nail.
"Yeah," he said, with a satisfied smile. "That's perfect."
"I've always loved the stars," she said. "The jewels of the Gods."
"I like that," he said, picking up a silver glitter pen to inscribe her words at the bottom of the page. "Sounds like something out of Greek mythology."
"Maybe," she said, certain it wasn't. She knew little about the ancient Greeks, certainly not enough to quote from. "It just … sprang to mind, I guess."
After checking to be sure his writing had dried completely, he turned the page and inscribed DAY 2 at the top.
Laura found herself holding her breath as she waited to see what he would choose to represent his second day at sea. Hopefully not a reproduction of her Seaman's Choice stash. When he set about cutting something from a sheet of deep purple textured paper, she thanked the Gods that none of the other scrapbookers had chosen to sit at Bill's table. Because if he glued a paper bra and panty set into his book, she was going to die right there on the spot.
It soon became obvious that Bill was cutting out a huge purple "3." Laura felt a blush rise to her cheeks. She picked up the little bottle of glue but found it was empty. Leaning across the table to reach for a new bottle, she placed a hand on Bill's thigh for balance.
And because she really really wanted to.
"Careful," he whispered in her ear. "You wouldn't want Mrs. Phillips to stroke out on us."
Laura settled back in her seat but left her hand right where it was, inches from Bill's crotch. Thank the Gods for oversized tablecloths and strategic seating arrangements because what she was contemplating next really would cause the old lady to keel over.
As she leaned in closer to spread some glue on the page, she let her hand slide higher, higher, until she found the object of her exploration.
"Oh my," she said in a low voice. "I never realized scrapbooking could be so … stimulating."
Bill smoothed his number 3 on the page carefully, slowly, for far longer than was necessary, almost in time with the movement of her hand. "Maybe you weren't doing it right."
"And now?" She gave him a squeeze and was impressed with how his carefully composed expression didn't change, even as his erection twitched under her hand. She stroked the length of him through his pants and wondered just how far they could get away with taking this. "Am I doing it right?"
Before Bill could answer, Gaius clapped his hands, signaling the end of the session. Curse him for learning that little trick so well. Laura jumped in her seat and snatched her hand back into her own lap as Gaius recited the instructions for clean-up.
"Thank you for coming," Gaius said to a group of departing ladies and Laura couldn't help notice the smirk on Bill's face.
"You didn't," Laura hissed.
Bill gave her an exaggerated frown. "You're not that good."
"I wasn't finished." She bent over the table, gathering up the supplies and giving him a view down her sleeveless blouse. "But if you'd like a more complete demonstration of my skills, that could be arranged."
Bill pushed his chair back and strategically crossed his legs. "I was thinking we could do something more traditional."
"Back to option two are we?"
"You could say that."
She frowned. They were back in that gray area that had gotten them into trouble last night. "Tonight isn't good. I've got cabaret night until ten and then we have the Rocky Horror sing-a-long at eleven and a midnight dance-a-thon, which can go on for-"
"Hey, it's okay. Just give it some thought." The room was empty now and he took the opportunity to give her a quick kiss before departing, scrapbook in hand.
*
With his arousal finally-though just barely-under control, Bill left the activities room, not sure what had just happened. He'd gone to the class hoping to make a good impression, maybe flirt a little, get back on Laura's good side. Somehow things had gone from flirty to awkward to serious then sexy and back to awkward again. He needed a frakkin' playbook to keep up with that woman.
As he started down the stairs to the crew quarters, Bill spotted a familiar figure coming in the opposite direction.
"Wuh-ho," Saul said. "I heard you and our lovely cruise director have been getting cozy."
Bill froze. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"A little bird at the poker game last night told me she saw the two of you making out in the pool."
Okay, that wasn't so bad. In fact, it felt pretty good. Bill puffed out his chest. "What if we were? A guy's got a right to get laid."
"Damn straight. No shame in that game." Saul glanced at the rolled up scrapbook in Bill's hand. "Whatcha got there?"
"Nothing." Bill put it behind his back and then felt foolish. "I went to one of Laura's classes. For moral support."
Saul laughed. "You ain't nothin' close to moral."
"Shut up."
"C'mere, lemme see that." Saul grabbed it from Bill's hand and unrolled it. "Scrapbookin', huh? Ellen does this shit sometimes. Says it helps her relax. I can think of better things …"
Bill felt a little less foolish. If Ellen did it …
"Good ol' Bill Adama, scrapbookin' for pussy. Never thought of trying that, but you might be onto something." Saul rapped Bill's arm with the rolled up pages before handing the book back to him.
"Carry on, my friend." He clapped Bill on the back as he continued up the stairs. "Carry on."
Bill looked at the cover of the scrapbook with the childish figures on the cover. What the frak had gotten into him? He was all in, and then some.
Authors: icedteainthebag and wishflsinfl
Characters/pairings: Adama/Roslin, Kara/Lee, Gaius/Caprica, other assorted affairs, ensemble cast
Rating: MA (graphic sex)
Warnings: AU, Character death
Spoilers: through Daybreak
Summary: As the new bartender on the cruise ship Galactica Bill Adama is hoping for an uneventful first voyage, but his life is irrevocably changed when he meets cruise director Laura Roslin.
A/N: As AU as AU can get. Thank you to fragrantwoods and somadanne for their invaluable beta assistance. Also thanks to the folks at bsg_checkin for cheerleading.
Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven
DAY FOUR: Cabo San Awesome
Technically, Laura should have been back on board Galactica coordinating the shore excursions, not wandering the streets of Cabo San Lucas. But what were they gonna do-fire her?
She laughed a little, the thought of screwing over corporate giving her a thrill. The dockyard was thronged with tourists browsing the tents and tables that sprang up on days when a ship was in port. Laura elbowed her way through the crowd, thankful for the anonymity that her sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat afforded her.
Here she was just another American with a few hours to kill before setting sail again.
She made her way to the pedicab stand, ignoring the protests of the drivers at the front of the queue when she approached a battered orange cab near the back of the line.
"Cómo está, Miguel?"
"Ah, Doña Laura! I thought you say no more visits?"
Laura stepped into the cab as Miguel threw his leg over the bike seat. "Just one more. For old times' sake."
"Si, si. For old times."
Miguel pedaled hard, weaving through traffic around the port area, and Laura only relaxed when they emerged on the quieter village side streets. As they climbed the narrow switchbacked lanes, she watched the village recede below them.
Soon they were up high enough to see Galactica where she sat at anchor. There were a few people on deck-mostly crew, she suspected. After three days at sea, the passengers couldn't get off the boat fast enough.
Laura didn't blame them. Being at sea did strange things to you. Like last night with Bill. Or more precisely every one of the last three nights with Bill. They'd gone from flirty to kinky to old married couple in record time.
She was surprised how much his rejection bothered her. She tried telling herself he was just tired but maybe he was one of those men who needed things to be really kinky to get it up.
If that was the case, it would be hard to top ass frakking a near stranger over the bar. She wasn't sure she wanted to try. Maybe it was best if they just let things be. She'd be back on shore-permanently-in a few days and Bill would be at sea, gone more than he was home. That was no way to start a relationship.
The halting of the pedicab jolted Laura from her thoughts. She steeled herself before turning her eyes to the familiar spot by the side of the road.
The three simple white crosses stood just as she remembered them. The one marked "Dad" in the middle, one with each of her sisters' names on either side. A few clumps of flowers bloomed half-heartedly in the shade of the roadside trees.
"I come up once a week," Miguel offered. "Make sure everything looks bueno."
"Thank you, Miguel."
He nodded and walked off across the road to smoke. He knew that she liked her privacy on these visits while she said a few words of prayer for her family.
This would be her last visit for a long time. Perhaps ever. Her sisters and father were buried near her home. Miguel would tend the descanso, using the money Laura wired each month. He was a good man and their spirits would be well-tended, even in her absence.
In some ways, she was relieved that there would be no more days at anchor in Cabo San Lucas, that she would no longer feel the guilty pull of this place.
Each time she stood here, she promised herself she wouldn't look, but each time she did. The trees below the road still bore deep scars from where the minivan had torn alongside their trunks. If she looked closely enough, she could make out bits of rusted wreckage farther down the cliff.
Laura said her goodbyes and turned back to the pedicab and to Miguel, who was squatting in the shade.
"Vamanos, Miguel."
He stubbed out his cigarette and wiped the sweat from his face with a rag he carried in his pocket. The trip down the hill always went faster and they were both relieved to get started.
*
Bill had come up on deck looking for Laura. According to Tory, she was supposed to be at the excursions information desk, but all he found there was a couple of her minions conspiring over clipboards.
He'd really frakked things up the night before-he'd been moody with combined fatigue, pain, and stubbornness. He hadn't come on this joyride in order to fall in love; that hadn't been in his life plan. And he wasn't sure it was love, but it was feeling like a lot more than a fling. The easy thing to do would be to push Laura away. She was an incredible woman, but an incredible woman didn't need a man like him, in the state he was in.
He had no idea what Laura wanted. He'd thought from the way she came at him in the bar that she wanted to get laid, no strings attached. Because, seriously, who wants to tell their grandkids that kind of "how we met" story?
But then last night, he'd felt blindsided by her concern and by how quickly she'd shut him down when he refused to share things that he had every right to keep private. When had hooking up with a woman gotten so hard?
He was about to go down below to grab a nap when the roar of a boat engine drew him to the railing. Lee's boat was powering across the mouth of the bay, shooting a spray of water into the air hundreds of feet behind it. The winged horse airbrushed on the side of the boat looked like it was about to take flight each time Lee gunned the boat, pointing its nose up out of the surf.
Bill watched as his son took the boat in tight circles, drawing screams of excitement from the passengers.
"People eat that shit up."
Turning toward the voice, Bill found Kara standing beside him. She was in her dress whites, her cap perched on her head, looking every inch the professional. Seeing her made him stand up a little straighter.
"He's good," Bill conceded. The kid knew how to handle a boat.
"You ever seen him race?"
"Not yet."
It wasn't like Lee hadn't invited him. Bill just hadn't gotten around to going to a race. He'd barely gotten over Lee mustering out of the Coast Guard early. Bill had expected his son to make a career of it, rise through the ranks, retire with a nice pension. Maybe they'd even set up a charter business down in the Keys together.
Either way, that dream was frakked. It was stupid to place the blame on Lee now.
"The boats they race are-you gotta see it."
Bill glanced back at Kara. The way she felt about his son was written all over her face. "You go watch him often?"
She shrugged. "Once in a while. We should go together some time. Make a date of it."
Bill frowned. Before he could open his mouth to ask what she meant by that, she punched him in the shoulder.
"Psych. Had you going for a minute there didn't I, Old Man?"
Laughing, Bill shook his head. "You're a handful, Thrace."
She looked out over the bay, eyes tracking Pegasus. "That I am."
*
"Mas cerveza, señor?"
Galactica crewman Sam Anders, with wind-tousled hair and Oakley sunglasses, was enjoying the Cabo sun at a roadside bar that was little more than four barstools and a wooden counter. "Si, por favor," he said, finishing off the last bit in his current bottle. After cruising Mexico for almost a year, he'd developed the enlightened view that American beer was shit, so he got as much Mexican brew as he could before he headed back to the U.S.
Sam loved Cabo. He loved the weather, the food, the women. Every eight hours he had there, he decimated the place, like Hurricane Sam. And he enjoyed every last minute of it. He'd even thought of retiring in Cabo San Awesome once but decided that it would somehow take the shine off it.
This stop was different. There'd been a new woman in the crew-Laura Roslin's new assistant, who seemed to do nothing other than sit at a desk and play Space Angry Birds all day. Her name was Tory and she rocked out a bathing suit like Sam had never seen. He'd been courting her, but keeping it gentlemanly-unlike the women he usually entertained in port, Tory would sail away with him at the end of the day. That, and she seemed more conservative, which Sam respected in a lady.
When Tory asked him to take her out on Cabo, Sam had a crisis of faith.
When she told him she'd let him do body shots off her if he found a good bar, his crisis was wiped away.
So far, no body shots. Disappointing, but the day was still young. Tory sat next to him, nursing the last few sips of a margarita on the rocks and taking in the bustling tourist street activity around them.
"When do we, um, do the body shots?" Sam asked, aligning the bottle cap with the edge of the counter and cracking it off with one smack of his hand.
"When I'm drunk enough not to care." Tory adjusted her sunglasses, leaning back against the bar with both elbows. She swung one foot with prettily painted toes back and forth. "So is this what you do all day in port?"
Telling her he usually ate, drank, and engaged in group sex with college co-eds probably wasn't the right response. "Sometimes I look at the shops. You know, uh … for things."
"Things." He watched her head move as she scanned the row of stores and independent vendors in tents hawking hundreds of Mexican tchotchkes.
Gods, he wanted to bang her.
"You know. Souvenirs." He chugged the rest of his beer, then tapped the counter so he could close his tab. "You want anything to send home to your family?"
"I'm not close to them." Tory drained her margarita. "So we're going to shop, then what?"
"Umm, we hit the beach, maybe?" High hopes for a bikini spotting there-either hers or others.
"Oh yeah. I brought something you might like."
"Score," he breathed. He probably should have contained himself, but she was already off the barstool while he busied himself paying for their drinks.
He caught up with her just as she was entering a very festive-looking tent. "You probably shouldn't walk away without me."
Tory took off her sunglasses in time for him to see her eye roll. "You gonna protect me?"
This woman was nearly too hot to handle.
Sam debated responding until he realized no response was necessary. Instead, he browsed the shelves of the store, filled with painted wood vases and carved rocks. He noticed there was one shelf that had a canvas curtain in front of it and, of course, it sparked his interest. He pulled back the curtain and saw a variety of small musical instruments.
He was particularly drawn to a small guitar. Reaching in, he hesitantly plucked the strings.
Open your mind and hear what your heart wants to deny, end of line.
The voice in his head was deafening, the words garbled and nonsensical. He picked up the guitar and strummed a few chords, then a few more.
*
Galactica ship engineer Galen Tyrol, looking at postcards in a rack outside a very festive-looking tent, suddenly heard music. At first he thought it was inside his head, but he realized it was coming from inside the tent. He followed it and barely noticed the musician was one Sam Anders from his own ship. Instead he grabbed a tambourine and began to play rhythm with the sweet sound of the guitar, the tune filling the tent just as the woman next to Sam-Laura Roslin's assistant with the beautiful hair-began singing.
"Nibblin' on sponge cake … watchin' the sun bake, all of those tourists covered with oil …"
*
The uproarious sound of applause shocked Sam back into consciousness. He was holding a guitar, he was standing next to ship engineer Tyrol, and someone had handed Tory a bouquet of roses. And people were clapping. And throwing more roses.
"La flash mob! La canción es buena!" somebody cried.
"Let's get out of here," Sam said to Tory, grabbing her by the arm.
"Sam, wait," Tyrol said. Sam looked back and saw Galen was trying to make his way after them, but the crowd surrounded him, cheering and attempting to lift him off the ground.
Sam and Tory ran through the city streets until they ended up in a small patch of trees overlooking a white-sand beach. "What the frak was that?" Tory yelled, visibly shaken. "Do you even know how to play guitar? Do you know that song? Something happened back there, Sam. I don't even remember most of it. It was like something took me over."
Sam shook his head, unable to speak, unable to explain. Instead, he grabbed Tory and kissed her hard. She returned the kiss, grabbing his polo shirt and dragging him down in the sand with her. Tory lifted her shirt over her head, straddling his hips.
"Perfection," Sam said, cupping her bare breasts.
He'd take an asscrack full of sand for this one.
*
Laura arrived back on Galactica with the last of the passengers. She was exhausted from her shore excursion and in no mood for the Fun with Scrapbooking! class she was scheduled to lead in a mere fifteen minutes. Hopefully Gaius was already in the craft room setting up various papers, Martha Stewart decorative punchers, and border materials.
She took a quick trip back to her room to freshen up, brushing her hair and washing her face of the bit of city dust that always seemed to stick. She'd left her flask on the counter-she learned once to never drink before or on shore excursions-and now it called her name. Just one hit before she faced a roomful of hell.
Bill's words at the pool echoed in her head again. Sobered up. She'd been stunned that he'd pinned her as an alcoholic so quickly. Was it that obvious to everyone? She knew she hadn't been exactly hiding it, but she was holding her job, doing it well, completely functional. Definitely not passing out in the hallways like the thousands of binge-drinking co-eds she encountered every year.
It never seemed like an addiction to her, but she'd never contemplated why she didn't feel inclined to go about her life without something alcoholic within arm's reach. She hated that she drank, because it was drinking that caused such destruction in her family. Yet it was drinking that led her through that labyrinth of depression and helped her emerge on the other side. It was a way to cope with it all, and it was a habit that had stuck since the accident.
Bill knew nothing of this. He just saw her, tasted the liquor on her tongue, and that was normal to him. Her normal.
She glanced at her watch and ignored the urge to take a hit of her flask. This time.
With minutes to spare, she hoofed it up the stairs to the craft room. Out of breath, she was relieved to see Gaius handing out the booklets Tory had printed that described the basics of page layout and design. Walking into the room, she scanned the sparse crowd. Your typical scrapbookers-a couple moms in their thirties, a couple of grandmothers, and Bill Adama.
Wait.
Laura did a double take as Gaius handed him a page layout book. Her mouth fell open and then Bill looked up, catching her eye and smiling. He flipped open the book and began to read, or pretended to read. She had no idea. Heartbeat racing, she realized everyone in the room was looking at her, expecting her to do something.
Anything.
"Welcome, welcome." Realizing her voice sounded faint, like her head felt, she cleared her throat and tried to blame it on the frog stuck there. "Welcome to Fun with Scrapbooking! I'm happy to see we've had a fine turnout today. How many of you have scrapbooked before?"
Everyone raised their hands but Bill.
"Oh, we have a new scrapper today! How are you today, Mister …"
"Adama. Bill Adama." He put the book down with a sigh. "I have to admit, I feel pretty scrapped."
The ladies in the room tittered with laughter. He was, indeed, a charmer.
"Well, then, Bill. I feel your fortune's about to change. Because scrapbooking is … fun!"
She wanted to kill herself for a brief moment. The women laughed again and he grinned at her, causing her to blush.
"All right, then, ladies and gentleman," Laura said, grabbing her book. "Why don't we move in an orderly fashion to the paper and decorative materials table, where Associate Cruise Director Gaius has, may I note, masterfully arranged what we'll be working with today."
"Thank you, Laura," Gaius said, beaming.
They all walked over to the table and Laura joined them, moving beside Bill. "Of all the hobbies I'd imagined you having, this wasn't one of them," she said in a low murmur.
"Maybe I'm not who you think I am," he replied, picking up several pieces of textured paper.
Laura handed him two lace doilies. "For your cover."
"These will be perfect." He took them and grabbed a red glitter pen. "Don't judge me for how this thing looks when I'm done."
She raised her eyebrows. "Sometimes the best things aren't pretty at all."
Leaving him to ponder that, she turned back to the room. "Please open your books to page one, and we'll start," she said as everyone settled in. "If anyone needs extra help at any time, just let me know and Gaius will assist you."
The look of disappointment on Bill's face was priceless.
"Don't worry," Laura said, settling into the empty chair next to him. "I always give the scrapbooking virgins a little extra help getting started."
He ducked his head and grinned at her suggestively. "You do, huh?"
Flattered and surprised by his flirty tone, she couldn't help smiling back. Maybe last night really had been a fluke. He was anything but disinterested this afternoon.
"You'll have to at least pretend you're here to scrapbook, Bill, or Mrs. Phillips over there will be broadcasting our impending marriage over the PA within the hour."
Bill blew out a breath and studied the supplies scattered on the table. "So how does this work?"
"Most people start with a theme. Cruise memories is a popular one."
Picking up the bright red glitter marker, Bill scrawled across the cover: My First Cruise by William Adama.
"That's … great."
"Hey, I'm just getting started." He reached for the doilies and a scissor, a look of intense concentration on his face as he folded the first doily in half and cut out a little paper man. Rotating the second doily under the quick snip-snip of the scissors, he produced a woman to match. "Glue?"
Laura squirted thin lines of glue on the back of the little paper couple and watched Bill glue them to the cover of his book so they were holding hands. Except that they didn't have hands. "Cute."
After admiring his work for a moment, he turned to the first page and wrote in big loopy script: DAY 1. "Pass me that dark blue tissue paper?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
"I don't do things halfway, Laura. Once I'm in"-he held her eyes for a moment as he reached past her for the tissue paper brushing his arm against hers-"I'm all in."
Annoyed at the pointed tone of his words, she squirted a stream of glue on the page just a little too hard, making a gloppy mess of it. But she held her tongue. She wasn't going to let him get to her again.
With the tissue paper stuck in place, Bill started punching out stars from a sheet of silver paper. "Something you want to ask me? Go ahead." His voice was eerily calm now. "Just know that you may not like the answer very much."
The stars fell across the dark blue of the page, and Laura was reminded of their meeting on deck that first night, the feel of his arm around her in the chilly night air. She opened a glue stick and silently began gluing the bits of silver to the page, dozens of them, as many as they'd seen in the sky and more. She was surprised to see Orion emerge on the page and then Scorpius.
Beside her Bill studied the stars, lost in thought, and Laura studied him. She was surprised to find herself wondering what he looked like when he slept. If the sadness that seemed to be always just below the surface disappeared and left his face peaceful as he dreamed of better times.
When he finally turned to her, she had to stifle the impulse to kiss him. Gods she wanted to kiss him right now. And he wanted to kiss her. She could tell by the way he was staring at her lips and edging closer.
Mindful of cruise director protocol, she looked back down at their handiwork.
"Is this what you had in mind?" she asked, poking the last of the stars into place with the tip of her nail.
"Yeah," he said, with a satisfied smile. "That's perfect."
"I've always loved the stars," she said. "The jewels of the Gods."
"I like that," he said, picking up a silver glitter pen to inscribe her words at the bottom of the page. "Sounds like something out of Greek mythology."
"Maybe," she said, certain it wasn't. She knew little about the ancient Greeks, certainly not enough to quote from. "It just … sprang to mind, I guess."
After checking to be sure his writing had dried completely, he turned the page and inscribed DAY 2 at the top.
Laura found herself holding her breath as she waited to see what he would choose to represent his second day at sea. Hopefully not a reproduction of her Seaman's Choice stash. When he set about cutting something from a sheet of deep purple textured paper, she thanked the Gods that none of the other scrapbookers had chosen to sit at Bill's table. Because if he glued a paper bra and panty set into his book, she was going to die right there on the spot.
It soon became obvious that Bill was cutting out a huge purple "3." Laura felt a blush rise to her cheeks. She picked up the little bottle of glue but found it was empty. Leaning across the table to reach for a new bottle, she placed a hand on Bill's thigh for balance.
And because she really really wanted to.
"Careful," he whispered in her ear. "You wouldn't want Mrs. Phillips to stroke out on us."
Laura settled back in her seat but left her hand right where it was, inches from Bill's crotch. Thank the Gods for oversized tablecloths and strategic seating arrangements because what she was contemplating next really would cause the old lady to keel over.
As she leaned in closer to spread some glue on the page, she let her hand slide higher, higher, until she found the object of her exploration.
"Oh my," she said in a low voice. "I never realized scrapbooking could be so … stimulating."
Bill smoothed his number 3 on the page carefully, slowly, for far longer than was necessary, almost in time with the movement of her hand. "Maybe you weren't doing it right."
"And now?" She gave him a squeeze and was impressed with how his carefully composed expression didn't change, even as his erection twitched under her hand. She stroked the length of him through his pants and wondered just how far they could get away with taking this. "Am I doing it right?"
Before Bill could answer, Gaius clapped his hands, signaling the end of the session. Curse him for learning that little trick so well. Laura jumped in her seat and snatched her hand back into her own lap as Gaius recited the instructions for clean-up.
"Thank you for coming," Gaius said to a group of departing ladies and Laura couldn't help notice the smirk on Bill's face.
"You didn't," Laura hissed.
Bill gave her an exaggerated frown. "You're not that good."
"I wasn't finished." She bent over the table, gathering up the supplies and giving him a view down her sleeveless blouse. "But if you'd like a more complete demonstration of my skills, that could be arranged."
Bill pushed his chair back and strategically crossed his legs. "I was thinking we could do something more traditional."
"Back to option two are we?"
"You could say that."
She frowned. They were back in that gray area that had gotten them into trouble last night. "Tonight isn't good. I've got cabaret night until ten and then we have the Rocky Horror sing-a-long at eleven and a midnight dance-a-thon, which can go on for-"
"Hey, it's okay. Just give it some thought." The room was empty now and he took the opportunity to give her a quick kiss before departing, scrapbook in hand.
*
With his arousal finally-though just barely-under control, Bill left the activities room, not sure what had just happened. He'd gone to the class hoping to make a good impression, maybe flirt a little, get back on Laura's good side. Somehow things had gone from flirty to awkward to serious then sexy and back to awkward again. He needed a frakkin' playbook to keep up with that woman.
As he started down the stairs to the crew quarters, Bill spotted a familiar figure coming in the opposite direction.
"Wuh-ho," Saul said. "I heard you and our lovely cruise director have been getting cozy."
Bill froze. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"A little bird at the poker game last night told me she saw the two of you making out in the pool."
Okay, that wasn't so bad. In fact, it felt pretty good. Bill puffed out his chest. "What if we were? A guy's got a right to get laid."
"Damn straight. No shame in that game." Saul glanced at the rolled up scrapbook in Bill's hand. "Whatcha got there?"
"Nothing." Bill put it behind his back and then felt foolish. "I went to one of Laura's classes. For moral support."
Saul laughed. "You ain't nothin' close to moral."
"Shut up."
"C'mere, lemme see that." Saul grabbed it from Bill's hand and unrolled it. "Scrapbookin', huh? Ellen does this shit sometimes. Says it helps her relax. I can think of better things …"
Bill felt a little less foolish. If Ellen did it …
"Good ol' Bill Adama, scrapbookin' for pussy. Never thought of trying that, but you might be onto something." Saul rapped Bill's arm with the rolled up pages before handing the book back to him.
"Carry on, my friend." He clapped Bill on the back as he continued up the stairs. "Carry on."
Bill looked at the cover of the scrapbook with the childish figures on the cover. What the frak had gotten into him? He was all in, and then some.