Fic: "Protocol", BSG, non-gen, adult content.
Title: Protocol.
Author: jamjar
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Notes: Written mostly for and with the help of petronelle who also beta-read it, in a chat which included references to Philip Larkin, which should tell you everything the Kara Thrace/William Adama pairing doesn't.
Adult content, which includes fairly explicit sex and people being pretty fucked up in ways that are still probably healthier than canon. It's like writing in DCU all over again!
All comments, all criticisms welcome.
Kara doesn't want to compare them -- tries, very hard, not to think about it, or this, or anything, when they do this -- but she can't help it. Sex is pretty frakkin' universal. Only so much variation around, especially when you're rushing it like this, quick as you can before anyone gets a chance to get suspicious. Rough and minimal.
It can't be that different, but she still can't help but compare.
Zak liked to hold her, liked gripping her arms. Not to control her, but because he liked feeling her strength, the way her muscles would tense. And when he does the same, she doubts it's for the same reasons, but still. She's lost weight since Zak, pared down, so the fact that the Commander has smaller hands is pretty much wiped out. They still go around exactly the same place.
Zak loved oral. He loved going down on her. Even their pre-training quickies would be him on his knees more often than not. He loved it when she'd return the favour, and she'd look up, after, and he'd smile at her, grinning like it was a joke.
She's only gone down the Commander a few times, because when she does, when she looks up at him, the perspective is *wrong*. The angle, seeing him like that... it's like he's a stranger, some guy she's never met before, maybe only seen a few times on the street.
She can't frakkin' deal with that at all. She had to look down the whole time, so she wasn't seeing anything in particular, so close that it could be almost anyone, just so she could keep at it. After, he pulled her up and used his hands to get her off, her looking over his shoulder, and that's different.
Zak almost never--
So mostly, they just fuck. It's easiest.
The desk is a thing. Kara's prepared to admit that, because you deny anything about sex, and it'll bite you in the ass twice as hard. You say it, shout it, and nine times out of ten, people will just look away.
The desk is hard and wooden, and rests on magnets to keep it locked to the floor if they lose gravity. Standing in front of it brings back every time she's been disciplined, every official warning, every time she's stood there and thought, Frak you, Sir, with the sharp end of that official sword.
When she sits on the other side, she can practically feel the decisions -- sacrifice this Viper so that ship can go through, half as many missiles for that mission so we still have enough to protect the Galactica if everyone on it dies -- that have been made by the people that have sat there before. Kara brushes her fingers against the reports -engineering, water reg, flight checks from her unit, moral reps- and neatens the piles, squaring the edges.
She sits back in the chair and puts her feet on the desk, and when Adama comes in, she sighs in satisfaction and crosses her arms behind her head.
"Nice seat," she says. "I think I like it here."
"Get up. Get your feet off my desk," he says, only looking at her for a second before turning to hang up his jacket.
She sighs again, faking disappointment, and drops her feet on the ground as loud as she can. Her shoes hit the floor with a thump, muted by the thick carpet.
"You don't think I should be ambitious?"
He looks at her. "I don't think you should have command," he says. His smile isn't nice, exactly, but what it is, is maybe better. Shared-joke, almost. "Neither do you."
"Better on the front-lines," she says. "'My gift is my craft and my body are my tools.'" Religious quotes are one of her lesser-known talents.
"Are you here for a reason?" he says. It's not an attack.
She doesn't say anything. Doesn't have to, because if she was here for a reason, she'd have said so already.
After a moment, he nods like she'd said something, and she stands up and comes around to the side of the desk.
That's the other thing the desk is: convenient. It doesn't leave traces, moulting threads like the rug does. Its hard bruises are a lot like the ones you get from being thrown around inside a Viper, unremarkable. Unlike the rugburn on a ship that has maybe three rooms with carpets, all of them off limits without special cause.
She moves the lamp to the chair and switches it on. It gives a different, yellower light than the main one, old-fashioned, inefficient and warmer. Wasteful.
Then she kicks her boots off -- the laces are only knotted for special events and flights, the rest of the time she tucks them in at the top -- and smiles at him. Her smile isn't any friendlier than his. Insubordinate, she'd call it. A nice little frak-you smile she's had to give to everyone who's ever been her commander at some point.
It irritates him, even now, even when he knows that's exactly the reaction she wants, which only irritates him more. She leans back on the desk, feeling the edge of it dig into her hands. "Sir," she says, because she knows he hates it. Commander Adama is not the sort of man that fucks, or sleeps with, or has affairs with his subordinates.
He believes in the chain of command like she believes in the words of the gods, and he would never screw it up the way screwing below ranks always does.
This, what they do, isn't something he's ashamed of, so much as angry at. An affront to who, to what he is.
Kara Thrace wouldn't be who she is if she ever let him ignore that.
She wonders if she can get away with saying something more, "Waiting for your orders," or "Reporting for duty," something clichéd and tacky, but he doesn't give her the chance. He steps forwards and kisses her, one hand on the side of her face so it tilts to the right angle, the other next to hers on the desk.
It's not a forceful kiss, which is his way of letting her know he's still in charge, still in control. He doesn't let her push him into easy anger. They both know that it'd be easier if he did, which is maybe the other reason why he doesn't. Why should he make this easy on either of them?
He doesn't let her stop thinking entirely. She leans back and pulls him with her, or he steers her back with slight pressure on her neck, she can't tell.
The angle is only comfortable if she brings her legs up, so she does. She wraps her legs around him, and it's a flashback to being a teenager, when the only way to be sure of not getting knocked up was to both keep your pants on, and do what you could that way. She didn't stay at that stage long, but it's still familiar-wrong, like seeing a pineapple in a hangar bay or a teacher at a restaurant.
She laughs, and then stops, because he's pulled her T-shirt out from her trousers and his hand is on her stomach. He's never seen her naked when they're like this, never even really seen her with her top off. It's pushed up or pulled down, but it's always there. It's like sleeping in a call-shift, in your bank but fully dressed in case the alarm goes, ready to leave at any moment.
She digs her hands into his back. Her nails are short enough she never has to worry about cleaning under them, and he doesn't have to worry about communal showers and shared locker-rooms, so she digs in, harder when he touches her breast. He's good at that, and she thinks, 'So that's where your son gets it from.' She thinks that every time, and it's almost welcome by now.
He sees her reaction. They're good at this, got it down to a fine art. The most efficient flightplan, pared down of any scenic detours, so it's only what they need to get them off. Mostly.
He pushes her top further up, over her bra, and she lets go of her back to unzip her flies, and he gets his mouth on her, his hand pressing against her cunt, and she moans and her head tilts back, like it always does. She gets a glimpse of ceiling and the top of the wall behind her, and then he's taken his hand and his mouth away, and he's cupping the back of her head, bringing it forward so she has to see him.
He meets her eyes, holds them as he gets his hand down to her pants, and gives her something to move against.
She has to hold on to him as she does, pulling herself up against him rather than pulling him down to her. He's bracing himself with one arm, and she has to concentrate on looking at him. She wants to close her eyes. It's not personal, it's just what she does, helps her concentrate.
But, contrary to popular opinion, she can follow an order, and William Adama is one of the few people that knows that.
She brings herself off against his hand. She's not a screamer, and that helps them do this.
Her eyes close when she comes, but she doesn't let herself have that dark, sweet moment of rest, sheltered and shuttered. She opens her eyes and forces them to stay open while she gets her breathing back under control. Smiles at him when she does, because she loves upsetting people who expect to be disappointed by her.
She lets go of him and undoes his belt. Standard issue for dress uniforms. Then his flies, pushes down his pants, gets her hand around his cock. She could bring him off like that. It'd be easy. He's close to it already, enough that fucking would maybe be over too quick. She's thinking about it when he breaks eye-contact, looks away, and shudders. She strokes him and feels his whole body tense, his breathing stop.
And then start again as he gets back some control. She could still finish him off, make him come in her hands, then hold them up, maybe even lick them clean, just so he has that image stuck in his head whenever he sees them.
The thought makes her catch her breath, and that makes him look at her again, so she takes her hand away, smiling at his involuntary little thrust forward, holds them up like a magician -- see, nothing up my sleeve -- and wriggles her fingers. She sees his eyes track them, the movement less a tease and more a goad.
She leans back more fully against the desk, getting herself obnoxiously comfortable.
About now is the point where some men would call her a bitch, in varying shades of anger and admiration, but he doesn't. He pushes her panties to one side, then just lets his fingers touch her for a second, like testing the water, before he gets two fingers inside, thumb on her clit and makes her moan, makes her close her eyes for a second, hands on either side of the desk and holding on. "Frak, yes," she says when he stops, opening her eyes and glaring at him, but only for a second because his hand slams down next to her, and he's only pulling back so he can push in.
Her head drops back with a thump, hard enough to make him pause, just for a second, but not so hard she wants him to stop. She lets go of the desk to hold on to him so she can get a good leverage, forearms on his back, her fingers digging into his shoulders, made harder by the slippery fabric of his shirt.
She can't move as much as she likes, her trousers tangled around her ankles, but she can push up when he pushes down, and she can roll her whole body against him, make use of every bit of training, every practised bit of muscle-control she has and then some, and she can hold on, gritting her teeth against what she's feeling, how close she is, for just a few seconds, until she feels his body tense and knows that he's there. He says something which isn't her name, and she bites back on a "Co--" before she comes, too.
She recovers quickly, always has, so she's got her face right when he opens his eyes. She smiles at him, then pushes him off and jumps off the desk. The floor hums beneath her feet, the ceaseless, reassuring buzz of a working spaceship. She pulls her trousers up, holds them with one hand and digs in one of the desk drawers for one of the standard hygiene wipes, general issue for all space-based troops with finite water resources. The sharp, medicinal smell is something she's familiar with on her own skin, on the skin of others, and it's a sense-memory of back-to-back shifts, five minutes break on emergency rations and back out.
She doesn't hate the smell.
Kara cleans herself of the most obvious, does up her trousers and rolls her shoulders, settling herself back into uniform, before turning around. Commander Adama is watching her. He looks ruffled, uniform out of place. No worse than she's seen him before, for better reasons. "Sir?" She says. "Any orders for me?" She's only half joking.
The moment stretches, then he looks away. "I need the duty roster for next week, and you need to have your resource allocation requests ready by tomorrow. If you want to keep taking those pleasure trips, you're going to need to come up with a damn good excuse for us to let you keep burning through our fuel supplies."
She shrugs, then pulls her uniform neater, tucking the shirt in. "Vital training and scouting, sir."
"Justifications in writing, lieutenant," he says, a little wearily. He starts tidying up the desk, putting papers back in order. "You know the procedure."
Procedure, routine, protocol. All the things to keep discipline in the unit, keep soldiers and civilians anchored and in place when they're between worlds.
"Sir," she says.
"You're dismissed." He doesn't look at her, just waves at the door and goes back to looking at old reports.
End.
Author: jamjar
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Notes: Written mostly for and with the help of petronelle who also beta-read it, in a chat which included references to Philip Larkin, which should tell you everything the Kara Thrace/William Adama pairing doesn't.
Adult content, which includes fairly explicit sex and people being pretty fucked up in ways that are still probably healthier than canon. It's like writing in DCU all over again!
All comments, all criticisms welcome.
Kara doesn't want to compare them -- tries, very hard, not to think about it, or this, or anything, when they do this -- but she can't help it. Sex is pretty frakkin' universal. Only so much variation around, especially when you're rushing it like this, quick as you can before anyone gets a chance to get suspicious. Rough and minimal.
It can't be that different, but she still can't help but compare.
Zak liked to hold her, liked gripping her arms. Not to control her, but because he liked feeling her strength, the way her muscles would tense. And when he does the same, she doubts it's for the same reasons, but still. She's lost weight since Zak, pared down, so the fact that the Commander has smaller hands is pretty much wiped out. They still go around exactly the same place.
Zak loved oral. He loved going down on her. Even their pre-training quickies would be him on his knees more often than not. He loved it when she'd return the favour, and she'd look up, after, and he'd smile at her, grinning like it was a joke.
She's only gone down the Commander a few times, because when she does, when she looks up at him, the perspective is *wrong*. The angle, seeing him like that... it's like he's a stranger, some guy she's never met before, maybe only seen a few times on the street.
She can't frakkin' deal with that at all. She had to look down the whole time, so she wasn't seeing anything in particular, so close that it could be almost anyone, just so she could keep at it. After, he pulled her up and used his hands to get her off, her looking over his shoulder, and that's different.
Zak almost never--
So mostly, they just fuck. It's easiest.
The desk is a thing. Kara's prepared to admit that, because you deny anything about sex, and it'll bite you in the ass twice as hard. You say it, shout it, and nine times out of ten, people will just look away.
The desk is hard and wooden, and rests on magnets to keep it locked to the floor if they lose gravity. Standing in front of it brings back every time she's been disciplined, every official warning, every time she's stood there and thought, Frak you, Sir, with the sharp end of that official sword.
When she sits on the other side, she can practically feel the decisions -- sacrifice this Viper so that ship can go through, half as many missiles for that mission so we still have enough to protect the Galactica if everyone on it dies -- that have been made by the people that have sat there before. Kara brushes her fingers against the reports -engineering, water reg, flight checks from her unit, moral reps- and neatens the piles, squaring the edges.
She sits back in the chair and puts her feet on the desk, and when Adama comes in, she sighs in satisfaction and crosses her arms behind her head.
"Nice seat," she says. "I think I like it here."
"Get up. Get your feet off my desk," he says, only looking at her for a second before turning to hang up his jacket.
She sighs again, faking disappointment, and drops her feet on the ground as loud as she can. Her shoes hit the floor with a thump, muted by the thick carpet.
"You don't think I should be ambitious?"
He looks at her. "I don't think you should have command," he says. His smile isn't nice, exactly, but what it is, is maybe better. Shared-joke, almost. "Neither do you."
"Better on the front-lines," she says. "'My gift is my craft and my body are my tools.'" Religious quotes are one of her lesser-known talents.
"Are you here for a reason?" he says. It's not an attack.
She doesn't say anything. Doesn't have to, because if she was here for a reason, she'd have said so already.
After a moment, he nods like she'd said something, and she stands up and comes around to the side of the desk.
That's the other thing the desk is: convenient. It doesn't leave traces, moulting threads like the rug does. Its hard bruises are a lot like the ones you get from being thrown around inside a Viper, unremarkable. Unlike the rugburn on a ship that has maybe three rooms with carpets, all of them off limits without special cause.
She moves the lamp to the chair and switches it on. It gives a different, yellower light than the main one, old-fashioned, inefficient and warmer. Wasteful.
Then she kicks her boots off -- the laces are only knotted for special events and flights, the rest of the time she tucks them in at the top -- and smiles at him. Her smile isn't any friendlier than his. Insubordinate, she'd call it. A nice little frak-you smile she's had to give to everyone who's ever been her commander at some point.
It irritates him, even now, even when he knows that's exactly the reaction she wants, which only irritates him more. She leans back on the desk, feeling the edge of it dig into her hands. "Sir," she says, because she knows he hates it. Commander Adama is not the sort of man that fucks, or sleeps with, or has affairs with his subordinates.
He believes in the chain of command like she believes in the words of the gods, and he would never screw it up the way screwing below ranks always does.
This, what they do, isn't something he's ashamed of, so much as angry at. An affront to who, to what he is.
Kara Thrace wouldn't be who she is if she ever let him ignore that.
She wonders if she can get away with saying something more, "Waiting for your orders," or "Reporting for duty," something clichéd and tacky, but he doesn't give her the chance. He steps forwards and kisses her, one hand on the side of her face so it tilts to the right angle, the other next to hers on the desk.
It's not a forceful kiss, which is his way of letting her know he's still in charge, still in control. He doesn't let her push him into easy anger. They both know that it'd be easier if he did, which is maybe the other reason why he doesn't. Why should he make this easy on either of them?
He doesn't let her stop thinking entirely. She leans back and pulls him with her, or he steers her back with slight pressure on her neck, she can't tell.
The angle is only comfortable if she brings her legs up, so she does. She wraps her legs around him, and it's a flashback to being a teenager, when the only way to be sure of not getting knocked up was to both keep your pants on, and do what you could that way. She didn't stay at that stage long, but it's still familiar-wrong, like seeing a pineapple in a hangar bay or a teacher at a restaurant.
She laughs, and then stops, because he's pulled her T-shirt out from her trousers and his hand is on her stomach. He's never seen her naked when they're like this, never even really seen her with her top off. It's pushed up or pulled down, but it's always there. It's like sleeping in a call-shift, in your bank but fully dressed in case the alarm goes, ready to leave at any moment.
She digs her hands into his back. Her nails are short enough she never has to worry about cleaning under them, and he doesn't have to worry about communal showers and shared locker-rooms, so she digs in, harder when he touches her breast. He's good at that, and she thinks, 'So that's where your son gets it from.' She thinks that every time, and it's almost welcome by now.
He sees her reaction. They're good at this, got it down to a fine art. The most efficient flightplan, pared down of any scenic detours, so it's only what they need to get them off. Mostly.
He pushes her top further up, over her bra, and she lets go of her back to unzip her flies, and he gets his mouth on her, his hand pressing against her cunt, and she moans and her head tilts back, like it always does. She gets a glimpse of ceiling and the top of the wall behind her, and then he's taken his hand and his mouth away, and he's cupping the back of her head, bringing it forward so she has to see him.
He meets her eyes, holds them as he gets his hand down to her pants, and gives her something to move against.
She has to hold on to him as she does, pulling herself up against him rather than pulling him down to her. He's bracing himself with one arm, and she has to concentrate on looking at him. She wants to close her eyes. It's not personal, it's just what she does, helps her concentrate.
But, contrary to popular opinion, she can follow an order, and William Adama is one of the few people that knows that.
She brings herself off against his hand. She's not a screamer, and that helps them do this.
Her eyes close when she comes, but she doesn't let herself have that dark, sweet moment of rest, sheltered and shuttered. She opens her eyes and forces them to stay open while she gets her breathing back under control. Smiles at him when she does, because she loves upsetting people who expect to be disappointed by her.
She lets go of him and undoes his belt. Standard issue for dress uniforms. Then his flies, pushes down his pants, gets her hand around his cock. She could bring him off like that. It'd be easy. He's close to it already, enough that fucking would maybe be over too quick. She's thinking about it when he breaks eye-contact, looks away, and shudders. She strokes him and feels his whole body tense, his breathing stop.
And then start again as he gets back some control. She could still finish him off, make him come in her hands, then hold them up, maybe even lick them clean, just so he has that image stuck in his head whenever he sees them.
The thought makes her catch her breath, and that makes him look at her again, so she takes her hand away, smiling at his involuntary little thrust forward, holds them up like a magician -- see, nothing up my sleeve -- and wriggles her fingers. She sees his eyes track them, the movement less a tease and more a goad.
She leans back more fully against the desk, getting herself obnoxiously comfortable.
About now is the point where some men would call her a bitch, in varying shades of anger and admiration, but he doesn't. He pushes her panties to one side, then just lets his fingers touch her for a second, like testing the water, before he gets two fingers inside, thumb on her clit and makes her moan, makes her close her eyes for a second, hands on either side of the desk and holding on. "Frak, yes," she says when he stops, opening her eyes and glaring at him, but only for a second because his hand slams down next to her, and he's only pulling back so he can push in.
Her head drops back with a thump, hard enough to make him pause, just for a second, but not so hard she wants him to stop. She lets go of the desk to hold on to him so she can get a good leverage, forearms on his back, her fingers digging into his shoulders, made harder by the slippery fabric of his shirt.
She can't move as much as she likes, her trousers tangled around her ankles, but she can push up when he pushes down, and she can roll her whole body against him, make use of every bit of training, every practised bit of muscle-control she has and then some, and she can hold on, gritting her teeth against what she's feeling, how close she is, for just a few seconds, until she feels his body tense and knows that he's there. He says something which isn't her name, and she bites back on a "Co--" before she comes, too.
She recovers quickly, always has, so she's got her face right when he opens his eyes. She smiles at him, then pushes him off and jumps off the desk. The floor hums beneath her feet, the ceaseless, reassuring buzz of a working spaceship. She pulls her trousers up, holds them with one hand and digs in one of the desk drawers for one of the standard hygiene wipes, general issue for all space-based troops with finite water resources. The sharp, medicinal smell is something she's familiar with on her own skin, on the skin of others, and it's a sense-memory of back-to-back shifts, five minutes break on emergency rations and back out.
She doesn't hate the smell.
Kara cleans herself of the most obvious, does up her trousers and rolls her shoulders, settling herself back into uniform, before turning around. Commander Adama is watching her. He looks ruffled, uniform out of place. No worse than she's seen him before, for better reasons. "Sir?" She says. "Any orders for me?" She's only half joking.
The moment stretches, then he looks away. "I need the duty roster for next week, and you need to have your resource allocation requests ready by tomorrow. If you want to keep taking those pleasure trips, you're going to need to come up with a damn good excuse for us to let you keep burning through our fuel supplies."
She shrugs, then pulls her uniform neater, tucking the shirt in. "Vital training and scouting, sir."
"Justifications in writing, lieutenant," he says, a little wearily. He starts tidying up the desk, putting papers back in order. "You know the procedure."
Procedure, routine, protocol. All the things to keep discipline in the unit, keep soldiers and civilians anchored and in place when they're between worlds.
"Sir," she says.
"You're dismissed." He doesn't look at her, just waves at the door and goes back to looking at old reports.
End.