[bsg] all feelings but this one
Title: All Feelings But This One
Author: Claira
Summary: Backstory. Kara, Zak and Lee in 16,800 something words. In two parts because LJ won't actually let me post it all at once.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None whatsoever.
A/N: A HUGE thank you to bantha_fodder and brynnmck who put in the hard yards with it once I was done, and to those people who listened to me talk endlessly about it. sloanesomething, I'm looking at you.
*
One of the few things Kara hated about being a flight instructor was being rostered on for lock up. Especially when that included the simulation rooms, because that inevitably meant waiting and waiting for pilots to finish, or shutting down the power and kicking them out before they had completed their circuits, which certainly didn’t make her a popular person.
This particular day, however, there was only one screen that wasn’t blank, and she watched, curious, as the Viper on it tried to manoeuvre through one of the basic obstacle courses. It was doomed, she knew that even before the pilot tried a clumsy barrel roll, and it was no surprise to see the Viper hit the side of the tube and explode about three seconds later.
“Frak!” she heard from inside the closest sim, and she stepped over and rapped on the door.
It opened immediately, and the cadet flushed. “Sir! I’m sorry, I was just - “
“I know, I was watching.”
She looked him up and down; he was still in uniform, his dark hair damp with sweat. His face was unfamiliar to her, but that wasn’t surprising. A new semester had just started, and the school was full of new students, all of whom were still somehow getting lost between the dorms and their classes in the morning.
“Right. I’ll just get going then.” He started to clamber out of the sim.
She stopped him. “You know what you’re doing wrong?”
“Everything?” he said, with such a wry smile that she liked him on the spot.
“Well, close. What’s your name?”
“Zak. Zak Adama, Sir.”
“Well, Adama, for starters, you’re going too fast. Remember that your plane has momentum, so hold up on your thrusters. You’re using them too much.”
He nodded, his fingers tracing over the stick as if he wasn’t used to the feel of it. “Yes, Sir.”
“And anticipate the turn before you are there,” she added. “Try again.”
She closed the door on him and punched in the simulation, then stood back so she could watch his progress on the screen above his simulator. She’d chosen one of the two simplest courses, one she could have completed in less than thirty seconds, and she watched as he moved through it painfully slowly.
It was over two minutes before he finished, but he made it through with his Viper intact, and she thought she heard something like a whoop of exultation before the door slid open. He grinned up at her, running a hand through his hair.
“Well done,” she told him. “See what I mean?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Good. Now get out of here so I can lock up.”
He swung himself up and out of the simulator and saluted. “Good night, Sir. And thanks.”
“Good night, Adama,” she said, shutting down the main computer. “Oh - and I’m Starbuck.”
“I know,” he answered from the door, and then he was gone.
*
She pulled up his unofficial file the next day, flicking through the ‘A’s in the filing cabinet in the staffroom until she came to “Adama, Lee,” and “Adama, Zak”.
She took both their folders out. Lee, she remembered from the Academy; he had been a year older, but the top students were always known at least by name to each other, and Lee Adama had been no exception. If anything, they’d been compared so often she’d gone out of her way to avoid him.
His folder was brimming with flight reports and assignment sheets and she read a couple out of curiosity; natural, shows intuition and leadership, style and flair in the cockpit. Nothing she hadn’t had on hers.
Then she picked up the second file. “Zak Adama” was written neatly across the front, and then, in brackets, Husker’s kid. The initial reports he’d received had the same phrases over and over; trying hard, landings need work, and one, a confidential first assessment, had ‘doesn’t have the talent of his family’ in Triplecheck’s neat print, followed by ‘won’t make Vipers’.
“What are you looking at?” Triplecheck asked, coming in to the staffroom with a mug in one hand and sheaf of papers in the other.
“The Adamas,” she replied, as he sat down at the table and drained the last of his coffee.
“Ah, Zak. Why the interest?”
“I saw him practicing in the sims last night.”
“I’ve caught him doing that twice already. How was he?”
“Crap.”
Triplecheck nodded. “Yeah. Commander Adama’s son. Not like he has any pressure on him.” He took an apple out of the fruit bowl and bit into it. “Poor kid. He won’t make it, but it’s not through lack of trying.”
“It’s only been two weeks,” she retorted. “Don’t you think that’s a bit of a premature assumption?”
“When you’ve been a flight instructor as long as I have, Starbuck, you’ll be able to pick them.” He leaned over her, still chewing, and stole a piece of her chocolate. “See you after 201 - meeting in the mess.”
She nodded, watched him leave the room and then picked up Zak Adama’s file yet, studied the three words that made up Triplecheck’s prediction for his future.
*
It took her a good half hour to track him down, which was surprising given it wasn’t one of the biggest flight schools. She went through the mess hall, the quad and was finally directed to the library and she’d walked through three of the levels before she finally found him. He was sitting against the wall at the end of one of the aisles with the Basic Flight manual open on his lap.
He started to get to his feet when he saw her approaching, but she waved him back down. “Adama.”
“Sir?”
“Meet me at the sims, 2130. I’m your new flight coach.”
He looked disbelieving for a moment, and then a grin spread across his face.
“Thanks, Sir,” he said. “I’ll be there, Sir.”
She nodded. “Cadet,” and spun on her heel. He had a cute smile, she decided. Not that she’d noticed.
*
It wasn’t until the third week in a row that he was anything less than twenty minutes early, and she quickly found out that what he lacked in talent, he made up for in effort alone. She’d never taught a student with so much intensity when it came to learning who was so totally devoid of natural talent, and she found herself reluctantly agreeing with Triplecheck’s assessment of him.
Every week, she kept planning to tell him that it had been the last training session, but the gratitude in his eyes always made the words stick in her throat, and gave her some idea of how it felt, being in the shadow of his father and brother.
She was trying to talk him through the perfect barrel roll when he interrupted her in the middle of a sentence.
“What’s your real name?”
“What?”
“Well, it’s not Starbuck.”
She paused. “Ace it this time and I’ll tell you, Adama,” she replied, not expecting anything of the sort, given he’d flunked it every time he’d done it in the session.
This time, however, he nearly, nearly pulled it off, and when he opened the door he was looking so pleased with himself that she didn’t have the heart to argue and insist that his barrel roll wouldn’t have passed any exam.
“So?”
“It’s Kara. Kara Thrace.”
“Kara. Pretty.” He smiled, and she felt a wave of warmth run right down to her toes. “It suits you.”
“Charmer.”
“Honest.”
She rolled her eyes and couldn’t help smiling back. “Tell anyone - “
“And you’ll make me suffer. I know.”
“You learn fast. I like that.”
The weekly lessons soon became routine, and one month passed, then two. His progress was slow, painfully so, but it was progress at least, and his reports were dotted with phrases like improving and landings more solid now.
She got to know the way he laughed, the way he held his jaw when he was concentrating. She learnt about his family - listened to endless stories about his brother, heard the same few about his father over and over.
They spent time discussing things that were apparently deeply important; one day, when they were smoking in the darkness after Kara had locked up, he found out she hated fishing and simply couldn’t believe it.
“What do you mean, Kara?”
“It’s stupid. You sit in a boat for six hours with a hook in the water. Spare me.”
He waved his hand around, the cigarette tracing a glowing path in the air. “It’s more than that.”
“Yeah. Sleep. That’s about it.”
“It is being at one with nature.”
She laughed. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It is not. It’s the best sport in the world. After pyramid,” he amended, caching her glare and she grinned, blew out a breath of smoke.
“Nice save, Adama.”
She almost didn’t notice she got home just a little later every week.
*
Kara was in the middle of a mock argument with Triplecheck over lunch, fighting off teasing insinuations about her flying ability, when there was a soft knock on the staffroom door.
Nova yanked it open and put her hands on her hips. “What do you want?” she demanded imperiously and then cracked up at the startled look on Zak’s face. “Who would you like to speak to, Adama?” she said, going back to her normal voice, and he grinned.
“Starbuck, Sir.”
Kara got up, ignored Nova’s curious look in her direction, and stepped outside the staffroom.
“Adama?”
“I won’t be able to make the session tonight,” he said. “I’m sorry - my father’s dropping on his way back to his ship, and I only found out today - “
“Oh.” She felt a sudden rush of disappointment. He was studying her carefully. “That’s fine,” she said, with a smile. “I understand. Is next week okay?”
“Well,” he said, “If you didn’t mind - I could come tomorrow night. If you didn’t have anything else.”
She didn’t care if she did. “I’ll see you then.”
*
Two weeks later, he had his first really abysmal session.
“Spit it out, Adama,” she said finally, as his distraction cost him another Viper and he wasn’t at all interested in listening to her lecture about his turning.
“Sir?”
“Your flying’s been off all day. What’s bugging you?”
He seemed to hesitate, and then he shrugged and pulled something white out of his pocket. “Happy birthday,” he said, holding out an envelope.
It caught her completely by surprise. “How did you know?”
“You’ll have to work that out,” he said, as she turned it over and over in her hands. “Go on. Open it.”
She slit the top with her fingernail, and pulled the two pieces of paper out, and laughed. Two tickets for Caprica verses Sagittaron at the Agacantheon Center, good seats in the first tier, right on the halfway line.
“How did you know?”
“Kara, you’re obsessed with that team.”
“That’s because they’ve got the best shooters Caprica has had in years.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, sounding long-suffering, and she laughed again and gave him a quick hug.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
They stood there, grinning at each other.
“So,” she said finally.
“So…?”
“You bought me two tickets?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to go alone.” He was desperately trying not to look hopeful.
She grinned, folded one of the tickets and slipped it into his pocket.
“Meet you at 1800 sharp, Adama, Barter Street Gate.”
“Sir,” he said and saluted, his eyes sparkling, and she turned on her heel and left the room before the grin on her face got any wider.
*
Summer came with a vengeance and the sims room was stuffy and smelled of sweat even at ten at night. They finished twenty minutes early, mostly because Zak refused point blank to spend one more moment in a cockpit and she couldn’t be bothered arguing with him.
“Gods, it’s sweltering,” she said, draining the last of her water. It was lukewarm, tasted metallic and she pulled a face and worked at not spitting it out.
“Hey, you haven’t been stuck in a sim for the last half hour,” he told her. “There’s no air intake in those things and you know it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The material of her tanks was sticking to her like glue and she rolled her shoulders, arched her back and tried to get rid of the stubborn aches from too many hours in the cockpit. “It shouldn’t be this hot, especially this late.”
“Hold still,” he said, and then he was kneading the muscles across the top of her shoulders, his thumbs digging in with just the right amount of pressure.
“Oh,” she breathed out, letting her head fall forward. “How good would a beer be right now?”
“Tell me about it,” he said absentmindedly, and then his hands stopped moving for a moment. “I know the perfect place.”
And there it was, the tiniest hint of a challenge, and she hesitated because she’d had the feeling this whole thing was moving towards something she wasn’t ready to face, ever since they’d spent three hours walking home from the pyramid game when it only took about twenty minutes.
“Right,” she said, finally, because she was Starbuck and Starbuck was not a coward. “Then let’s go.”
*
The perfect place turned out to be a cheap looking dive quite close to her apartment block. The bouncer greeted him by name and waved him inside. Zak had her fingers tight in his and he led her straight to the bar, didn’t give her time to think, escape.
“Good day?” the bartender asked.
“Better than most,” Zak replied, while Kara looked around, studying the walls, the crowd of people packing every booth, spilling out onto the dance floor.
“Who’s your friend?”
“This is - “ Zak looked at her, and then back at the bartender. “Jim, this is Kara.”
Jim slid a drink across the counter. “Kara. Pretty name.” She reached for her wallet and he shook his head. “On the house.”
“Thank you.” She smiled, watched as Jim filled a glass with beer for Zak and pushed it towards him. Zak picked it up, just as someone sang out “Yo, Adama!” from behind them.
A group over in one booth was waving, and Zak grinned back. “Come meet some people,” he said, and dragged her over to the table.
He introduced her to his friends; she didn’t recognise one of the faces, and wondered how he got to know them, wondered why the pilots were so conspicuously lacking. He kept his hand on the small of her back the entire time, his thumb rubbing the skin in between her jeans and shirt.
Zak bought the second round, she paid for the third and things got a little blurry around the fourth. All she was really conscious of was the way he was looking at her, how she got a flash of heat low in her stomach every time his fingers brushed hers. By the fifth, she was aching to feel those hands on her skin, taste that mouth and she dragged him out onto the dance floor, into the crowd of people.
The smell of sweat and beer was heavy in the air, the floor wet with spilled alcohol and she put her hands on his shoulders, moved in so her hips were swaying lightly against his with every beat of the music. “Kara,” he said, his lips touching her ear and it wasn’t enough, and she traced her hands down his arms and twisted her fingers into his belt loops, pulled him closer.
*
Kara didn’t quite know how they made the progression from dancing to kissing to slamming into the cushions of her couch because they couldn’t make the extra meters to her bedroom. She also knew there were many reasons, good reasons, as to why they shouldn’t be doing this, but he was kissing her like he wanted no one else, almost reverently and her body arched involuntarily and she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning as his hand traced a path from her hip bone to her thigh.
*
She woke up completely disoriented, half crushed into the back of a couch by a warm, muscular back.
Her couch, she realised slowly, which was strange. She never brought anyone back to her apartment.
The hand on her stomach shifted and she tensed.
She rolled over to face him.
“Morning,” he said, his fingers beating out a random rhythm along her side that made it really hard to think.
“Look, Zak, this was fun, but - ”
He laughed, and the sound was so unexpected she lost what she was about to say.
“But it can’t happen again, it was just a release of tension, we can still be friends - yeah, I’ve heard it all before, Kara.”
She smiled in spite of herself, planted a palm on his chest and pushed him a little further away. “Then let me up, Adama, since I clearly don’t need to say anything more.”
“Sure.” He shifted, and she clambered awkwardly over the top of him, and then realised exactly what a position she had put herself into, with the bedroom a good couple of meters away and the warm sunlight brightening the room. It didn’t help that he was already staring at her, tilting his head with the faintest of smirks.
It sent a shiver of heat down her spine, and she leant over and grabbed some clothes off the floor, flung him his boxers and pulled his T-shirt over her head. It just covered everything. It also smelled like his sweat, deodorant and that was distracting, and she couldn’t help remembering the way she’d pulled it off him the night before, desperate to get her hands on his skin.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I’m going to shower,” she told him. “I’m sure you have somewhere to be.”
Once the water was on, she sagged against the wall and tried to tell herself that she hadn’t wanted this.
*
When she emerged in sweats and a t-shirt, finger combing her hair, he hadn’t left. He was cooking breakfast in his boxers, and the sight was so incongruous that she laughed.
“Can’t you take a hint?” she told him, walking into the kitchen.
He held up his hands. “You were in my shirt!”
She slapped it over his shoulder. “There.”
“Keep it,” he told her, and added, with a smirk, “It looked good on you.”
She sent him a glare that normally froze the heart of the bravest nugget. He grinned at her.
“Are you trying to make this difficult?”
He opened her pantry, and picked up her bottle of instant coffee with a look of disgust. “Is this all the coffee you have?”
She took the bottle off him and put it down on the counter. Leaned against the fridge and mentally ran through the rules of Starbuck One Night Stands. She thought, on first count, she’d broken at least ten of the twelve, starting with don’t frak people you have to work with, moving through never bring then back to your own apartment, and finishing with never, ever stay for breakfast.
“Zak, I am your flight instructor.”
“It’s not against regulations.”
“Bullshit. I’m your superior officer.”
“I’m not in your direct line of command. If I was in any of your classes, it would be different, but as it is…”
She shook her head, couldn’t help the grin. “When exactly did you do all of that research?”
“A while ago,” he said evasively, moving towards her, backing her into the fridge door. “Is that the only problem you have?”
It wasn’t, she had many, but it was getting hard to think with him so close. “Don’t you have class, or something?” she managed, with her hands braced on his chest.
“No,” he said, and his tongue flicked out against the skin of her neck and she shivered, fingers flexing on warm skin. “Don’t you?”
“Not until later.”
“Good.”
*
It was hard at flight school, seeing him lying in the sun on the quad, passing him in the library or pushing in front of him in the lunch line, and not being able to acknowledge him beyond a nod and quick smile.
She didn’t quite know why they were keeping it such a secret, but part of it was that she didn’t know if she would be able to continue training him if the other instructors found out, and as she couldn’t work that question into a casual conversation, she said nothing at all. She wasn’t willing to bet Zak’s future as a pilot on a hunch, and she had no illusions as to his chances if she didn’t help him.
On the other hand, she’d never been so profoundly grateful a student hadn’t been placed in her classes.
*
“Adama, Adama.”
“Just the person we’ve been looking for.”
Kara watched with interest as Saunders, Owen and Messenger took up positions around Zak at a table in the mess. He had his back to her, and she didn’t think he knew she was there.
“Who is she?”
“Who is who?” she heard him answer.
“The woman that keeps you out of the dorms.”
“And don’t deny it.”
“I’m not denying it.”
There was a sound of palms slapping together, and Owens said “I knew it!” triumphantly.
“So who is she?” Saunders was leaning over the table, her chin resting on one hand, head tilted to one side.
“That, I’m not telling.”
“Why? Is she married?”
“I bet she’s married.”
“Or, she’s really, really ugly.”
“Dean!”
“What?” Owen said unrepentantly. “I just said what we were all thinking. Ow, Kelly!”
“So. Is she?”
“What?” Kara could tell by Zak’s tone that he was getting frustrated, and she got to her feet and made her way over to the table.
“Is she ugly?”
There was a slight pause, and then Zak said “No”, so emphatically that all three antagonists were silent and Kara chose that moment to cough politely. She saw his back stiffen for an instant before he turned and saluted with the others.
“Nuggets,” she said, nodding her head at them. “Adama, a word?”
He pushed his chair back, followed her a little way away. She could see the group over his shoulder, all carefully not looking at them both.
“Sir?”
“I’m going to be about half an hour late for sims tonight.”
He nodded. “2200, then?”
“See you then.”
“Yes, Sir.” And he grinned - nothing that would break regulation - and she had to fight the smile, fight the urge to reach out and brush the crumb of bread from the front of his tanks.
“Dismissed,” she said instead, and turned to pick her stuff up off the table, lingering long enough to hear Zak’s chair grate on the concrete floor as he sat back down.
“What did God want?” Saunders asked. “Lords, she’s a bitch.”
“Training session,” Zak answered shortly, and then she was out of ear-shot.
*
“Saunders has a thing for you,” she said later, when they were sitting on her tiny excuse for a balcony.
“She does not.”
“She does.” She ground out her cigarette and blew out the last breath of smoke into the cool night air.
“You were listening the whole time, weren’t you?”
“It’s possible.”
He laughed, and she felt it from where her back was pressed against his chest. “I knew it.”
There was a moment of silence.
“She’s a bitch, you know.”
“Who?”
“Saunders.”
She shrugged, still seeing the pretty brunette tilting her head at him over the table. His arms tightened around her waist.
“And you’re way hotter,” he said, sounding so smug that she laughed.
*
Soon, the weekend meant at least one night out at the bar with Zak, playing triad with his friends (he was excellent at it, she found, which surprised her given how normally she found it easy read him), drinking (sometimes a little too much), and dancing, her hips swinging against his in time with the music from the live band, and laughing as Fowler and Gilbert made up ridiculous actions to match the lyrics. All which inevitably led to waking up the next morning, her legs tangled in his, wrapped up in him so securely she couldn’t tell who didn’t want to let who go.
He was making her bed one morning when he knocked over the things on her bedside table with a pillow. She flinched. “Be careful,” she said quickly, as he picked her idols and weighed them in his hands, studying the carving.
“They’re beautiful,” he said. “Where did you get them?”
“Messena.” She took them out of his hands, and he watched her run her fingers lightly over Aphrodite and Artemis, wiping them free of the tiny film of dust that had collected overnight.
“You really believe, don’t you?”
She shrugged and placed them carefully back on their stand. “You do when it’s all you have left.”
She left for the shower before he had time to say anything.
*
The knocking on her door woke her up at just past two in the morning - loud, obnoxious knocking that went on and on as she stumbled across the living room, snapping the kitchen light on and wrenching the door open.
Zak was standing there, his shirt torn in three places and smudged with dirt, blood all over his face. He was also grinning wildly. “Kara!”
“Shut up, you moron, there are people trying to sleep.”
“Oh, sorry,” he said, as she pulled him inside and shut the door.
“Gods, what happened to you?”
His nose was still bleeding. “Shit. I’m dripping on your floor.”
“It’s seen worse.” She handed him the tissue box. “Now what happened?”
He grinned, holding tissues to his nose. “Well, I was at Gailey’s, you know? Playing triad, and I got into a fight.”
“Never would have guessed.”
“He was cheating, Kara.”
She was grinning ear to ear. “Lords, how much have you had?”
The look on his face very, very guilty. “Don’t answer,” she said, laughing, and slung one arm around his waist, half dragged him across the hallway and shoved him inside the bathroom. “Get in, shower, and call me if you think you’re going to die.”
“You’re so good to me.”
She laughed again, rummaging through her drawers for some of his clothes. The water went on and he started whistling, and after a moment she recognised it as one of the drinking chants of the pilots.
She shook her head. “When you’re done - are you listening?”
The whistling stopped. “Yeah?”
“When you’re done, your clothes are here.”
By the time she’d finished cleaning up the floor, located her packet of painkillers and had rinsed the worst of the blood and dirt out of his shirt, leaving it to soak, everything was silent.
“Zak?” She flicked the kitchen lights out and paused in the doorway of her bedroom.
He’d passed out on the precise middle of her bed. She bit back a smile, shook her head and watched him sleep for a moment, studied the curve of his back, the way he had the sheets bunched in one hand, the line of his cheekbone, sharp in the moonlight.
Then she clambered gingerly in beside him, tried to nudge him over so she got more room. “Throw up on me and die, Adama,” she whispered, wrestling back some of the bedding and he shifted, threw an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him.
“Love you,” he said sleepily, and she stiffened, looked at him in shock, but he was already drifting off again, completely unaware of what he’d said.
She went to sleep counting all the reasons why he shouldn’t.
*
She thought about it for a week straight and avoided him. Luckily, it was a week where he was almost as busy as she was, coming into exams so it wasn’t completely out of place, but it only took three days for her to work out how insidiously he’d crept under her skin.
Every morning she woke up looking for him, her arm sweeping through the covers, trying to find his warmth. She couldn’t stop thinking about him - in the morning, missing his off-key whistling as he made breakfast, and when she found things he’d snuck into her apartment that she’d never really noticed - the razor, the toothbrush, a bottle of his favourite brand of coffee. The half finished crossword lying on her counter, ripped out of the Caprica City Daily.
It took her another week to realise that just maybe she was in love with him, and that thought terrified her almost as much as she missed him, maybe more.
Her living room floor was a maze of student evaluation reports, and she was just finishing up marking the written tests when the door opened. She looked up, and he was standing there, leaning against the doorway and she couldn’t help the grin that exploded across her face at the sight of him, the feeling of things clicking back into place.
“Hi, honey.”
“Gods, you know I hate that.”
He laughed. “Okay.” He picked his way gingerly across the floor, moved a stack onto the couch and sat down next to her, placed a hand on the other side of her body so she was trapped. “What would you prefer? My darling? My precious?”
She made a gagging sound. Zak laughed, leant in and kissed her quickly. “Oh, wait. I’ve got it. My girl.”
She tried to shove him away. “No frakking way.”
He grinned then, kissed her again but longer and deeper, his tongue sliding across her bottom lip, his fingers twisting in her hair. She curled her hand around the back of his neck and tried to pull him even closer.
“Miss me?” he murmured, in between kisses.
“Not a bit.”
That made him smirk against her mouth, and then he pulled away.
She made a low sound of frustration. “Why are you stopping?”
“Remember when I said you needed to meet my brother?”
“Mmm?” She trailed a hand down his back, pulled at the back of his jeans. Danced her fingertips across the strip of skin showing.
“Kara, stop that. He’s on holidays, and we’re going out for dinner.”
“That’s fine.”
“In half an hour.”
“What? Now?” She sat up straighter. “Why didn’t you give me some warning?”
“Relax.” He ruffled her hair and attempted to get up. “We’re not going anywhere classy.”
“Zak - I -” She ran a hand through her hair, tried to settle it back down and quell the sudden rush of nervousness. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“You won’t be.”
“You haven’t seen him in months - “
“Kara.” His eyes were dark, full of warmth and security, and one of his hands was just touching her waist. “I want him to meet you.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Good.” He grinned at her, and she hooked her arms around him and let him pull her up. Leant into him and remembered something else she’d missed. “So. Half an hour.”
His look was wary. “Kara...”
She studied him carefully. “I need a shower.” She dragged her nails down the front of his chest, ignored his still damp hair and the smell of soap on his skin. “So do you.”
He’d always been a pushover.
*
They were only ten minutes late, which was pretty good, she thought, given all they’d managed to do in that time, but Lee was standing outside the restaurant and as they approached, he tapped his watch and grinned.
“Late again, Zak,” he said, but affectionately, and she played with the zipper of her jacket as the two men hugged, slapped each other on the back. She was nervous, which she resented; she hadn’t been nervous about anything for at least two years, but meeting Zak’s brother had her hands sweating.
“Lee, this is Kara,” Zak said, and she stepped forward and studied the man she’d heard so much about. He looked nothing like Zak, she decided - roughly the same height, but Lee was slimmer, paler, with sharper features. He offered his hand, and she took it. His grip was warm.
“Apollo.” She smiled. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Oh, really?” He looked over at Zak, who grinned and held up his hands.
“Hey, nothing but positive from me.”
“So you’re the mighty Starbuck.” He smiled, blue eyes sparkling. “Are all the stories true?”
“Depends on which ones you’ve been listening to,” she said with a grin, and then Zak’s stomach rumbled and they all laughed.
Dinner turned out remarkably well; Lee’s sense on humour turned out to be exactly that of Zak’s, only with a slightly sharper edge, and she relaxed and listened as the two of them bounced off each other, listened to Lee’s stories about War College and Zak’s stories about flight school, most of which she’d heard.
When Zak left to find out what had happened to their desserts, she fell into easy conversation with Lee about the Academy and by the time Zak returned triumphant, dragging a waiter behind him, they’d discovered six lecturers they had had in common and were discussing the simulators in the flight hall, laughing about the faulty one that often turned the left screen off at the worst possible moment.
Three hours flew by.
“I’m glad you get along,” Zak told her afterwards, hovering outside the restaurant as Lee got into the car.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She laughed, pulled his head down and kissed him thoroughly, until a cough behind them startled them apart.
“When you’re done,” Lee said, leaning out of the window and she could hear the laughter in his voice, “some of us would like to get home before it’s morning.”
Zak rolled his eyes. “See what I had to live with?”
*
The next day, they went to one of the parks down by the river and bought lunch from the food stalls along the walkway. They ended up sprawled on the lawn, with Zak and Lee trading childhood stories, much to Kara’s amusement. The similarities between them became more apparent the more she saw them together; the way they walked, their intonation pattern when they were exaggerating. Which seemed to happen a lot.
“Anyway, Zak climbs the tree, right, and being the genius he is, he stands right underneath the nest and smashes it with his toy shovel. Ants come raining down out of the sky, all over him - “
“- and you can see that Lee’s still not sorry - “
“- and the next minute Zak’s screaming - “
“- those things frakking bite, Lee - “
“- and Mom came running out, and Zak blamed me - “
“- you deserved it - “
“ - and I wound up grounded for a month,” Lee finished, punching Zak lightly on one arm.
“Yeah. Good story,” Zak told him. “Really heroic,” and Kara laughed, settled her head more comfortably in Zak’s lap as Lee lay down and threw one arm over his eyes. The sun was warm on her face, the sky dotted with clouds; a perfect day on Caprica.
There was a moment of relaxed silence.
"It's strange, isn't it?" she said. "That we fly up there? It looks so blue."
"You and your Vipers.” Lee grinned at her, rolled a little onto his side. "You should be dating one of them instead of my brother."
"Hey, I'm not the one who named my Viper," she retorted.
He threw a twig at her. “Now, how did you hear about that?”
“God knows all.”
“Then you should know as well as I do that was a complete misunderstanding.”
She snapped the twig in two and sent both pieces flying back, laughing as he tried to break the tiny pieces in half again.
“Oh?” Zak said from above her. “I think I like the sound of this story.”
“It is a good one. So, the scene: this is in his last year - “
“Zak, this is all hearsay - “
“Whatever. So, Lee found a practice Viper that he stuck to, right?”
“Like most of us did.”
“Who is telling the story, Apollo?”
“There is no story. Besides, didn’t you name yours?”
“Yes. But I didn’t name him after who I was frakking at the time.”
Zak snorted with laughter. “He didn’t.”
“Apparently, it was something about the way the Viper moved.” She smiled innocently at Lee. “Not that I would know.”
Lee’s face was slowly flushing bright red. “That’s all over exaggerated and you know it, Starbuck.”
She sent him a quick grin. “I do miss actually flying, though,” she told him. “I miss that about the Academy. I rarely go up without the cadets and they kinda cramp my style.”
Lee laughed, and she caught Zak’s hand before he could poke her, and smiled up at him.
“I know what you mean, though.” She looked over, and Lee was lying on his back, looking up into the sky. “If I don’t get up there once a week, I feel like I’m in a cage, or something.” He paused, and then shrugged a little. “That sounds stupid.”
“No, it’s not.”
He glanced over at her. His eyes were exactly the colour of the sky overhead.
Zak laughed, shaking his head. "You are both as bad as each other," he said affectionately, reaching down and pushing her hair off her forehead.
*
“So, which one of you is the best pilot?”
She was surprised, really, that Zak hadn’t asked the question earlier, given how she and Lee had been trading battle stories for the last four days. However, she was impressed with how innocent he sounded. He’d been spoiling for this fight for a long time.
“I am,” she said, and Lee raised his eyebrows.
“I think our grades would beg to differ, Starbuck.”
“Oh, you can out-history me any day, Apollo. But in the air, well...” Kara cleaned the ice-cream off her spoon, swirling her tongue just so, smiled wickedly at Zak as he stared at her mouth. “There’s only one thing for it. Take you on, Adama?”
Lee was looking at her as if he couldn’t quite collect his thoughts.
“Lee? Are you game?”
“On,” he answered finally. “But it’s late. Sims won’t be open.”
“I’m an instructor, Lee. I have the keys. Coming?”
He was already shoving his chair back. Zak shook his head, didn’t move from the table.
“Get up,” Lee said, cuffing his shoulder as he passed.
“There’s this show on Channel 11 - “
Kara pulled him up by his shirt. “You’re coming. I want you there when I kick your brother’s ass.”
“And I want you there when I prove your girlfriend a liar,” Lee retorted, from where he was bent over pulling on his socks.
Zak groaned.
“Hey, you started this,” she told him, as Zak’s jacket flew through the air and landed on the table. “Bring the last of the ice cream if you’re that miserable.”
*
They didn’t need her keys, in the end; Nova and Triplecheck were already there, and Zak let go of her hand instantly, stepped a little further away from her as Triplecheck and Nova greeted Lee.
“So, what are you all doing here at this hour?” Nova said, when Triplecheck had finished a one minute interrogation of Lee about War College.
“Same thing you are, I think,” Kara replied. “Apollo here claims he’s the better pilot.”
Triplecheck laughed. “Oh, this I want to see.”
Nova nudged Triplecheck with her arm. “I’ve got a better idea. You think we can take the Academy’s hotshot pilots?”
“They wouldn’t stand a chance.” Triplecheck grinned, linked his fingers and flexed them dramatically. “You guys on?”
Kara looked at Lee. He nodded, and there was a look in his eyes she recognised well, and her heart started beating just a little faster. “Viper-Viper or Viper-Cylon?”
“Viper-Viper.”
“Fairer.”
“Fine with me. Lee?”
“Done.”
Zak had sunk down onto the couches in the corner and was lying stretched out, hands behind his head. “Don’t mind me,” he said to no one in particular. “I’ll just be asleep over here.”
Kara threw her keys at him, and he caught them with one hand, grinned, and she turned back to the computer and started entering the settings. “You better be as good as they say you are, Adama,” she told Lee, out of the side of her mouth. “Or I’ll never live this down.”
“Just don’t get blown up on me, Thrace.” She looked up and he smirked at her. “I don’t want to have to win this by myself.”
Zak snorted with laughter from the couch, and she was trying to think of the perfect response when Triplecheck interrupted.
“When you two are ready,” he called from his sim, “Some of us here would like to kick your ass.”
They both laughed, and she punched in the last code with a flourish.
*
Triplecheck and Nova were good, Kara thought, as the four Vipers lifted into the air, and this was going to be a tough battle. They had decided on a five minute no-fire time, to get used to the terrain and to their partners - Kara knew it was to Nova and Triplecheck’s advantage, because they’d been flight partners for longer than she’d been a pilot.
The rainforest was misty, dense with trees, and she knew a river curved through the forest at some point, and there was a beach somewhere and a steep mountainside around as well, but it wasn’t a topography she was familiar with; the mist made it harder for students so she rarely used the simulation.
“Okay, Apollo,” she told him. “The mist is going to make visibility poor, and - “
“Thanks for that insight, Starbuck, I never would have worked that out.”
“What I was going to say, if you’d let me finish, is that Triplecheck and Nova use this simulation a lot, and they tend to ambush rather than play hide and seek.”
He didn’t question her. “We need some way of using that to our advantage.”
The next few minutes went quickly as they discussed tactics and got their bearings; rainforest ending on beachfront there, the river curved through a gorge here, and when the five minute signal beeped, she realised she hadn’t seen the movement of Triplecheck and Nova for at least four of them.
“How good are these two?” Lee asked.
“They’re like Fox and Switchblade,” she said, remembering the two lectures at the Academy who had been average pilots alone but almost unbeatable together.
“Right,” he said. “So what’s the - frak, I can’t see them on dradis.”
She checked hers. “How the hell did that happen?”
“I don’t know. There must be a blind spot somewhere.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Frak, there is.”
“What?”
“There’s this ridge that drops away really steeply, like a gorge, along one of these mountains.” The silence that followed that was accusatory. “I forgot!”
“You forgot?”
“Excuse me for not memorizing all two hundred simulations!”
“Well, which way were they moving?”
“Left, but that means nothing,” she said, wracking her brains for the location. She looked around, but nothing looked familiar. “Where are they?” she said, almost to herself as she flew over the strange looking peak of one mountain and took almost one second too long to work it out, remembering at the last moment the steep fall-away on the other side of the tree line.
“Shit, they’re going to bounce us. Apollo!”
“Copy that. Frak. Get DOWN!”
Two Vipers came flashing up over the ridge, fast and at such a steep angle she couldn’t get a firing solution on them. She saw Lee disappear into the tree line under heavy fire, and heard a string of curses, every god from Ares to Zeus included.
She had no choice, dipped into the canopy and flew as low as she could as Triplecheck and Nova almost pulled out the perfect ambush, the branches of trees smacking into the glass of the cockpit and making it even harder to see.
“Frak. Frakfrakfrak.” She rolled her Viper viciously out of the way off one tree and risked rising about the treetops, ducking down again in an instant when Triplecheck fired a burst at her. “Come on, Lee, we’re better than this!”
“You think of something!”
“Mine Shaft?”
“Too predictable. Burton Wheel?”
“Wrong terrain.” She could just make out the movement of his Viper to the left, through the treetops and the mist. “Need less coverage.”
He laughed, and the sound was so relaxed that she felt the tension leave her body in one warm wave. “What we need is something they haven’t seen.”
“There isn’t much they haven’t seen, Apollo,” she told him, losing her sentence in a flurry of fire as Triplecheck’s Viper was momentarily visible. “Anything.”
“Got it,” he answered, after a moment. “Theban Feint.”
She racked her brain for it, mentally flipping the pages of the course textbook.
“It’s not textbook,” Lee said, as if reading her mind, and then the manoeuvre flashed into her head. “That’s why it stands a chance. You know, the one where - “
“I’ve got it.” she replied. “Okay, we need to circle back - “
“I know,” he cut her off. “I’ll take left.”
They set it up carefully; Lee circled low to the left, her to the right, splitting the attention of Nova and Triplecheck and swinging around at the same speed.
“Who is feinting?”
“You want it?”
“Frak yes,” she said, and he laughed. “Are you ready?”
“When you are.”
“Go!”
They both rose from the canopy at the same instant, circling up and around in opposite directions, drawing a tight circle around the red-striped Vipers, rising higher and higher and taking the two with them.
“Come on,” she whispered, slowing down, banking towards one of the Vipers - Triplecheck’s, she guessed, she recognised his style. “Take the bait. Come on come on - “
And then it happened; Triplecheck fired a burst, she rolled, and her wing was singed and smoking.
“Now,” Lee yelled, and she angled the nose of her Viper towards to the ground, cut off most of the power and let gravity tug her Viper into the perfect death spiral, shallow at first and then faster and deeper until the green of the tree tops was rushing up towards her.
She could hear Lee breathing hard with the effort of keeping out of the fire of two Vipers, and she flexed her fingers around the stick, tried to stop herself from getting dizzy and losing her bearing.
“A little help up here, Starbuck,” he snapped. She could hear the bursts of fire in the background.
“Yeah, yeah, coming,” she retorted. “You better have them in the right frakking place.”
The exact moment before the spiral went from being controlled to free falling, she punched on the power, wrenched back the stick and raised the nose enough to pull her out. The Viper shuddered beneath her, and she put it through a tight 270 and hit the thrusters to send her straight back upwards so fast that she was slammed back into the seat, so hard it was difficult to breathe. Lee had done his job perfectly, lured both Nova and Triplecheck into formation directly above her, and the two Vipers were black shadows against the sky; perfect targets.
“Took your time,” he said, as she opened fire, and she watched Nova’s Viper blow up, shrapnel raining down into the forest. Triplecheck was quicker, and managed to angle his Viper towards her, but she was flying so fast she was up and over him before he fired. Lee swooped in from the opposite angle and Kara banked, rolled, and turned back just in time to see Triplecheck’s Viper explode into the most beautiful fireball she thought she’d ever seen as Lee yelled in exultation.
Game over.
*
She almost fell, clambering out of the sims - not her most graceful exit, but she didn’t care because they had won, and Lee put out an arm to steady her.
“So.”
“So?”
“You might just live up to your reputation,” she told him.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Might?”
“Okay, so that was a good idea.”
He laughed. “Don’t over-do the compliments there, Kara.”
“I wouldn’t want to feed that ego.”
His eyes were sparkling, and she was waiting for the comeback she knew coming, when Nova and Triplecheck finished their debrief and came over to join them.
“You make one hell of a team,” Nova said, after they all shook hands. She wiped the sweat off her forehead, started pulling her gloves off. “What was that last move?”
“Theban Feint.”
“Oh, yeah, I thought I’d seen it somewhere. It’s used in that demo, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the one for advanced flight.”
“Not textbook.”
Lee smirked. “No.”
“Yeah, yeah, rub it in,” Triplecheck retorted. “You’ll have to think of something else next time.”
“Shame. It’s a good one.”
“It’s the corkscrew that does it,” Nova added. “We thought you were out, Starbuck, and then you came out of nowhere. I’ve never seen one so deep pulled off.”
“It was lucky your engines took it.”
“It was not luck,” Kara said arrogantly, and then laughed as Triplecheck rolled his eyes.
“Was she always like this?” Nova asked Lee.
Lee grinned. “Worse, apparently.”
“Hey!”
He laughed, slung an arm around her shoulders.
“How often did you fly together?” Triplecheck asked, and Kara shrugged, grinned up at Lee.
“First time.”
“Frak me.”
“Are you serious?”
“You were never paired at the Academy?”
“Nope.”
They both looked so incredulous that she laughed.
“They would never let us fly together,” Kara proclaimed, waving her free arm around extravagantly. “We would have kicked everyone’s asses.”
Triplecheck snorted. “Wait until the rematch.”
“Plus we nearly had you. We would have, too, if,” and Nova raised her voice, “if my frakking partner hadn’t come over that rise three seconds too early.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Triplecheck said, swatting Nova lightly on her elbow. “Blame me, as usual.”
“I do.” She threw her gloves at him. “Oh, I do, so much.”
Lee laughed. He was sweaty, his shirt sticking to his back and stomach and Nova looked him up and down, and glanced back at Kara mischievously, and mock whispered. “I’ll take yours, if you don’t want him.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Triplecheck said indignantly and then looked at Lee’s arm, still around Kara’s shoulders, and winked. “Besides, I think he’s taken.”
Kara felt Lee tense beside her, felt the heat rise in her face and his arm fell off her instantly, and she turned. Zak was sitting on the edge of the couch with something she’d never seen before in his face.
Nova saw the look and turned as well, and Zak got to his feet. He saluted Triplecheck and Nova, and then Kara, almost as an afterthought. “Sirs.”
Triplecheck waved him at ease. “Enjoy the show?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be as good as your brother, one day?”
Zak’s smile got a little more forced. “I’ll try, sir.”
“See you tomorrow, Kara,” Triplecheck said. “Nice seeing you again, Apollo.”
Lee nodded, gave a quick easy salute and Nova grinned. Then the door shut behind them and it was just the three of them.
“That was some amazing flying,” Zak said, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and smiling but it was still just a little crooked, just a little sharp at the edges. “Really amazing.”
There was a beat of silence.
“They don’t know?” Lee asked quietly.
Zak shrugged. “No.”
“It’s against rules?”
“Not exactly.” Lee turned to look at her, his eyes hard, and she gestured with her hands. “It’s more - not advised.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not going to test him, Lee. You don’t need to worry.”
Lee nodded again, then glanced at his watch. “It’s late. I should go. Thanks for that, Starbuck.”
“Anytime,” she told him, with a slight grin. “You both go, if you want. I’ll lock up.”
Lee nodded, and picked up his jacket. Zak hovered at the door as she put the computer systems on standby.
“So who was better?” she said finally, attempting to make him smile.
He did, but it still wasn’t right. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“Sleep well,” he said, kissed her forehead and was gone before she could say anything else.
That night, she dreamt of Lee flying with her, his Viper swooping down and over hers, moving to the same rhythm, beat for beat, as easily as breathing.
*
Part Two here.
Author: Claira
Summary: Backstory. Kara, Zak and Lee in 16,800 something words. In two parts because LJ won't actually let me post it all at once.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None whatsoever.
A/N: A HUGE thank you to bantha_fodder and brynnmck who put in the hard yards with it once I was done, and to those people who listened to me talk endlessly about it. sloanesomething, I'm looking at you.
*
One of the few things Kara hated about being a flight instructor was being rostered on for lock up. Especially when that included the simulation rooms, because that inevitably meant waiting and waiting for pilots to finish, or shutting down the power and kicking them out before they had completed their circuits, which certainly didn’t make her a popular person.
This particular day, however, there was only one screen that wasn’t blank, and she watched, curious, as the Viper on it tried to manoeuvre through one of the basic obstacle courses. It was doomed, she knew that even before the pilot tried a clumsy barrel roll, and it was no surprise to see the Viper hit the side of the tube and explode about three seconds later.
“Frak!” she heard from inside the closest sim, and she stepped over and rapped on the door.
It opened immediately, and the cadet flushed. “Sir! I’m sorry, I was just - “
“I know, I was watching.”
She looked him up and down; he was still in uniform, his dark hair damp with sweat. His face was unfamiliar to her, but that wasn’t surprising. A new semester had just started, and the school was full of new students, all of whom were still somehow getting lost between the dorms and their classes in the morning.
“Right. I’ll just get going then.” He started to clamber out of the sim.
She stopped him. “You know what you’re doing wrong?”
“Everything?” he said, with such a wry smile that she liked him on the spot.
“Well, close. What’s your name?”
“Zak. Zak Adama, Sir.”
“Well, Adama, for starters, you’re going too fast. Remember that your plane has momentum, so hold up on your thrusters. You’re using them too much.”
He nodded, his fingers tracing over the stick as if he wasn’t used to the feel of it. “Yes, Sir.”
“And anticipate the turn before you are there,” she added. “Try again.”
She closed the door on him and punched in the simulation, then stood back so she could watch his progress on the screen above his simulator. She’d chosen one of the two simplest courses, one she could have completed in less than thirty seconds, and she watched as he moved through it painfully slowly.
It was over two minutes before he finished, but he made it through with his Viper intact, and she thought she heard something like a whoop of exultation before the door slid open. He grinned up at her, running a hand through his hair.
“Well done,” she told him. “See what I mean?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Good. Now get out of here so I can lock up.”
He swung himself up and out of the simulator and saluted. “Good night, Sir. And thanks.”
“Good night, Adama,” she said, shutting down the main computer. “Oh - and I’m Starbuck.”
“I know,” he answered from the door, and then he was gone.
*
She pulled up his unofficial file the next day, flicking through the ‘A’s in the filing cabinet in the staffroom until she came to “Adama, Lee,” and “Adama, Zak”.
She took both their folders out. Lee, she remembered from the Academy; he had been a year older, but the top students were always known at least by name to each other, and Lee Adama had been no exception. If anything, they’d been compared so often she’d gone out of her way to avoid him.
His folder was brimming with flight reports and assignment sheets and she read a couple out of curiosity; natural, shows intuition and leadership, style and flair in the cockpit. Nothing she hadn’t had on hers.
Then she picked up the second file. “Zak Adama” was written neatly across the front, and then, in brackets, Husker’s kid. The initial reports he’d received had the same phrases over and over; trying hard, landings need work, and one, a confidential first assessment, had ‘doesn’t have the talent of his family’ in Triplecheck’s neat print, followed by ‘won’t make Vipers’.
“What are you looking at?” Triplecheck asked, coming in to the staffroom with a mug in one hand and sheaf of papers in the other.
“The Adamas,” she replied, as he sat down at the table and drained the last of his coffee.
“Ah, Zak. Why the interest?”
“I saw him practicing in the sims last night.”
“I’ve caught him doing that twice already. How was he?”
“Crap.”
Triplecheck nodded. “Yeah. Commander Adama’s son. Not like he has any pressure on him.” He took an apple out of the fruit bowl and bit into it. “Poor kid. He won’t make it, but it’s not through lack of trying.”
“It’s only been two weeks,” she retorted. “Don’t you think that’s a bit of a premature assumption?”
“When you’ve been a flight instructor as long as I have, Starbuck, you’ll be able to pick them.” He leaned over her, still chewing, and stole a piece of her chocolate. “See you after 201 - meeting in the mess.”
She nodded, watched him leave the room and then picked up Zak Adama’s file yet, studied the three words that made up Triplecheck’s prediction for his future.
*
It took her a good half hour to track him down, which was surprising given it wasn’t one of the biggest flight schools. She went through the mess hall, the quad and was finally directed to the library and she’d walked through three of the levels before she finally found him. He was sitting against the wall at the end of one of the aisles with the Basic Flight manual open on his lap.
He started to get to his feet when he saw her approaching, but she waved him back down. “Adama.”
“Sir?”
“Meet me at the sims, 2130. I’m your new flight coach.”
He looked disbelieving for a moment, and then a grin spread across his face.
“Thanks, Sir,” he said. “I’ll be there, Sir.”
She nodded. “Cadet,” and spun on her heel. He had a cute smile, she decided. Not that she’d noticed.
*
It wasn’t until the third week in a row that he was anything less than twenty minutes early, and she quickly found out that what he lacked in talent, he made up for in effort alone. She’d never taught a student with so much intensity when it came to learning who was so totally devoid of natural talent, and she found herself reluctantly agreeing with Triplecheck’s assessment of him.
Every week, she kept planning to tell him that it had been the last training session, but the gratitude in his eyes always made the words stick in her throat, and gave her some idea of how it felt, being in the shadow of his father and brother.
She was trying to talk him through the perfect barrel roll when he interrupted her in the middle of a sentence.
“What’s your real name?”
“What?”
“Well, it’s not Starbuck.”
She paused. “Ace it this time and I’ll tell you, Adama,” she replied, not expecting anything of the sort, given he’d flunked it every time he’d done it in the session.
This time, however, he nearly, nearly pulled it off, and when he opened the door he was looking so pleased with himself that she didn’t have the heart to argue and insist that his barrel roll wouldn’t have passed any exam.
“So?”
“It’s Kara. Kara Thrace.”
“Kara. Pretty.” He smiled, and she felt a wave of warmth run right down to her toes. “It suits you.”
“Charmer.”
“Honest.”
She rolled her eyes and couldn’t help smiling back. “Tell anyone - “
“And you’ll make me suffer. I know.”
“You learn fast. I like that.”
The weekly lessons soon became routine, and one month passed, then two. His progress was slow, painfully so, but it was progress at least, and his reports were dotted with phrases like improving and landings more solid now.
She got to know the way he laughed, the way he held his jaw when he was concentrating. She learnt about his family - listened to endless stories about his brother, heard the same few about his father over and over.
They spent time discussing things that were apparently deeply important; one day, when they were smoking in the darkness after Kara had locked up, he found out she hated fishing and simply couldn’t believe it.
“What do you mean, Kara?”
“It’s stupid. You sit in a boat for six hours with a hook in the water. Spare me.”
He waved his hand around, the cigarette tracing a glowing path in the air. “It’s more than that.”
“Yeah. Sleep. That’s about it.”
“It is being at one with nature.”
She laughed. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It is not. It’s the best sport in the world. After pyramid,” he amended, caching her glare and she grinned, blew out a breath of smoke.
“Nice save, Adama.”
She almost didn’t notice she got home just a little later every week.
*
Kara was in the middle of a mock argument with Triplecheck over lunch, fighting off teasing insinuations about her flying ability, when there was a soft knock on the staffroom door.
Nova yanked it open and put her hands on her hips. “What do you want?” she demanded imperiously and then cracked up at the startled look on Zak’s face. “Who would you like to speak to, Adama?” she said, going back to her normal voice, and he grinned.
“Starbuck, Sir.”
Kara got up, ignored Nova’s curious look in her direction, and stepped outside the staffroom.
“Adama?”
“I won’t be able to make the session tonight,” he said. “I’m sorry - my father’s dropping on his way back to his ship, and I only found out today - “
“Oh.” She felt a sudden rush of disappointment. He was studying her carefully. “That’s fine,” she said, with a smile. “I understand. Is next week okay?”
“Well,” he said, “If you didn’t mind - I could come tomorrow night. If you didn’t have anything else.”
She didn’t care if she did. “I’ll see you then.”
*
Two weeks later, he had his first really abysmal session.
“Spit it out, Adama,” she said finally, as his distraction cost him another Viper and he wasn’t at all interested in listening to her lecture about his turning.
“Sir?”
“Your flying’s been off all day. What’s bugging you?”
He seemed to hesitate, and then he shrugged and pulled something white out of his pocket. “Happy birthday,” he said, holding out an envelope.
It caught her completely by surprise. “How did you know?”
“You’ll have to work that out,” he said, as she turned it over and over in her hands. “Go on. Open it.”
She slit the top with her fingernail, and pulled the two pieces of paper out, and laughed. Two tickets for Caprica verses Sagittaron at the Agacantheon Center, good seats in the first tier, right on the halfway line.
“How did you know?”
“Kara, you’re obsessed with that team.”
“That’s because they’ve got the best shooters Caprica has had in years.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, sounding long-suffering, and she laughed again and gave him a quick hug.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
They stood there, grinning at each other.
“So,” she said finally.
“So…?”
“You bought me two tickets?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to go alone.” He was desperately trying not to look hopeful.
She grinned, folded one of the tickets and slipped it into his pocket.
“Meet you at 1800 sharp, Adama, Barter Street Gate.”
“Sir,” he said and saluted, his eyes sparkling, and she turned on her heel and left the room before the grin on her face got any wider.
*
Summer came with a vengeance and the sims room was stuffy and smelled of sweat even at ten at night. They finished twenty minutes early, mostly because Zak refused point blank to spend one more moment in a cockpit and she couldn’t be bothered arguing with him.
“Gods, it’s sweltering,” she said, draining the last of her water. It was lukewarm, tasted metallic and she pulled a face and worked at not spitting it out.
“Hey, you haven’t been stuck in a sim for the last half hour,” he told her. “There’s no air intake in those things and you know it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The material of her tanks was sticking to her like glue and she rolled her shoulders, arched her back and tried to get rid of the stubborn aches from too many hours in the cockpit. “It shouldn’t be this hot, especially this late.”
“Hold still,” he said, and then he was kneading the muscles across the top of her shoulders, his thumbs digging in with just the right amount of pressure.
“Oh,” she breathed out, letting her head fall forward. “How good would a beer be right now?”
“Tell me about it,” he said absentmindedly, and then his hands stopped moving for a moment. “I know the perfect place.”
And there it was, the tiniest hint of a challenge, and she hesitated because she’d had the feeling this whole thing was moving towards something she wasn’t ready to face, ever since they’d spent three hours walking home from the pyramid game when it only took about twenty minutes.
“Right,” she said, finally, because she was Starbuck and Starbuck was not a coward. “Then let’s go.”
*
The perfect place turned out to be a cheap looking dive quite close to her apartment block. The bouncer greeted him by name and waved him inside. Zak had her fingers tight in his and he led her straight to the bar, didn’t give her time to think, escape.
“Good day?” the bartender asked.
“Better than most,” Zak replied, while Kara looked around, studying the walls, the crowd of people packing every booth, spilling out onto the dance floor.
“Who’s your friend?”
“This is - “ Zak looked at her, and then back at the bartender. “Jim, this is Kara.”
Jim slid a drink across the counter. “Kara. Pretty name.” She reached for her wallet and he shook his head. “On the house.”
“Thank you.” She smiled, watched as Jim filled a glass with beer for Zak and pushed it towards him. Zak picked it up, just as someone sang out “Yo, Adama!” from behind them.
A group over in one booth was waving, and Zak grinned back. “Come meet some people,” he said, and dragged her over to the table.
He introduced her to his friends; she didn’t recognise one of the faces, and wondered how he got to know them, wondered why the pilots were so conspicuously lacking. He kept his hand on the small of her back the entire time, his thumb rubbing the skin in between her jeans and shirt.
Zak bought the second round, she paid for the third and things got a little blurry around the fourth. All she was really conscious of was the way he was looking at her, how she got a flash of heat low in her stomach every time his fingers brushed hers. By the fifth, she was aching to feel those hands on her skin, taste that mouth and she dragged him out onto the dance floor, into the crowd of people.
The smell of sweat and beer was heavy in the air, the floor wet with spilled alcohol and she put her hands on his shoulders, moved in so her hips were swaying lightly against his with every beat of the music. “Kara,” he said, his lips touching her ear and it wasn’t enough, and she traced her hands down his arms and twisted her fingers into his belt loops, pulled him closer.
*
Kara didn’t quite know how they made the progression from dancing to kissing to slamming into the cushions of her couch because they couldn’t make the extra meters to her bedroom. She also knew there were many reasons, good reasons, as to why they shouldn’t be doing this, but he was kissing her like he wanted no one else, almost reverently and her body arched involuntarily and she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning as his hand traced a path from her hip bone to her thigh.
*
She woke up completely disoriented, half crushed into the back of a couch by a warm, muscular back.
Her couch, she realised slowly, which was strange. She never brought anyone back to her apartment.
The hand on her stomach shifted and she tensed.
She rolled over to face him.
“Morning,” he said, his fingers beating out a random rhythm along her side that made it really hard to think.
“Look, Zak, this was fun, but - ”
He laughed, and the sound was so unexpected she lost what she was about to say.
“But it can’t happen again, it was just a release of tension, we can still be friends - yeah, I’ve heard it all before, Kara.”
She smiled in spite of herself, planted a palm on his chest and pushed him a little further away. “Then let me up, Adama, since I clearly don’t need to say anything more.”
“Sure.” He shifted, and she clambered awkwardly over the top of him, and then realised exactly what a position she had put herself into, with the bedroom a good couple of meters away and the warm sunlight brightening the room. It didn’t help that he was already staring at her, tilting his head with the faintest of smirks.
It sent a shiver of heat down her spine, and she leant over and grabbed some clothes off the floor, flung him his boxers and pulled his T-shirt over her head. It just covered everything. It also smelled like his sweat, deodorant and that was distracting, and she couldn’t help remembering the way she’d pulled it off him the night before, desperate to get her hands on his skin.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I’m going to shower,” she told him. “I’m sure you have somewhere to be.”
Once the water was on, she sagged against the wall and tried to tell herself that she hadn’t wanted this.
*
When she emerged in sweats and a t-shirt, finger combing her hair, he hadn’t left. He was cooking breakfast in his boxers, and the sight was so incongruous that she laughed.
“Can’t you take a hint?” she told him, walking into the kitchen.
He held up his hands. “You were in my shirt!”
She slapped it over his shoulder. “There.”
“Keep it,” he told her, and added, with a smirk, “It looked good on you.”
She sent him a glare that normally froze the heart of the bravest nugget. He grinned at her.
“Are you trying to make this difficult?”
He opened her pantry, and picked up her bottle of instant coffee with a look of disgust. “Is this all the coffee you have?”
She took the bottle off him and put it down on the counter. Leaned against the fridge and mentally ran through the rules of Starbuck One Night Stands. She thought, on first count, she’d broken at least ten of the twelve, starting with don’t frak people you have to work with, moving through never bring then back to your own apartment, and finishing with never, ever stay for breakfast.
“Zak, I am your flight instructor.”
“It’s not against regulations.”
“Bullshit. I’m your superior officer.”
“I’m not in your direct line of command. If I was in any of your classes, it would be different, but as it is…”
She shook her head, couldn’t help the grin. “When exactly did you do all of that research?”
“A while ago,” he said evasively, moving towards her, backing her into the fridge door. “Is that the only problem you have?”
It wasn’t, she had many, but it was getting hard to think with him so close. “Don’t you have class, or something?” she managed, with her hands braced on his chest.
“No,” he said, and his tongue flicked out against the skin of her neck and she shivered, fingers flexing on warm skin. “Don’t you?”
“Not until later.”
“Good.”
*
It was hard at flight school, seeing him lying in the sun on the quad, passing him in the library or pushing in front of him in the lunch line, and not being able to acknowledge him beyond a nod and quick smile.
She didn’t quite know why they were keeping it such a secret, but part of it was that she didn’t know if she would be able to continue training him if the other instructors found out, and as she couldn’t work that question into a casual conversation, she said nothing at all. She wasn’t willing to bet Zak’s future as a pilot on a hunch, and she had no illusions as to his chances if she didn’t help him.
On the other hand, she’d never been so profoundly grateful a student hadn’t been placed in her classes.
*
“Adama, Adama.”
“Just the person we’ve been looking for.”
Kara watched with interest as Saunders, Owen and Messenger took up positions around Zak at a table in the mess. He had his back to her, and she didn’t think he knew she was there.
“Who is she?”
“Who is who?” she heard him answer.
“The woman that keeps you out of the dorms.”
“And don’t deny it.”
“I’m not denying it.”
There was a sound of palms slapping together, and Owens said “I knew it!” triumphantly.
“So who is she?” Saunders was leaning over the table, her chin resting on one hand, head tilted to one side.
“That, I’m not telling.”
“Why? Is she married?”
“I bet she’s married.”
“Or, she’s really, really ugly.”
“Dean!”
“What?” Owen said unrepentantly. “I just said what we were all thinking. Ow, Kelly!”
“So. Is she?”
“What?” Kara could tell by Zak’s tone that he was getting frustrated, and she got to her feet and made her way over to the table.
“Is she ugly?”
There was a slight pause, and then Zak said “No”, so emphatically that all three antagonists were silent and Kara chose that moment to cough politely. She saw his back stiffen for an instant before he turned and saluted with the others.
“Nuggets,” she said, nodding her head at them. “Adama, a word?”
He pushed his chair back, followed her a little way away. She could see the group over his shoulder, all carefully not looking at them both.
“Sir?”
“I’m going to be about half an hour late for sims tonight.”
He nodded. “2200, then?”
“See you then.”
“Yes, Sir.” And he grinned - nothing that would break regulation - and she had to fight the smile, fight the urge to reach out and brush the crumb of bread from the front of his tanks.
“Dismissed,” she said instead, and turned to pick her stuff up off the table, lingering long enough to hear Zak’s chair grate on the concrete floor as he sat back down.
“What did God want?” Saunders asked. “Lords, she’s a bitch.”
“Training session,” Zak answered shortly, and then she was out of ear-shot.
*
“Saunders has a thing for you,” she said later, when they were sitting on her tiny excuse for a balcony.
“She does not.”
“She does.” She ground out her cigarette and blew out the last breath of smoke into the cool night air.
“You were listening the whole time, weren’t you?”
“It’s possible.”
He laughed, and she felt it from where her back was pressed against his chest. “I knew it.”
There was a moment of silence.
“She’s a bitch, you know.”
“Who?”
“Saunders.”
She shrugged, still seeing the pretty brunette tilting her head at him over the table. His arms tightened around her waist.
“And you’re way hotter,” he said, sounding so smug that she laughed.
*
Soon, the weekend meant at least one night out at the bar with Zak, playing triad with his friends (he was excellent at it, she found, which surprised her given how normally she found it easy read him), drinking (sometimes a little too much), and dancing, her hips swinging against his in time with the music from the live band, and laughing as Fowler and Gilbert made up ridiculous actions to match the lyrics. All which inevitably led to waking up the next morning, her legs tangled in his, wrapped up in him so securely she couldn’t tell who didn’t want to let who go.
He was making her bed one morning when he knocked over the things on her bedside table with a pillow. She flinched. “Be careful,” she said quickly, as he picked her idols and weighed them in his hands, studying the carving.
“They’re beautiful,” he said. “Where did you get them?”
“Messena.” She took them out of his hands, and he watched her run her fingers lightly over Aphrodite and Artemis, wiping them free of the tiny film of dust that had collected overnight.
“You really believe, don’t you?”
She shrugged and placed them carefully back on their stand. “You do when it’s all you have left.”
She left for the shower before he had time to say anything.
*
The knocking on her door woke her up at just past two in the morning - loud, obnoxious knocking that went on and on as she stumbled across the living room, snapping the kitchen light on and wrenching the door open.
Zak was standing there, his shirt torn in three places and smudged with dirt, blood all over his face. He was also grinning wildly. “Kara!”
“Shut up, you moron, there are people trying to sleep.”
“Oh, sorry,” he said, as she pulled him inside and shut the door.
“Gods, what happened to you?”
His nose was still bleeding. “Shit. I’m dripping on your floor.”
“It’s seen worse.” She handed him the tissue box. “Now what happened?”
He grinned, holding tissues to his nose. “Well, I was at Gailey’s, you know? Playing triad, and I got into a fight.”
“Never would have guessed.”
“He was cheating, Kara.”
She was grinning ear to ear. “Lords, how much have you had?”
The look on his face very, very guilty. “Don’t answer,” she said, laughing, and slung one arm around his waist, half dragged him across the hallway and shoved him inside the bathroom. “Get in, shower, and call me if you think you’re going to die.”
“You’re so good to me.”
She laughed again, rummaging through her drawers for some of his clothes. The water went on and he started whistling, and after a moment she recognised it as one of the drinking chants of the pilots.
She shook her head. “When you’re done - are you listening?”
The whistling stopped. “Yeah?”
“When you’re done, your clothes are here.”
By the time she’d finished cleaning up the floor, located her packet of painkillers and had rinsed the worst of the blood and dirt out of his shirt, leaving it to soak, everything was silent.
“Zak?” She flicked the kitchen lights out and paused in the doorway of her bedroom.
He’d passed out on the precise middle of her bed. She bit back a smile, shook her head and watched him sleep for a moment, studied the curve of his back, the way he had the sheets bunched in one hand, the line of his cheekbone, sharp in the moonlight.
Then she clambered gingerly in beside him, tried to nudge him over so she got more room. “Throw up on me and die, Adama,” she whispered, wrestling back some of the bedding and he shifted, threw an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him.
“Love you,” he said sleepily, and she stiffened, looked at him in shock, but he was already drifting off again, completely unaware of what he’d said.
She went to sleep counting all the reasons why he shouldn’t.
*
She thought about it for a week straight and avoided him. Luckily, it was a week where he was almost as busy as she was, coming into exams so it wasn’t completely out of place, but it only took three days for her to work out how insidiously he’d crept under her skin.
Every morning she woke up looking for him, her arm sweeping through the covers, trying to find his warmth. She couldn’t stop thinking about him - in the morning, missing his off-key whistling as he made breakfast, and when she found things he’d snuck into her apartment that she’d never really noticed - the razor, the toothbrush, a bottle of his favourite brand of coffee. The half finished crossword lying on her counter, ripped out of the Caprica City Daily.
It took her another week to realise that just maybe she was in love with him, and that thought terrified her almost as much as she missed him, maybe more.
Her living room floor was a maze of student evaluation reports, and she was just finishing up marking the written tests when the door opened. She looked up, and he was standing there, leaning against the doorway and she couldn’t help the grin that exploded across her face at the sight of him, the feeling of things clicking back into place.
“Hi, honey.”
“Gods, you know I hate that.”
He laughed. “Okay.” He picked his way gingerly across the floor, moved a stack onto the couch and sat down next to her, placed a hand on the other side of her body so she was trapped. “What would you prefer? My darling? My precious?”
She made a gagging sound. Zak laughed, leant in and kissed her quickly. “Oh, wait. I’ve got it. My girl.”
She tried to shove him away. “No frakking way.”
He grinned then, kissed her again but longer and deeper, his tongue sliding across her bottom lip, his fingers twisting in her hair. She curled her hand around the back of his neck and tried to pull him even closer.
“Miss me?” he murmured, in between kisses.
“Not a bit.”
That made him smirk against her mouth, and then he pulled away.
She made a low sound of frustration. “Why are you stopping?”
“Remember when I said you needed to meet my brother?”
“Mmm?” She trailed a hand down his back, pulled at the back of his jeans. Danced her fingertips across the strip of skin showing.
“Kara, stop that. He’s on holidays, and we’re going out for dinner.”
“That’s fine.”
“In half an hour.”
“What? Now?” She sat up straighter. “Why didn’t you give me some warning?”
“Relax.” He ruffled her hair and attempted to get up. “We’re not going anywhere classy.”
“Zak - I -” She ran a hand through her hair, tried to settle it back down and quell the sudden rush of nervousness. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“You won’t be.”
“You haven’t seen him in months - “
“Kara.” His eyes were dark, full of warmth and security, and one of his hands was just touching her waist. “I want him to meet you.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Good.” He grinned at her, and she hooked her arms around him and let him pull her up. Leant into him and remembered something else she’d missed. “So. Half an hour.”
His look was wary. “Kara...”
She studied him carefully. “I need a shower.” She dragged her nails down the front of his chest, ignored his still damp hair and the smell of soap on his skin. “So do you.”
He’d always been a pushover.
*
They were only ten minutes late, which was pretty good, she thought, given all they’d managed to do in that time, but Lee was standing outside the restaurant and as they approached, he tapped his watch and grinned.
“Late again, Zak,” he said, but affectionately, and she played with the zipper of her jacket as the two men hugged, slapped each other on the back. She was nervous, which she resented; she hadn’t been nervous about anything for at least two years, but meeting Zak’s brother had her hands sweating.
“Lee, this is Kara,” Zak said, and she stepped forward and studied the man she’d heard so much about. He looked nothing like Zak, she decided - roughly the same height, but Lee was slimmer, paler, with sharper features. He offered his hand, and she took it. His grip was warm.
“Apollo.” She smiled. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Oh, really?” He looked over at Zak, who grinned and held up his hands.
“Hey, nothing but positive from me.”
“So you’re the mighty Starbuck.” He smiled, blue eyes sparkling. “Are all the stories true?”
“Depends on which ones you’ve been listening to,” she said with a grin, and then Zak’s stomach rumbled and they all laughed.
Dinner turned out remarkably well; Lee’s sense on humour turned out to be exactly that of Zak’s, only with a slightly sharper edge, and she relaxed and listened as the two of them bounced off each other, listened to Lee’s stories about War College and Zak’s stories about flight school, most of which she’d heard.
When Zak left to find out what had happened to their desserts, she fell into easy conversation with Lee about the Academy and by the time Zak returned triumphant, dragging a waiter behind him, they’d discovered six lecturers they had had in common and were discussing the simulators in the flight hall, laughing about the faulty one that often turned the left screen off at the worst possible moment.
Three hours flew by.
“I’m glad you get along,” Zak told her afterwards, hovering outside the restaurant as Lee got into the car.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She laughed, pulled his head down and kissed him thoroughly, until a cough behind them startled them apart.
“When you’re done,” Lee said, leaning out of the window and she could hear the laughter in his voice, “some of us would like to get home before it’s morning.”
Zak rolled his eyes. “See what I had to live with?”
*
The next day, they went to one of the parks down by the river and bought lunch from the food stalls along the walkway. They ended up sprawled on the lawn, with Zak and Lee trading childhood stories, much to Kara’s amusement. The similarities between them became more apparent the more she saw them together; the way they walked, their intonation pattern when they were exaggerating. Which seemed to happen a lot.
“Anyway, Zak climbs the tree, right, and being the genius he is, he stands right underneath the nest and smashes it with his toy shovel. Ants come raining down out of the sky, all over him - “
“- and you can see that Lee’s still not sorry - “
“- and the next minute Zak’s screaming - “
“- those things frakking bite, Lee - “
“- and Mom came running out, and Zak blamed me - “
“- you deserved it - “
“ - and I wound up grounded for a month,” Lee finished, punching Zak lightly on one arm.
“Yeah. Good story,” Zak told him. “Really heroic,” and Kara laughed, settled her head more comfortably in Zak’s lap as Lee lay down and threw one arm over his eyes. The sun was warm on her face, the sky dotted with clouds; a perfect day on Caprica.
There was a moment of relaxed silence.
"It's strange, isn't it?" she said. "That we fly up there? It looks so blue."
"You and your Vipers.” Lee grinned at her, rolled a little onto his side. "You should be dating one of them instead of my brother."
"Hey, I'm not the one who named my Viper," she retorted.
He threw a twig at her. “Now, how did you hear about that?”
“God knows all.”
“Then you should know as well as I do that was a complete misunderstanding.”
She snapped the twig in two and sent both pieces flying back, laughing as he tried to break the tiny pieces in half again.
“Oh?” Zak said from above her. “I think I like the sound of this story.”
“It is a good one. So, the scene: this is in his last year - “
“Zak, this is all hearsay - “
“Whatever. So, Lee found a practice Viper that he stuck to, right?”
“Like most of us did.”
“Who is telling the story, Apollo?”
“There is no story. Besides, didn’t you name yours?”
“Yes. But I didn’t name him after who I was frakking at the time.”
Zak snorted with laughter. “He didn’t.”
“Apparently, it was something about the way the Viper moved.” She smiled innocently at Lee. “Not that I would know.”
Lee’s face was slowly flushing bright red. “That’s all over exaggerated and you know it, Starbuck.”
She sent him a quick grin. “I do miss actually flying, though,” she told him. “I miss that about the Academy. I rarely go up without the cadets and they kinda cramp my style.”
Lee laughed, and she caught Zak’s hand before he could poke her, and smiled up at him.
“I know what you mean, though.” She looked over, and Lee was lying on his back, looking up into the sky. “If I don’t get up there once a week, I feel like I’m in a cage, or something.” He paused, and then shrugged a little. “That sounds stupid.”
“No, it’s not.”
He glanced over at her. His eyes were exactly the colour of the sky overhead.
Zak laughed, shaking his head. "You are both as bad as each other," he said affectionately, reaching down and pushing her hair off her forehead.
*
“So, which one of you is the best pilot?”
She was surprised, really, that Zak hadn’t asked the question earlier, given how she and Lee had been trading battle stories for the last four days. However, she was impressed with how innocent he sounded. He’d been spoiling for this fight for a long time.
“I am,” she said, and Lee raised his eyebrows.
“I think our grades would beg to differ, Starbuck.”
“Oh, you can out-history me any day, Apollo. But in the air, well...” Kara cleaned the ice-cream off her spoon, swirling her tongue just so, smiled wickedly at Zak as he stared at her mouth. “There’s only one thing for it. Take you on, Adama?”
Lee was looking at her as if he couldn’t quite collect his thoughts.
“Lee? Are you game?”
“On,” he answered finally. “But it’s late. Sims won’t be open.”
“I’m an instructor, Lee. I have the keys. Coming?”
He was already shoving his chair back. Zak shook his head, didn’t move from the table.
“Get up,” Lee said, cuffing his shoulder as he passed.
“There’s this show on Channel 11 - “
Kara pulled him up by his shirt. “You’re coming. I want you there when I kick your brother’s ass.”
“And I want you there when I prove your girlfriend a liar,” Lee retorted, from where he was bent over pulling on his socks.
Zak groaned.
“Hey, you started this,” she told him, as Zak’s jacket flew through the air and landed on the table. “Bring the last of the ice cream if you’re that miserable.”
*
They didn’t need her keys, in the end; Nova and Triplecheck were already there, and Zak let go of her hand instantly, stepped a little further away from her as Triplecheck and Nova greeted Lee.
“So, what are you all doing here at this hour?” Nova said, when Triplecheck had finished a one minute interrogation of Lee about War College.
“Same thing you are, I think,” Kara replied. “Apollo here claims he’s the better pilot.”
Triplecheck laughed. “Oh, this I want to see.”
Nova nudged Triplecheck with her arm. “I’ve got a better idea. You think we can take the Academy’s hotshot pilots?”
“They wouldn’t stand a chance.” Triplecheck grinned, linked his fingers and flexed them dramatically. “You guys on?”
Kara looked at Lee. He nodded, and there was a look in his eyes she recognised well, and her heart started beating just a little faster. “Viper-Viper or Viper-Cylon?”
“Viper-Viper.”
“Fairer.”
“Fine with me. Lee?”
“Done.”
Zak had sunk down onto the couches in the corner and was lying stretched out, hands behind his head. “Don’t mind me,” he said to no one in particular. “I’ll just be asleep over here.”
Kara threw her keys at him, and he caught them with one hand, grinned, and she turned back to the computer and started entering the settings. “You better be as good as they say you are, Adama,” she told Lee, out of the side of her mouth. “Or I’ll never live this down.”
“Just don’t get blown up on me, Thrace.” She looked up and he smirked at her. “I don’t want to have to win this by myself.”
Zak snorted with laughter from the couch, and she was trying to think of the perfect response when Triplecheck interrupted.
“When you two are ready,” he called from his sim, “Some of us here would like to kick your ass.”
They both laughed, and she punched in the last code with a flourish.
*
Triplecheck and Nova were good, Kara thought, as the four Vipers lifted into the air, and this was going to be a tough battle. They had decided on a five minute no-fire time, to get used to the terrain and to their partners - Kara knew it was to Nova and Triplecheck’s advantage, because they’d been flight partners for longer than she’d been a pilot.
The rainforest was misty, dense with trees, and she knew a river curved through the forest at some point, and there was a beach somewhere and a steep mountainside around as well, but it wasn’t a topography she was familiar with; the mist made it harder for students so she rarely used the simulation.
“Okay, Apollo,” she told him. “The mist is going to make visibility poor, and - “
“Thanks for that insight, Starbuck, I never would have worked that out.”
“What I was going to say, if you’d let me finish, is that Triplecheck and Nova use this simulation a lot, and they tend to ambush rather than play hide and seek.”
He didn’t question her. “We need some way of using that to our advantage.”
The next few minutes went quickly as they discussed tactics and got their bearings; rainforest ending on beachfront there, the river curved through a gorge here, and when the five minute signal beeped, she realised she hadn’t seen the movement of Triplecheck and Nova for at least four of them.
“How good are these two?” Lee asked.
“They’re like Fox and Switchblade,” she said, remembering the two lectures at the Academy who had been average pilots alone but almost unbeatable together.
“Right,” he said. “So what’s the - frak, I can’t see them on dradis.”
She checked hers. “How the hell did that happen?”
“I don’t know. There must be a blind spot somewhere.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Frak, there is.”
“What?”
“There’s this ridge that drops away really steeply, like a gorge, along one of these mountains.” The silence that followed that was accusatory. “I forgot!”
“You forgot?”
“Excuse me for not memorizing all two hundred simulations!”
“Well, which way were they moving?”
“Left, but that means nothing,” she said, wracking her brains for the location. She looked around, but nothing looked familiar. “Where are they?” she said, almost to herself as she flew over the strange looking peak of one mountain and took almost one second too long to work it out, remembering at the last moment the steep fall-away on the other side of the tree line.
“Shit, they’re going to bounce us. Apollo!”
“Copy that. Frak. Get DOWN!”
Two Vipers came flashing up over the ridge, fast and at such a steep angle she couldn’t get a firing solution on them. She saw Lee disappear into the tree line under heavy fire, and heard a string of curses, every god from Ares to Zeus included.
She had no choice, dipped into the canopy and flew as low as she could as Triplecheck and Nova almost pulled out the perfect ambush, the branches of trees smacking into the glass of the cockpit and making it even harder to see.
“Frak. Frakfrakfrak.” She rolled her Viper viciously out of the way off one tree and risked rising about the treetops, ducking down again in an instant when Triplecheck fired a burst at her. “Come on, Lee, we’re better than this!”
“You think of something!”
“Mine Shaft?”
“Too predictable. Burton Wheel?”
“Wrong terrain.” She could just make out the movement of his Viper to the left, through the treetops and the mist. “Need less coverage.”
He laughed, and the sound was so relaxed that she felt the tension leave her body in one warm wave. “What we need is something they haven’t seen.”
“There isn’t much they haven’t seen, Apollo,” she told him, losing her sentence in a flurry of fire as Triplecheck’s Viper was momentarily visible. “Anything.”
“Got it,” he answered, after a moment. “Theban Feint.”
She racked her brain for it, mentally flipping the pages of the course textbook.
“It’s not textbook,” Lee said, as if reading her mind, and then the manoeuvre flashed into her head. “That’s why it stands a chance. You know, the one where - “
“I’ve got it.” she replied. “Okay, we need to circle back - “
“I know,” he cut her off. “I’ll take left.”
They set it up carefully; Lee circled low to the left, her to the right, splitting the attention of Nova and Triplecheck and swinging around at the same speed.
“Who is feinting?”
“You want it?”
“Frak yes,” she said, and he laughed. “Are you ready?”
“When you are.”
“Go!”
They both rose from the canopy at the same instant, circling up and around in opposite directions, drawing a tight circle around the red-striped Vipers, rising higher and higher and taking the two with them.
“Come on,” she whispered, slowing down, banking towards one of the Vipers - Triplecheck’s, she guessed, she recognised his style. “Take the bait. Come on come on - “
And then it happened; Triplecheck fired a burst, she rolled, and her wing was singed and smoking.
“Now,” Lee yelled, and she angled the nose of her Viper towards to the ground, cut off most of the power and let gravity tug her Viper into the perfect death spiral, shallow at first and then faster and deeper until the green of the tree tops was rushing up towards her.
She could hear Lee breathing hard with the effort of keeping out of the fire of two Vipers, and she flexed her fingers around the stick, tried to stop herself from getting dizzy and losing her bearing.
“A little help up here, Starbuck,” he snapped. She could hear the bursts of fire in the background.
“Yeah, yeah, coming,” she retorted. “You better have them in the right frakking place.”
The exact moment before the spiral went from being controlled to free falling, she punched on the power, wrenched back the stick and raised the nose enough to pull her out. The Viper shuddered beneath her, and she put it through a tight 270 and hit the thrusters to send her straight back upwards so fast that she was slammed back into the seat, so hard it was difficult to breathe. Lee had done his job perfectly, lured both Nova and Triplecheck into formation directly above her, and the two Vipers were black shadows against the sky; perfect targets.
“Took your time,” he said, as she opened fire, and she watched Nova’s Viper blow up, shrapnel raining down into the forest. Triplecheck was quicker, and managed to angle his Viper towards her, but she was flying so fast she was up and over him before he fired. Lee swooped in from the opposite angle and Kara banked, rolled, and turned back just in time to see Triplecheck’s Viper explode into the most beautiful fireball she thought she’d ever seen as Lee yelled in exultation.
Game over.
*
She almost fell, clambering out of the sims - not her most graceful exit, but she didn’t care because they had won, and Lee put out an arm to steady her.
“So.”
“So?”
“You might just live up to your reputation,” she told him.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Might?”
“Okay, so that was a good idea.”
He laughed. “Don’t over-do the compliments there, Kara.”
“I wouldn’t want to feed that ego.”
His eyes were sparkling, and she was waiting for the comeback she knew coming, when Nova and Triplecheck finished their debrief and came over to join them.
“You make one hell of a team,” Nova said, after they all shook hands. She wiped the sweat off her forehead, started pulling her gloves off. “What was that last move?”
“Theban Feint.”
“Oh, yeah, I thought I’d seen it somewhere. It’s used in that demo, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the one for advanced flight.”
“Not textbook.”
Lee smirked. “No.”
“Yeah, yeah, rub it in,” Triplecheck retorted. “You’ll have to think of something else next time.”
“Shame. It’s a good one.”
“It’s the corkscrew that does it,” Nova added. “We thought you were out, Starbuck, and then you came out of nowhere. I’ve never seen one so deep pulled off.”
“It was lucky your engines took it.”
“It was not luck,” Kara said arrogantly, and then laughed as Triplecheck rolled his eyes.
“Was she always like this?” Nova asked Lee.
Lee grinned. “Worse, apparently.”
“Hey!”
He laughed, slung an arm around her shoulders.
“How often did you fly together?” Triplecheck asked, and Kara shrugged, grinned up at Lee.
“First time.”
“Frak me.”
“Are you serious?”
“You were never paired at the Academy?”
“Nope.”
They both looked so incredulous that she laughed.
“They would never let us fly together,” Kara proclaimed, waving her free arm around extravagantly. “We would have kicked everyone’s asses.”
Triplecheck snorted. “Wait until the rematch.”
“Plus we nearly had you. We would have, too, if,” and Nova raised her voice, “if my frakking partner hadn’t come over that rise three seconds too early.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Triplecheck said, swatting Nova lightly on her elbow. “Blame me, as usual.”
“I do.” She threw her gloves at him. “Oh, I do, so much.”
Lee laughed. He was sweaty, his shirt sticking to his back and stomach and Nova looked him up and down, and glanced back at Kara mischievously, and mock whispered. “I’ll take yours, if you don’t want him.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Triplecheck said indignantly and then looked at Lee’s arm, still around Kara’s shoulders, and winked. “Besides, I think he’s taken.”
Kara felt Lee tense beside her, felt the heat rise in her face and his arm fell off her instantly, and she turned. Zak was sitting on the edge of the couch with something she’d never seen before in his face.
Nova saw the look and turned as well, and Zak got to his feet. He saluted Triplecheck and Nova, and then Kara, almost as an afterthought. “Sirs.”
Triplecheck waved him at ease. “Enjoy the show?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be as good as your brother, one day?”
Zak’s smile got a little more forced. “I’ll try, sir.”
“See you tomorrow, Kara,” Triplecheck said. “Nice seeing you again, Apollo.”
Lee nodded, gave a quick easy salute and Nova grinned. Then the door shut behind them and it was just the three of them.
“That was some amazing flying,” Zak said, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and smiling but it was still just a little crooked, just a little sharp at the edges. “Really amazing.”
There was a beat of silence.
“They don’t know?” Lee asked quietly.
Zak shrugged. “No.”
“It’s against rules?”
“Not exactly.” Lee turned to look at her, his eyes hard, and she gestured with her hands. “It’s more - not advised.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not going to test him, Lee. You don’t need to worry.”
Lee nodded again, then glanced at his watch. “It’s late. I should go. Thanks for that, Starbuck.”
“Anytime,” she told him, with a slight grin. “You both go, if you want. I’ll lock up.”
Lee nodded, and picked up his jacket. Zak hovered at the door as she put the computer systems on standby.
“So who was better?” she said finally, attempting to make him smile.
He did, but it still wasn’t right. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“Sleep well,” he said, kissed her forehead and was gone before she could say anything else.
That night, she dreamt of Lee flying with her, his Viper swooping down and over hers, moving to the same rhythm, beat for beat, as easily as breathing.
*
Part Two here.