(no subject)
Title: Sanctuary, Part 1/2
Author: prolix_allie
Rating: PG -13
Genre: Genish Het.
Character/Pairing: Sam Anders, Kara Thrace
Warnings: Angst, fake-swearing, mild sexuality
Notes: Not mine. Since this is already overdue I've decided to submit it as part one of two.
Spoilers: Through LDYBII
Prompt: #33
Summary: He wondered if the ideal and the reality would bear any resemblance to each other.
She was smaller than he remembered. That was the first, ridiculous thought that came into Sam's head as their two groups approached each other, hers confident, his wary and exhausted. There were tears in her eyes as she grabbed him and hugged him hard, and he was stunned that he had to bend down to hug her back. Eight months of first hoping and then simply longing for her return had built her up in his mind into someone taller, broader. Then she laughed and called him a big frakking idiot and there was the woman he knew. And she was saying something about Marines and Raptors and getting his people out of there. Her tone when she talked about "his people" made it clear she had already taken command without even thinking about it, and maybe he should have put up some kind of fight, but he could already feel a bit of the tension he'd been carrying for almost a year slip away as he grinned down at her. It was Barolay who brought them back to reality.
"People, this is nice, but we got toasters on our ass."
"Where's everyone else?" She wasn't smiling now.
"This is it. Toasters hit our base camp this morning. I lost half my crew." He fought a surge of pain and anger, the first he'd let himself feel since the raid. Maybe it was having someone else here giving orders that let him relax enough to feel again. He wasn't too sure it was a good thing. If I could have just kept them alive a few more hours.
If you could have just showed up yesterday.
He put that thought away. It wasn't her fault - it was a damn near impossible task she had set for herself- and besides there was no time to think about that now. They were getting out of here.
***
As it turned out, he had plenty of time to think. They had been holed up behind the remains of some building - he wondered what it had been - for 18 hours, waiting to die, or worse. This wasn't how he'd imagined her coming for him -he thought she would get here, and everything would finally be all right. Even now, he kept looking at her, expecting her to come up with some brilliant plan to save their asses. He had to admit that wasn't fair, especially not when this was all his fault. Cylons must have been tracking them, and he'd led them right to the rescue party.
At least they had a priest with them.
He'd gotten sloppy. He was ready to give up, truth be told, even before that last raid. As the weeks stretched into months, he kept thinking about all the people he could have saved if he had just done as Kara wanted and crammed as many as they could fit into the heavy raider and sent them home with her. Even then she had known better than to ask him to go with her himself and leave most of his people behind, but he saw the longing in her eyes all the same. She thought they were a bunch of civvies who needed rescuing, not an army - and really, that's what he had thought too. But then she'd been captured and hacked up by one of their doctors, and when they'd gotten her out he had promised to take out every one of those farms, and she had promised to send a rescue party as soon as she got back to the Fleet. And if he was going to hold up his end, he needed every last man and woman he had - and he knew they all had a better chance of surviving together. It was just until Kara came back. Her arrival had changed everything; before they had simply been fighting to make use of their last few days and exact some measure of payment. The devastating attack they had just suffered had only intensified the sense of fatalism. Now that there was an end in sight it gave them a renewed sense of purpose; they became even more determined yet also a little more careful. A part of Sam knew he must be starting to lose it, to latch onto this girl like the great blonde hope. He knew the chances of her making it back herself were slim, let alone convincing 40,000 desperate people to take a detour to save fifty. After a time he realized he was hanging on to her dog tag more as a memory of hope than a talisman. And when the Cylons wiped out half of them that morning, he had realized it was over. He'd accepted it. Funny how she always showed up when things were at their worst and he was ready to throw in the towel. And now she was going to die because of him, unless one of them could work a miracle.
As it turned out, they didn't have to. The frakking Cylons up and left on their own, and Sam still wasn't convinced he wasn't lying unconscious or dead somewhere and dreaming all this as he climbed off the Raptor and into the brightest room he had ever been in. All the way back to the ship he'd been talking, joking, ribbing Kara, and generally just trying to keep his people together as they headed toward the unknown. But as he stepped onto the Hangar Deck it suddenly hit him; he hadn't seen an unfamiliar human face that wasn't a skin-job in most of a year. And he was surrounded by what seemed like a hundred of them, all turned to look at the bedraggled remains of the Caprican Resistance.
If Kara noticed how the sweat was suddenly pouring off him and his hands were shaking a little, she didn't give any indication. She grabbed his arm and almost pranced over to a short but fearsome looking man who Sam guessed from the uniform must be the Commander. So he was surprised and, he had to admit, a little impressed when the man reached up and brushed the stray hair out of Kara's face. She began to stammer her way through an introduction, and he couldn't get over what a kid she was. She made him remember back when he brought his first Pyramid trophies home to his folks. He guessed that made him the trophy. With a surge of affection, he decided he could live with that for now.
***
Fifteen minutes later they were being herded through the first steps in their "re-acclimation." Health check, showers - "delousing" Kara called it, grinning at him, and then assignment to civilian barracks until they could be placed elsewhere in the Fleet. "You won't be needing any civvy quarters, Sammy," she'd informed him gleefully, "You've got some payback to start delivering."
He smirked down at her.""Hey, you might be a little unfortunate looking, but you really have to go to this much trouble to get laid?"
Kara howled her approval at that and reached up to pat his cheek. “The things I'll do for some fresh meat, honey. I just hope you're worth it."
She took off soon after that, and before he knew it it was his turn to see the Doc. As the man approached -the white coat gave him away, if not the cigarette dangling from his lips - Sam wrestled the sudden urge to bolt up and put his hands around his throat. What the frak was wrong with him? His hands were shaking again, and now there was this ringing in his ears.
"What the hell's the matter with you," the doc asked as he took his blood pressure.
"Nothing," he replied, forcing a cheerful grin. "Just nerves I guess."
But it wasn't nothing. The cranky tremble in the other man's voice suddenly brought it home to him; in all the time he'd been trapped down on that godsforsaken planet, he hadn't encountered a single soul over about 30. That is, until a week ago.
Jean had been the one to bring him back. She'd been leading a small scouting party through the mountains and had discovered the old man living in a cave. He told them his name was Brother Thomas. Later, Jean recalled how he'd wept with joy at being found and tried to hug her. She'd brought him back, bruised and blindfolded, for Sam to interrogate. And he had, for nearly six hours. But something had told him he could trust this guy, and Sam was used to following his instincts. Guilt and panic flooded through him and he was suddenly glad he hadn't eaten in two days.
Somehow he made it through the cursory exam, and an hour later he even managed to swallow some nutrition packets. He and the rest of his people were herded through the communal showers, and gods he'd forgotten the feeling of warm water on his skin. It hurt like hell, actually, slicing through all of his cuts - he hadn't realized how many he had - but he didn't much care. Someone made a crack about how he'd want to get cleaned up nice for the lady and he grinned and cheerfully threatened him, and it felt almost normal. More than anything it was good to get away from all the strange faces for a while.
Once they were assigned to new barracks and Sam was sure all his people were settled, he made his way back to the pilots' lounge. Kara had made sure he knew where that was, but the sounds of raucous celebration would have made it easy to find in any case. He wasn't surprised to find her holding court at the center of the room. She was giddy and flushed with alcohol and lording it over a small, dark-haired woman and a gawky kid who looked about 17, though Sam guessed he must be a bit older than that. She had obviously just had a shower herself - her hair was still damp, and she had changed into the pyramid jacket he'd given her all those months ago. He strode over to her, feeling almost bashful. Which was not a feeling he had experienced much in his life, but suddenly it occurred to him how long it had been since he'd seen this woman, and how little time they had actually spent together. He wondered if the ideal and the reality would bear any resemblence to each other. Sam decided to tell her that he was heading over to the civilian racks. They'd both been up for almost thirty hours; they should probably get some sleep...
All thoughts of sleep were chased from his mind as soon as Kara caught sight of him. "Sammy!" she crowed, almost falling over the tall kid in her haste to get over to him, and he had barely had time to decide that he should really break her of calling him that before she was pulling his head down and kissing him for all she was worth. The taste of ambrosia suddenly reminded him he hadn't had a drink in almost a year, and the pressure of her body against his reminded him of what else he hadn't had in far too long. "What the frak took you so long," she murmured - and then broke away quickly, grabbed an unopened bottle from the nearest table with one arm and him with the other, and began marching him out. Jean could take care of everybody, he decided.
***
Sam was a little worried that he'd been rude to the small, sharp looking man who had just slammed the hatch door behind him. That was bad, he decided hazily. Rude was bad. And he dimly remembered the guy saying his name was Lee Adama which would make him a relative of the Commander, he guessed. But he was having a hard time focusing on that when the memory he’d held onto for eight months was suddenly very real and very solid. Not to mention, straddling him. As soon as they’d made it back to the pilots’ bunkroom he had felt some of his tension start to ease away. Something about being in a dark, enclosed space brought a comforting sense of familiarity, but mostly he figured it was the absence of unfamiliar faces. The first shot of ambrosia he’d downed had made him cough and sputter like a teenager, which in turn made Kara howl with laughter and mockingly berate herself for corrupting the young. He’d indignantly poured them both a second round and relished the heat spreading through him, warming him down to his toes. Kara, naturally, had immediately declared a challenge, and before long Sam was relaxed and his thoughts were decidedly fuzzy. It had been all he could do to focus long enough to tell the guy his name and exchange a few pleasantries, and when Kara had flopped down on his lap suddenly even that was too much. Back on Caprica she’d been all for getting right to the point, but now she was running her fingers through his hair and languidly kissing him like she could do just that for days, and he was feeling torn between wonder and disbelief that this was really happening, that he was really here - and the fact that he hadn’t had sex in eight months.
Eight months won out, he thought, scooping her up and carrying her over to the bed. Fumbling out of his boots suddenly required intense skill and concentration, and Kara actually had to help him with the second one. It wasn’t fair, he decided, she’d left hers outside to ward off intruders back when they were both seeing straight, not that it had done much good. Between them, they managed to wrest off his remaining footwear and settle into the narrow rack.
“I think I win, honey,” she crowed, climbing on top of him and ruffling his hair affectionately. She didn’t use to be this touchy, he thought dimly, and wondered for a moment if it was because she was feeling the same sense of unreality he was, like they could wake up at any moment and he’d be back on Caprica. Or whether it was just the booze.
“Everything’s a contest, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” she said with mocking suggestion, before promptly losing her balance and sliding off of him, giggling. Definitely the booze. He had to make a quick grab to keep her from falling on her head.
“I think maybe I win, baby,” he teased, neatly reversing their positions.
“We’ll see.”
It was a little clumsy and awkward - Sam wasn’t used to maneuvering in such a small area - and admittedly over too fast. It was also the best sex of his life. Afterwards, Kara grinned at him blearily and absently stroked his face, her eyes at half-mast. “Can’t believe it,” he muttered, not sure what he was referring to exactly. That he was alive, that he was safe, at least for a moment, or that he was lying here in bed with a woman he was starting to think he might love. Sam didn’t really do love. Or maybe he did, he just wasn’t used to combining it with sex.
“I know,” she said softly, eyes finally drifting closed. In the morning they would both catch a bunch of grief for leaving Kara’s boots outside the hatch, and sleeping right through all the shouts and pounding before Hotdog finally ended up getting sent in first, one hand shielding his eyes just in case. But right now, Sam was ready for the first night of uninterrupted sleep he’d had since the worlds ended. It felt pretty good.
Continue to Part 2
Author: prolix_allie
Rating: PG -13
Genre: Genish Het.
Character/Pairing: Sam Anders, Kara Thrace
Warnings: Angst, fake-swearing, mild sexuality
Notes: Not mine. Since this is already overdue I've decided to submit it as part one of two.
Spoilers: Through LDYBII
Prompt: #33
Summary: He wondered if the ideal and the reality would bear any resemblance to each other.
She was smaller than he remembered. That was the first, ridiculous thought that came into Sam's head as their two groups approached each other, hers confident, his wary and exhausted. There were tears in her eyes as she grabbed him and hugged him hard, and he was stunned that he had to bend down to hug her back. Eight months of first hoping and then simply longing for her return had built her up in his mind into someone taller, broader. Then she laughed and called him a big frakking idiot and there was the woman he knew. And she was saying something about Marines and Raptors and getting his people out of there. Her tone when she talked about "his people" made it clear she had already taken command without even thinking about it, and maybe he should have put up some kind of fight, but he could already feel a bit of the tension he'd been carrying for almost a year slip away as he grinned down at her. It was Barolay who brought them back to reality.
"People, this is nice, but we got toasters on our ass."
"Where's everyone else?" She wasn't smiling now.
"This is it. Toasters hit our base camp this morning. I lost half my crew." He fought a surge of pain and anger, the first he'd let himself feel since the raid. Maybe it was having someone else here giving orders that let him relax enough to feel again. He wasn't too sure it was a good thing. If I could have just kept them alive a few more hours.
If you could have just showed up yesterday.
He put that thought away. It wasn't her fault - it was a damn near impossible task she had set for herself- and besides there was no time to think about that now. They were getting out of here.
***
As it turned out, he had plenty of time to think. They had been holed up behind the remains of some building - he wondered what it had been - for 18 hours, waiting to die, or worse. This wasn't how he'd imagined her coming for him -he thought she would get here, and everything would finally be all right. Even now, he kept looking at her, expecting her to come up with some brilliant plan to save their asses. He had to admit that wasn't fair, especially not when this was all his fault. Cylons must have been tracking them, and he'd led them right to the rescue party.
At least they had a priest with them.
He'd gotten sloppy. He was ready to give up, truth be told, even before that last raid. As the weeks stretched into months, he kept thinking about all the people he could have saved if he had just done as Kara wanted and crammed as many as they could fit into the heavy raider and sent them home with her. Even then she had known better than to ask him to go with her himself and leave most of his people behind, but he saw the longing in her eyes all the same. She thought they were a bunch of civvies who needed rescuing, not an army - and really, that's what he had thought too. But then she'd been captured and hacked up by one of their doctors, and when they'd gotten her out he had promised to take out every one of those farms, and she had promised to send a rescue party as soon as she got back to the Fleet. And if he was going to hold up his end, he needed every last man and woman he had - and he knew they all had a better chance of surviving together. It was just until Kara came back. Her arrival had changed everything; before they had simply been fighting to make use of their last few days and exact some measure of payment. The devastating attack they had just suffered had only intensified the sense of fatalism. Now that there was an end in sight it gave them a renewed sense of purpose; they became even more determined yet also a little more careful. A part of Sam knew he must be starting to lose it, to latch onto this girl like the great blonde hope. He knew the chances of her making it back herself were slim, let alone convincing 40,000 desperate people to take a detour to save fifty. After a time he realized he was hanging on to her dog tag more as a memory of hope than a talisman. And when the Cylons wiped out half of them that morning, he had realized it was over. He'd accepted it. Funny how she always showed up when things were at their worst and he was ready to throw in the towel. And now she was going to die because of him, unless one of them could work a miracle.
As it turned out, they didn't have to. The frakking Cylons up and left on their own, and Sam still wasn't convinced he wasn't lying unconscious or dead somewhere and dreaming all this as he climbed off the Raptor and into the brightest room he had ever been in. All the way back to the ship he'd been talking, joking, ribbing Kara, and generally just trying to keep his people together as they headed toward the unknown. But as he stepped onto the Hangar Deck it suddenly hit him; he hadn't seen an unfamiliar human face that wasn't a skin-job in most of a year. And he was surrounded by what seemed like a hundred of them, all turned to look at the bedraggled remains of the Caprican Resistance.
If Kara noticed how the sweat was suddenly pouring off him and his hands were shaking a little, she didn't give any indication. She grabbed his arm and almost pranced over to a short but fearsome looking man who Sam guessed from the uniform must be the Commander. So he was surprised and, he had to admit, a little impressed when the man reached up and brushed the stray hair out of Kara's face. She began to stammer her way through an introduction, and he couldn't get over what a kid she was. She made him remember back when he brought his first Pyramid trophies home to his folks. He guessed that made him the trophy. With a surge of affection, he decided he could live with that for now.
***
Fifteen minutes later they were being herded through the first steps in their "re-acclimation." Health check, showers - "delousing" Kara called it, grinning at him, and then assignment to civilian barracks until they could be placed elsewhere in the Fleet. "You won't be needing any civvy quarters, Sammy," she'd informed him gleefully, "You've got some payback to start delivering."
He smirked down at her.""Hey, you might be a little unfortunate looking, but you really have to go to this much trouble to get laid?"
Kara howled her approval at that and reached up to pat his cheek. “The things I'll do for some fresh meat, honey. I just hope you're worth it."
She took off soon after that, and before he knew it it was his turn to see the Doc. As the man approached -the white coat gave him away, if not the cigarette dangling from his lips - Sam wrestled the sudden urge to bolt up and put his hands around his throat. What the frak was wrong with him? His hands were shaking again, and now there was this ringing in his ears.
"What the hell's the matter with you," the doc asked as he took his blood pressure.
"Nothing," he replied, forcing a cheerful grin. "Just nerves I guess."
But it wasn't nothing. The cranky tremble in the other man's voice suddenly brought it home to him; in all the time he'd been trapped down on that godsforsaken planet, he hadn't encountered a single soul over about 30. That is, until a week ago.
Jean had been the one to bring him back. She'd been leading a small scouting party through the mountains and had discovered the old man living in a cave. He told them his name was Brother Thomas. Later, Jean recalled how he'd wept with joy at being found and tried to hug her. She'd brought him back, bruised and blindfolded, for Sam to interrogate. And he had, for nearly six hours. But something had told him he could trust this guy, and Sam was used to following his instincts. Guilt and panic flooded through him and he was suddenly glad he hadn't eaten in two days.
Somehow he made it through the cursory exam, and an hour later he even managed to swallow some nutrition packets. He and the rest of his people were herded through the communal showers, and gods he'd forgotten the feeling of warm water on his skin. It hurt like hell, actually, slicing through all of his cuts - he hadn't realized how many he had - but he didn't much care. Someone made a crack about how he'd want to get cleaned up nice for the lady and he grinned and cheerfully threatened him, and it felt almost normal. More than anything it was good to get away from all the strange faces for a while.
Once they were assigned to new barracks and Sam was sure all his people were settled, he made his way back to the pilots' lounge. Kara had made sure he knew where that was, but the sounds of raucous celebration would have made it easy to find in any case. He wasn't surprised to find her holding court at the center of the room. She was giddy and flushed with alcohol and lording it over a small, dark-haired woman and a gawky kid who looked about 17, though Sam guessed he must be a bit older than that. She had obviously just had a shower herself - her hair was still damp, and she had changed into the pyramid jacket he'd given her all those months ago. He strode over to her, feeling almost bashful. Which was not a feeling he had experienced much in his life, but suddenly it occurred to him how long it had been since he'd seen this woman, and how little time they had actually spent together. He wondered if the ideal and the reality would bear any resemblence to each other. Sam decided to tell her that he was heading over to the civilian racks. They'd both been up for almost thirty hours; they should probably get some sleep...
All thoughts of sleep were chased from his mind as soon as Kara caught sight of him. "Sammy!" she crowed, almost falling over the tall kid in her haste to get over to him, and he had barely had time to decide that he should really break her of calling him that before she was pulling his head down and kissing him for all she was worth. The taste of ambrosia suddenly reminded him he hadn't had a drink in almost a year, and the pressure of her body against his reminded him of what else he hadn't had in far too long. "What the frak took you so long," she murmured - and then broke away quickly, grabbed an unopened bottle from the nearest table with one arm and him with the other, and began marching him out. Jean could take care of everybody, he decided.
***
Sam was a little worried that he'd been rude to the small, sharp looking man who had just slammed the hatch door behind him. That was bad, he decided hazily. Rude was bad. And he dimly remembered the guy saying his name was Lee Adama which would make him a relative of the Commander, he guessed. But he was having a hard time focusing on that when the memory he’d held onto for eight months was suddenly very real and very solid. Not to mention, straddling him. As soon as they’d made it back to the pilots’ bunkroom he had felt some of his tension start to ease away. Something about being in a dark, enclosed space brought a comforting sense of familiarity, but mostly he figured it was the absence of unfamiliar faces. The first shot of ambrosia he’d downed had made him cough and sputter like a teenager, which in turn made Kara howl with laughter and mockingly berate herself for corrupting the young. He’d indignantly poured them both a second round and relished the heat spreading through him, warming him down to his toes. Kara, naturally, had immediately declared a challenge, and before long Sam was relaxed and his thoughts were decidedly fuzzy. It had been all he could do to focus long enough to tell the guy his name and exchange a few pleasantries, and when Kara had flopped down on his lap suddenly even that was too much. Back on Caprica she’d been all for getting right to the point, but now she was running her fingers through his hair and languidly kissing him like she could do just that for days, and he was feeling torn between wonder and disbelief that this was really happening, that he was really here - and the fact that he hadn’t had sex in eight months.
Eight months won out, he thought, scooping her up and carrying her over to the bed. Fumbling out of his boots suddenly required intense skill and concentration, and Kara actually had to help him with the second one. It wasn’t fair, he decided, she’d left hers outside to ward off intruders back when they were both seeing straight, not that it had done much good. Between them, they managed to wrest off his remaining footwear and settle into the narrow rack.
“I think I win, honey,” she crowed, climbing on top of him and ruffling his hair affectionately. She didn’t use to be this touchy, he thought dimly, and wondered for a moment if it was because she was feeling the same sense of unreality he was, like they could wake up at any moment and he’d be back on Caprica. Or whether it was just the booze.
“Everything’s a contest, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” she said with mocking suggestion, before promptly losing her balance and sliding off of him, giggling. Definitely the booze. He had to make a quick grab to keep her from falling on her head.
“I think maybe I win, baby,” he teased, neatly reversing their positions.
“We’ll see.”
It was a little clumsy and awkward - Sam wasn’t used to maneuvering in such a small area - and admittedly over too fast. It was also the best sex of his life. Afterwards, Kara grinned at him blearily and absently stroked his face, her eyes at half-mast. “Can’t believe it,” he muttered, not sure what he was referring to exactly. That he was alive, that he was safe, at least for a moment, or that he was lying here in bed with a woman he was starting to think he might love. Sam didn’t really do love. Or maybe he did, he just wasn’t used to combining it with sex.
“I know,” she said softly, eyes finally drifting closed. In the morning they would both catch a bunch of grief for leaving Kara’s boots outside the hatch, and sleeping right through all the shouts and pounding before Hotdog finally ended up getting sent in first, one hand shielding his eyes just in case. But right now, Sam was ready for the first night of uninterrupted sleep he’d had since the worlds ended. It felt pretty good.
Continue to Part 2