BSG fic: Damn Near Useless Orange Baling Wire (Anders/Chief)
I don't know if you've noticed, but I've developed a raging crush on Galen Tyrol. :)
Title: Damn Near Useless Orange Baling Wire
Pairing: Anders/Chief
Rating: PG-13
Summary: post-"Crossroads, part two." Warning: perhaps a bit schmoopy, although I think the two of them would resent me using such a word (no matter if they are big, dumb, cuddly boys). 1650 words.
Note: I would never kill off a spouse unless it was necessary. For instance, my issues with Mrs. Tyrol are mine, and in general, if the Chief loves her, I reckon I gotta love her, too. Except, you know, when I need to slash her husband. Then I pretend "A Day in the Life" ended differently. :)
Damn Near Useless Orange Baling Wire
People think it's because Kara and Cally are dead. Maybe that's part of it (and maybe it's easier to think of it that way), but they (and only they) know there is something somehow bigger that counts for more. After all, when their wives were both gone on New Caprica and they were both numb with misery, they didn't turn to each other, even if it would have been instinctive if not easy.
Sam doesn't easily remember a lot of day-to-day details about the occupation, but he does remember one dim sun morning, long after Kara went missing but before Cally was taken in. He stood outside his tent, looking out over the landscape, and he lay a hand on Tyrol's back, but not in the typical and friendly way of two men who'd come to trust each other so implicitly, who spent long hours not talking about their hopes and doubts about the resistance (because they didn't have to say the words). His hand had been warm, shaky, but it ceased shaking when it settled against Tyrol's shoulder blade. Safe. Just for a moment. He knew Tyrol felt it, too. It never occurred to them to talk about it.
And it never occurs to him to even think about (much less dwell on) how he used to find himself really breathing deep only when Tyrol smiled. His smile always seemed to mean something-that they'd come through something, or that the world was settled enough (for that moment) that a reasonable man could open up his soul-just long enough to let the light in before he set his sights back on the reality stretching ahead of them, cold and dry and dark, like the dirt path through the city of tents.
When Sam thinks about that tent city of New Caprica, he feels and knows that his experience there wasn't like his on old Caprica had been, and the difference-the only thing that hasn't been sucked down into the swamp of decayed failure and surrender inside him (that he doesn't very often dare to look into)-is Galen Tyrol, his brown eyes and his steady hands. During those days, Sam thinks he learned from him things he didn't know about tenacity and honor, about how to survive and, beyond that, how to live.
The most important thing he learned from him was how to want a person and be content in that wanting. What he felt for Tyrol was something he didn't analyze and probably couldn't explain, even to himself. It was too big and pervasive to ever get outside of (despite their wives, despite the rescue) but too small and simple to ever require holding as proof (despite their loneliness, despite the danger). He just needed to be near him.
On good days, Sam was convinced there must have been a reason Tyrol stayed near, too, that maybe Sam fell into some (simple, perhaps, but fundamental) slot inside him that nobody else quite did. He was never sure, though, of anything except a tension that couldn't have been entirely one-sided. Back then, keeping the proper distance had been easy, because they were never really apart. Sam didn't need to have his hands on him as long as he could stay firmly in his orbit. Once they got back to Galactica, and they didn't live and work (survive) in such close quarters, he had the oddest sensations sometimes of needing to see him and wanting to do things to him he hadn't thought about before.
When they learned what they were, he thought he began to see (even if he didn't quite know what to do). They reasoned that maybe a part of them always knew, and that's why they fell together the way they did, then and now. Or maybe it was never supposed to be what it's become, and this strange and new lust is just a part of the programming. That thought makes Sam sick to his stomach sometimes, even though they've agreed: if they can just say they always wanted each other, maybe it would be okay. If it was still, not since. If it was for a long time, not suddenly now. Not because.
But always was just as much a problem, for very different reasons, so they said that it was because Kara and Cally were gone. It was just comfort. That was true enough, but it mattered more in the wake of the revelation than it did in the days after their wives died (even if that doesn't seem possible to Sam).
They hugged each other tightly only once that day the switch was flipped, but it became a habit in the days after (like it never quite had on New Caprica). Sam would collapse, sometimes, into his arms at odd hours of the day-with a bottle in his hand, in some dark corner of the hangar deck. They didn't kiss for days, even though Sam wanted to so badly it made him jittery sometimes. Once they started, they didn't stop. But even when they both ended up grasping at each other, hard and flushed and unsteady, it never occurred to them to frak.
The way things worked, it was never Tyrol who broke down and sought him out; it was always Sam who reached out and took him in his grasp-even after the panic had slowly but definitely turned into the kind of self-assurance he had never possessed before he knew the truth about himself. He only really understood how different it was for Tyrol the day the man slipped into his room, looking somehow small, weak. It made Sam nervous as hell. Protective.
"One day," Tyrol said without context or prelude. "There was one day, Sam."
"What?"
"On New Caprica. We were down in that cellar together, exhausted. You leaned against my shoulder while we watched the monitor. I wanted you to. I felt it, and I let myself feel it."
Everything went static in Sam's head and hot under his skin. His stomach turned, maybe flipped; he wasn't sure.
Tyrol continued: "It was the day we heard from Racetrack's raptor. Then there was no time to think and… After, I never…"
"It's okay."
Tyrol shook his head. He didn't say anything for a moment, then he said, "It was always there, wasn't it?"
Tyrol looked like he was about to slide away from himself, so Sam grabbed him by both sides of his face, his thumbs sweeping over his close-trimmed beard.
Sam said, "You already know that. But you tell me: did it ever feel like something we ought to make ourselves frakking sick over?"
He shook his head slowly.
Sam continued, "Then we don’t have to now, you understand?"
Tyrol nodded again, then he let Sam wrap him up in a quick but close hug. When Sam let him go, he drifted back toward the bed to sit down, and although they'd never been in this one, always in Tyrol's, they'd slept side-by-side so many times now. Here, on Galactica; never back then.
Here on Galactica, Sam bowed his head and swept a hand over his face (sure that whatever Tyrol meant, it still never added up to what Sam had felt back then), but as he raised his head, he found Tyrol turning and stepping back toward him. He held him tight until Sam thought he couldn't breathe anymore, but he wanted Tyrol to pull tighter. Sometimes, he was still convinced it would be easier if they could both just be crushed to pieces.
But in his ear, Tyrol said, "You keep me going. Every day. Do you know that? You always did."
When Tyrol released him from that crushing embrace, Sam held his face still and gave him a long, hard kiss on the mouth.
Sam said, "And here I was thinking that back on the ground, I would've clawed my way out of my skin without you there."
Tyrol's eyes went wide, skeptically surprised. He gave a stuttered laugh that reached his eyes for only a second before it faded away.
Sam smiled with a shake of his head, a little bewildered, too. Then he said, "Maybe it's… Well, remember the way the poles were in all the military tents, how they fit together at the top and propped each other up?"
"Starbuck was convinced the frakking thing would come down around you some night while you slept."
"But it didn't. Those poles worked just like they were engineered to."
Tyrol's eyes closed; Sam took a breath and held it.
Engineered.
Then Tyrol shook his head, smiling wistfully as he opened his eyes again. "Aren't you the one that tied them together with that damn near useless orange baling wire?"
He snorted out a laugh and shrugged. "I never did trust mechanical stuff. I mean, if it didn't all need a little human intervention, you wouldn't have a job."
Tyrol's hand came up and lay against his neck, and this time his smile really reached his eyes, although Sam would be damned if he knew why. Then his face darkened again as he mumbled, "I don't want to sleep."
Sam didn't ask if he was scared; they'd learned a million ways of saying it, and most of them without words. He used to think the word Cylon was as good a synonym for terror as he knew. That was before he became one. But that wasn't what was in Tyrol's eyes that day, at least not entirely (and for once, it wasn't easier for them to think of it as anything other than what it was).
When they fell together after the day the universe turned them inside out (Tyrol simply calls it the day we knew), it wasn't about Kara or Cally. Sam knows that now. It wasn't even about New Caprica or the Cylons. It wasn't all that simple, either, but at least it was something they didn't have to fight.
~
Title: Damn Near Useless Orange Baling Wire
Pairing: Anders/Chief
Rating: PG-13
Summary: post-"Crossroads, part two." Warning: perhaps a bit schmoopy, although I think the two of them would resent me using such a word (no matter if they are big, dumb, cuddly boys). 1650 words.
Note: I would never kill off a spouse unless it was necessary. For instance, my issues with Mrs. Tyrol are mine, and in general, if the Chief loves her, I reckon I gotta love her, too. Except, you know, when I need to slash her husband. Then I pretend "A Day in the Life" ended differently. :)
Damn Near Useless Orange Baling Wire
People think it's because Kara and Cally are dead. Maybe that's part of it (and maybe it's easier to think of it that way), but they (and only they) know there is something somehow bigger that counts for more. After all, when their wives were both gone on New Caprica and they were both numb with misery, they didn't turn to each other, even if it would have been instinctive if not easy.
Sam doesn't easily remember a lot of day-to-day details about the occupation, but he does remember one dim sun morning, long after Kara went missing but before Cally was taken in. He stood outside his tent, looking out over the landscape, and he lay a hand on Tyrol's back, but not in the typical and friendly way of two men who'd come to trust each other so implicitly, who spent long hours not talking about their hopes and doubts about the resistance (because they didn't have to say the words). His hand had been warm, shaky, but it ceased shaking when it settled against Tyrol's shoulder blade. Safe. Just for a moment. He knew Tyrol felt it, too. It never occurred to them to talk about it.
And it never occurs to him to even think about (much less dwell on) how he used to find himself really breathing deep only when Tyrol smiled. His smile always seemed to mean something-that they'd come through something, or that the world was settled enough (for that moment) that a reasonable man could open up his soul-just long enough to let the light in before he set his sights back on the reality stretching ahead of them, cold and dry and dark, like the dirt path through the city of tents.
When Sam thinks about that tent city of New Caprica, he feels and knows that his experience there wasn't like his on old Caprica had been, and the difference-the only thing that hasn't been sucked down into the swamp of decayed failure and surrender inside him (that he doesn't very often dare to look into)-is Galen Tyrol, his brown eyes and his steady hands. During those days, Sam thinks he learned from him things he didn't know about tenacity and honor, about how to survive and, beyond that, how to live.
The most important thing he learned from him was how to want a person and be content in that wanting. What he felt for Tyrol was something he didn't analyze and probably couldn't explain, even to himself. It was too big and pervasive to ever get outside of (despite their wives, despite the rescue) but too small and simple to ever require holding as proof (despite their loneliness, despite the danger). He just needed to be near him.
On good days, Sam was convinced there must have been a reason Tyrol stayed near, too, that maybe Sam fell into some (simple, perhaps, but fundamental) slot inside him that nobody else quite did. He was never sure, though, of anything except a tension that couldn't have been entirely one-sided. Back then, keeping the proper distance had been easy, because they were never really apart. Sam didn't need to have his hands on him as long as he could stay firmly in his orbit. Once they got back to Galactica, and they didn't live and work (survive) in such close quarters, he had the oddest sensations sometimes of needing to see him and wanting to do things to him he hadn't thought about before.
When they learned what they were, he thought he began to see (even if he didn't quite know what to do). They reasoned that maybe a part of them always knew, and that's why they fell together the way they did, then and now. Or maybe it was never supposed to be what it's become, and this strange and new lust is just a part of the programming. That thought makes Sam sick to his stomach sometimes, even though they've agreed: if they can just say they always wanted each other, maybe it would be okay. If it was still, not since. If it was for a long time, not suddenly now. Not because.
But always was just as much a problem, for very different reasons, so they said that it was because Kara and Cally were gone. It was just comfort. That was true enough, but it mattered more in the wake of the revelation than it did in the days after their wives died (even if that doesn't seem possible to Sam).
They hugged each other tightly only once that day the switch was flipped, but it became a habit in the days after (like it never quite had on New Caprica). Sam would collapse, sometimes, into his arms at odd hours of the day-with a bottle in his hand, in some dark corner of the hangar deck. They didn't kiss for days, even though Sam wanted to so badly it made him jittery sometimes. Once they started, they didn't stop. But even when they both ended up grasping at each other, hard and flushed and unsteady, it never occurred to them to frak.
The way things worked, it was never Tyrol who broke down and sought him out; it was always Sam who reached out and took him in his grasp-even after the panic had slowly but definitely turned into the kind of self-assurance he had never possessed before he knew the truth about himself. He only really understood how different it was for Tyrol the day the man slipped into his room, looking somehow small, weak. It made Sam nervous as hell. Protective.
"One day," Tyrol said without context or prelude. "There was one day, Sam."
"What?"
"On New Caprica. We were down in that cellar together, exhausted. You leaned against my shoulder while we watched the monitor. I wanted you to. I felt it, and I let myself feel it."
Everything went static in Sam's head and hot under his skin. His stomach turned, maybe flipped; he wasn't sure.
Tyrol continued: "It was the day we heard from Racetrack's raptor. Then there was no time to think and… After, I never…"
"It's okay."
Tyrol shook his head. He didn't say anything for a moment, then he said, "It was always there, wasn't it?"
Tyrol looked like he was about to slide away from himself, so Sam grabbed him by both sides of his face, his thumbs sweeping over his close-trimmed beard.
Sam said, "You already know that. But you tell me: did it ever feel like something we ought to make ourselves frakking sick over?"
He shook his head slowly.
Sam continued, "Then we don’t have to now, you understand?"
Tyrol nodded again, then he let Sam wrap him up in a quick but close hug. When Sam let him go, he drifted back toward the bed to sit down, and although they'd never been in this one, always in Tyrol's, they'd slept side-by-side so many times now. Here, on Galactica; never back then.
Here on Galactica, Sam bowed his head and swept a hand over his face (sure that whatever Tyrol meant, it still never added up to what Sam had felt back then), but as he raised his head, he found Tyrol turning and stepping back toward him. He held him tight until Sam thought he couldn't breathe anymore, but he wanted Tyrol to pull tighter. Sometimes, he was still convinced it would be easier if they could both just be crushed to pieces.
But in his ear, Tyrol said, "You keep me going. Every day. Do you know that? You always did."
When Tyrol released him from that crushing embrace, Sam held his face still and gave him a long, hard kiss on the mouth.
Sam said, "And here I was thinking that back on the ground, I would've clawed my way out of my skin without you there."
Tyrol's eyes went wide, skeptically surprised. He gave a stuttered laugh that reached his eyes for only a second before it faded away.
Sam smiled with a shake of his head, a little bewildered, too. Then he said, "Maybe it's… Well, remember the way the poles were in all the military tents, how they fit together at the top and propped each other up?"
"Starbuck was convinced the frakking thing would come down around you some night while you slept."
"But it didn't. Those poles worked just like they were engineered to."
Tyrol's eyes closed; Sam took a breath and held it.
Engineered.
Then Tyrol shook his head, smiling wistfully as he opened his eyes again. "Aren't you the one that tied them together with that damn near useless orange baling wire?"
He snorted out a laugh and shrugged. "I never did trust mechanical stuff. I mean, if it didn't all need a little human intervention, you wouldn't have a job."
Tyrol's hand came up and lay against his neck, and this time his smile really reached his eyes, although Sam would be damned if he knew why. Then his face darkened again as he mumbled, "I don't want to sleep."
Sam didn't ask if he was scared; they'd learned a million ways of saying it, and most of them without words. He used to think the word Cylon was as good a synonym for terror as he knew. That was before he became one. But that wasn't what was in Tyrol's eyes that day, at least not entirely (and for once, it wasn't easier for them to think of it as anything other than what it was).
When they fell together after the day the universe turned them inside out (Tyrol simply calls it the day we knew), it wasn't about Kara or Cally. Sam knows that now. It wasn't even about New Caprica or the Cylons. It wasn't all that simple, either, but at least it was something they didn't have to fight.
~