(no subject)
Title: Fade: Every Angle
Author: Trinity
Character/Pairing: Racetrack/Starbuck
Rating: R for non-explicit girlslash
Spoilers to: 2.10 Pegasus
Summary: Racetrack isn't used to being blind sided by things. Apparently, nobody ever told that to Starbuck.
Author's Notes: Written for projectjulie, who requested femmeslash on ficsforcharity. Inspired by the song Every Angle, by Ani Difranco. My first attempt at femmeslash.
The fourth fic in my Fade series. Fade is about the things we don't see. What happens when the camera fades out? A missing moments/backstory exploration series.
Fade: Every Angle
I am flat on my face on the card table, and I know it's meant to be intimidating. And it is, a little, but then her hand lingers just a little too long on the back of my neck, maybe, and it turns into something else entirely.
*
I follow Starbuck to the officer's head. "What the frak was that about?" I yell, but she just stands there, hands braced on either side of the sink, looking in the mirror. Watching me in the mirror.
My mirror-self moves forward, daring her. "What's the matter, Thrace, you too much of a coward to kick my ass in front of everyone?"
Won't be able to hide the bruises, and this is not like, you, Meg.
Taunting her. "Didn't want your Cylon-lover boyfriend to know you're all talk, right?"
Starbuck just watches. I take another step forward, and somewhere in the background I can hear my death bell tolling. Or maybe it's just the shift-change bell. Either way, I don't let up. "Maybe the three of you can get together. I hear that Cylon model's a great frak."
Another step, and I'm standing right behind her. I can see her watching me in the mirror, but her expression is blank. For a second I question my own boldness, because when you can't read what's going on in Starbuck's head, that's when you have to worry. You can usually see what's coming a split second before it happens, so I brace myself for the impact of fist against jaw, or worse.
Not quite.
Soft lips over mine. Back pressed sharply against something, somehow we've changed positions. Hands gripping my shoulders, pinned between the curve of her body and the hard angles of the sink. Starbuck is under my hands, she tastes of stale beer and sweet tobacco, and I feel stupid and light headed.
Then my hands are empty and she is gone.
Holy Lords of Kobol...
I grab the edge of the sink for support. What the frak? I can still taste her on my lips, only I'm not exactly sure why it's there. Why it's Starbuck's. She's never...what have I been missing?
Maybe I just shouldn't ask.
*
For two days I do nothing but run through every encounter with Starbuck in my mind, looking for something. Anything that should have kept me from being blind-sided by that kiss. And there are things, miniscule and hardly worth noticing.
What I still don't know is why I'm so fascinated by her. Except that everyone is.
*
They're playing triad again in the rec room, Hotdog, Duck, Kat. Starbuck. I'm in the corner with my pilfered copy of Caprica Today; Starbuck's got her back to me. We haven't spoken since the day she tried to kick my ass. Scuttlebutt says she's got her panties in a bunch over my comment about that Cylon prisoner, but we both know better.
"Anyone else want in?" I wonder if that's directed at me. "No? Well ante up, then, nuggets, time to see if you can run with the big dogs."
"Dogs backwards is gods, you know. Only with the s in the wrong spot." That's Kat, I think.
"This is the real test, kids. If you can hold your own in a card game with God, you're invincible." Don't believe a word of it, you guys, the only invincible one here is Starbuck. My mouth freezes before the words have sounds, and thank the gods for that.
I'm the one avoiding her, because every time I see her, I feel something unidentifiable deep inside, and I can't say anything until I know what it is.
Her laughter rings through the room, and I don't know what she's saying but gods, her voice is beautiful. She swears, drinks, and probably fraks like a hardened war veteran,
Which, I suppose, we all are by now.
but her laugh betrays that. There's something softer there, and I feel compelled to find out what it is. And I watch her, watch as her ponytail brushes across the nape of her neck. I study the inked design there, then look down to find that I've traced it in the dust of the table with a finger.
"Prince high red, hells yeah." I can't see her smirk, but I know it's there, and it's for me. Is it hot in here? "Hand over the goods, Hotdog."
It's gone beyond bizarre. But now I think I understand why the CAG looks at her like he does.
Does he think we haven't noticed?
I'm probably looking at her like that too.
I hear someone say something about burning bridges, and I think I hear my name. So that's why they think I'm not at the table.
Let them think that. It makes more sense than the alternative, until Starbuck turns around to look at me, and she gives me this look that's like can you handle it and I know I can't, but I nod in assent anyway. Nobody knows.
*
Later that day, we're tucked into an old supply closet. She brings me off with her fingers and my hands ache to feel her secret softness. She doesn't let me, but for now that's enough.
I don't know if the question is what am I doing or why am I doing this or another one that I haven't asked myself yet.
*
Focus, Meg.
We're on CAP together, Starbuck and the CAG with me and Emmit in the Raptor. I have my eyes on my screens but my body is electric with the ghosts of fingers drifting across skin and slipping into hidden places. The memory -
whispered breath sliding over pulse points and curves, slow dance and slow fall, softness and strength under my fingers but only what she'll let me have of her
- is hypnotic. I float on a remembered high until my dradis sings me a Cylon song and I'm forced to set Starbuck aside.
Emmit drops the Raptor out of the fray and I watch the dance of Raider and Viper. Starbuck's old Mark II pirouettes gracefully and her war whoop carries all the way back to the Colonies. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Emmit looks over at me, puzzled, and I force a smile in her direction but my mind is elsewhere.
She flies like she's dead. Fraks like she's high on life. But what does it mean?
*
She is wild and high at the end of the rotation, and when I slip my fingers between her legs she lets me, but just for a moment. It's enough this time, too.
*
"Oh, yes...oh, gods..." I am right there, on the edge, body drawn tight like a bow, so close, so...gods...
I was feeling daring, pulled her into the supply closet as she walked by and this is how she rewards me. Not two minutes and I'm going frakking insane, her hands are everywhere and all the places I want them to be, and this is not what I intended, and yet it's exactly what I wanted.
Her breath is hot on my neck, body pressed against mine, one hand flat on the bulkhead behind me, one hand exploring. Her lips soft at the juncture of neck and shoulder. She bites down. Hard. "Frak!" I wasn't expecting that, the way it traveled straight down to my core, pleasure/pain like electricity.
Please, comes my silent begging, I won't say the words out loud, do that again. Gods, please...
But she feels the plea in my response, in the grind of my hips against her hand, in the tension across my shoulders as I cling to her and whimper. Her breathy laughter stings as it slides across the mark on my neck. "Loosen up, Racetrack," she chides gently, but I can't
Not with that, oh gods, Starbuck...Kara...oh...
as she twists her fingers up inside me, nothing gentle about it now, and I stop trying to control myself. Keening, low in my throat, sounds I've never heard myself make. "Oh, yes...oh, gods..."
"Yes," she repeats softly, and she almost sounds like she's smiling. Her hand is still and I am taking my pleasure, unashamed, and at the moment the tension snaps and I break apart around her and against her, she renews the mark she left on my throat, soothes the skin with her tongue as I tremble and gasp and collapse against the wall, held up only by her hand now resting on my hip.
There are no words. None are needed, I think.
Starbuck shrugs her uniform jacket back on as I slide down the wall to the floor. I don't trust my knees to hold me up right now. Blinking, I look up at her, buttoning up her jacket. She looks smug. Triumphant.
I don't get it.
*
Observation deck. I sit in the seat closest to the window, slouch down and let myself melt into the blackness of space above me. It feels good to relax, even if it's only for a few minutes. I watch the pinpoint stars, suspended in the vacuum, and remember that once upon a time I'd felt like those stars. Held in an endless orbit around some nameless center, free falling with agonizing slowness towards something so far from me that it was barely seen. Stuck. Falling towards something, never knowing quite what. Moving fast enough to know where I was going, slow enough to think I'd never get there.
Am I there yet? I don't know. But something's changed in me, shifted polarities, brought me closer to my central tendency. The thing I want to be.
Humanity's dead, and it's a frakked up thing, I know, but right now I feel alive. More alive than ever.
*
The supply closet suddenly becomes very tight, cramped space when the call comes to form up for the arrival of the Pegasus, and I'm still buttoning up my uniform as I run down the hall towards the hangar deck. Starbuck, though, is taking her time, and I see her as she sidles her way through the formation. She's breathless from running, and as she brushes past me, she steps in close. And laughs softly.
I smile, just a bit.
*
He tells me his name is Whiplash. I introduce myself as Racetrack, which is odd, because I never call myself that. We're a motley crew, Mark II Vipers and beat up Raptors, Apollo with his flight suit half unzipped and Starbuck's messy little ponytail. And me, loose-lipped and strangely relaxed. "I fly one of the Raptors," I tell Whiplash, and he nods appreciatively as my gaze travels over the length of his body, and not just once, either.
What the hell are you...? Put your eyes back in your head, Meg! But for once I don't listen to myself, and it feels good.
I hear Starbuck's voice. She's doing what she does best, that familiar mix of sarcasm and derision that would sound silly coming from anyone else. "Is this a scorecard? You guys put scorecards on the side of your ships?"
"Oh, like you don't keep score." For half a second I wonder where that chiding remark came from, but then I notice the look on Starbuck's face and I realize that it was me. And what's interesting is that smug look again, the one that crosses her features just briefly when she looks over at me. Like she knew what I was going to say before I did.
And maybe she did. Because I wasn't expecting it. It's not my usual thing...but it didn't seem the least bit unusual.
"You don't see me painting them on the side like I'm bragging to the whole frakking universe." Her eyes glint in the harsh light of the hangar deck. There it is again. Can you handle it?
I can.
That's what's different.
But thanks to my new friend Whiplash, I don't get the chance to prove it. That's okay, I know that Starbuck knows. She turns the full force of her biting wit on the Pegasus pilot, and we all laugh.
The sound is music. We haven't laughed in months.
I haven't laughed in months.
I know the question now, the one I hadn't dared ask myself, and I know the answer, too. Why me, why her, why did I let her happen?
The answer is in my laughter.
Starbuck smiles at me, and it's easier to return it.
*
She brushes past me as she heads to her Viper, her last flight out of Galactica for who knows how long. Her hand lingers on my shoulder. "Take care of my squad, Meg," she says softly. I nod.
My smile comes easy this time.
**
Author: Trinity
Character/Pairing: Racetrack/Starbuck
Rating: R for non-explicit girlslash
Spoilers to: 2.10 Pegasus
Summary: Racetrack isn't used to being blind sided by things. Apparently, nobody ever told that to Starbuck.
Author's Notes: Written for projectjulie, who requested femmeslash on ficsforcharity. Inspired by the song Every Angle, by Ani Difranco. My first attempt at femmeslash.
The fourth fic in my Fade series. Fade is about the things we don't see. What happens when the camera fades out? A missing moments/backstory exploration series.
Fade: Every Angle
I am flat on my face on the card table, and I know it's meant to be intimidating. And it is, a little, but then her hand lingers just a little too long on the back of my neck, maybe, and it turns into something else entirely.
*
I follow Starbuck to the officer's head. "What the frak was that about?" I yell, but she just stands there, hands braced on either side of the sink, looking in the mirror. Watching me in the mirror.
My mirror-self moves forward, daring her. "What's the matter, Thrace, you too much of a coward to kick my ass in front of everyone?"
Won't be able to hide the bruises, and this is not like, you, Meg.
Taunting her. "Didn't want your Cylon-lover boyfriend to know you're all talk, right?"
Starbuck just watches. I take another step forward, and somewhere in the background I can hear my death bell tolling. Or maybe it's just the shift-change bell. Either way, I don't let up. "Maybe the three of you can get together. I hear that Cylon model's a great frak."
Another step, and I'm standing right behind her. I can see her watching me in the mirror, but her expression is blank. For a second I question my own boldness, because when you can't read what's going on in Starbuck's head, that's when you have to worry. You can usually see what's coming a split second before it happens, so I brace myself for the impact of fist against jaw, or worse.
Not quite.
Soft lips over mine. Back pressed sharply against something, somehow we've changed positions. Hands gripping my shoulders, pinned between the curve of her body and the hard angles of the sink. Starbuck is under my hands, she tastes of stale beer and sweet tobacco, and I feel stupid and light headed.
Then my hands are empty and she is gone.
Holy Lords of Kobol...
I grab the edge of the sink for support. What the frak? I can still taste her on my lips, only I'm not exactly sure why it's there. Why it's Starbuck's. She's never...what have I been missing?
Maybe I just shouldn't ask.
*
For two days I do nothing but run through every encounter with Starbuck in my mind, looking for something. Anything that should have kept me from being blind-sided by that kiss. And there are things, miniscule and hardly worth noticing.
What I still don't know is why I'm so fascinated by her. Except that everyone is.
*
They're playing triad again in the rec room, Hotdog, Duck, Kat. Starbuck. I'm in the corner with my pilfered copy of Caprica Today; Starbuck's got her back to me. We haven't spoken since the day she tried to kick my ass. Scuttlebutt says she's got her panties in a bunch over my comment about that Cylon prisoner, but we both know better.
"Anyone else want in?" I wonder if that's directed at me. "No? Well ante up, then, nuggets, time to see if you can run with the big dogs."
"Dogs backwards is gods, you know. Only with the s in the wrong spot." That's Kat, I think.
"This is the real test, kids. If you can hold your own in a card game with God, you're invincible." Don't believe a word of it, you guys, the only invincible one here is Starbuck. My mouth freezes before the words have sounds, and thank the gods for that.
I'm the one avoiding her, because every time I see her, I feel something unidentifiable deep inside, and I can't say anything until I know what it is.
Her laughter rings through the room, and I don't know what she's saying but gods, her voice is beautiful. She swears, drinks, and probably fraks like a hardened war veteran,
Which, I suppose, we all are by now.
but her laugh betrays that. There's something softer there, and I feel compelled to find out what it is. And I watch her, watch as her ponytail brushes across the nape of her neck. I study the inked design there, then look down to find that I've traced it in the dust of the table with a finger.
"Prince high red, hells yeah." I can't see her smirk, but I know it's there, and it's for me. Is it hot in here? "Hand over the goods, Hotdog."
It's gone beyond bizarre. But now I think I understand why the CAG looks at her like he does.
Does he think we haven't noticed?
I'm probably looking at her like that too.
I hear someone say something about burning bridges, and I think I hear my name. So that's why they think I'm not at the table.
Let them think that. It makes more sense than the alternative, until Starbuck turns around to look at me, and she gives me this look that's like can you handle it and I know I can't, but I nod in assent anyway. Nobody knows.
*
Later that day, we're tucked into an old supply closet. She brings me off with her fingers and my hands ache to feel her secret softness. She doesn't let me, but for now that's enough.
I don't know if the question is what am I doing or why am I doing this or another one that I haven't asked myself yet.
*
Focus, Meg.
We're on CAP together, Starbuck and the CAG with me and Emmit in the Raptor. I have my eyes on my screens but my body is electric with the ghosts of fingers drifting across skin and slipping into hidden places. The memory -
whispered breath sliding over pulse points and curves, slow dance and slow fall, softness and strength under my fingers but only what she'll let me have of her
- is hypnotic. I float on a remembered high until my dradis sings me a Cylon song and I'm forced to set Starbuck aside.
Emmit drops the Raptor out of the fray and I watch the dance of Raider and Viper. Starbuck's old Mark II pirouettes gracefully and her war whoop carries all the way back to the Colonies. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Emmit looks over at me, puzzled, and I force a smile in her direction but my mind is elsewhere.
She flies like she's dead. Fraks like she's high on life. But what does it mean?
*
She is wild and high at the end of the rotation, and when I slip my fingers between her legs she lets me, but just for a moment. It's enough this time, too.
*
"Oh, yes...oh, gods..." I am right there, on the edge, body drawn tight like a bow, so close, so...gods...
I was feeling daring, pulled her into the supply closet as she walked by and this is how she rewards me. Not two minutes and I'm going frakking insane, her hands are everywhere and all the places I want them to be, and this is not what I intended, and yet it's exactly what I wanted.
Her breath is hot on my neck, body pressed against mine, one hand flat on the bulkhead behind me, one hand exploring. Her lips soft at the juncture of neck and shoulder. She bites down. Hard. "Frak!" I wasn't expecting that, the way it traveled straight down to my core, pleasure/pain like electricity.
Please, comes my silent begging, I won't say the words out loud, do that again. Gods, please...
But she feels the plea in my response, in the grind of my hips against her hand, in the tension across my shoulders as I cling to her and whimper. Her breathy laughter stings as it slides across the mark on my neck. "Loosen up, Racetrack," she chides gently, but I can't
Not with that, oh gods, Starbuck...Kara...oh...
as she twists her fingers up inside me, nothing gentle about it now, and I stop trying to control myself. Keening, low in my throat, sounds I've never heard myself make. "Oh, yes...oh, gods..."
"Yes," she repeats softly, and she almost sounds like she's smiling. Her hand is still and I am taking my pleasure, unashamed, and at the moment the tension snaps and I break apart around her and against her, she renews the mark she left on my throat, soothes the skin with her tongue as I tremble and gasp and collapse against the wall, held up only by her hand now resting on my hip.
There are no words. None are needed, I think.
Starbuck shrugs her uniform jacket back on as I slide down the wall to the floor. I don't trust my knees to hold me up right now. Blinking, I look up at her, buttoning up her jacket. She looks smug. Triumphant.
I don't get it.
*
Observation deck. I sit in the seat closest to the window, slouch down and let myself melt into the blackness of space above me. It feels good to relax, even if it's only for a few minutes. I watch the pinpoint stars, suspended in the vacuum, and remember that once upon a time I'd felt like those stars. Held in an endless orbit around some nameless center, free falling with agonizing slowness towards something so far from me that it was barely seen. Stuck. Falling towards something, never knowing quite what. Moving fast enough to know where I was going, slow enough to think I'd never get there.
Am I there yet? I don't know. But something's changed in me, shifted polarities, brought me closer to my central tendency. The thing I want to be.
Humanity's dead, and it's a frakked up thing, I know, but right now I feel alive. More alive than ever.
*
The supply closet suddenly becomes very tight, cramped space when the call comes to form up for the arrival of the Pegasus, and I'm still buttoning up my uniform as I run down the hall towards the hangar deck. Starbuck, though, is taking her time, and I see her as she sidles her way through the formation. She's breathless from running, and as she brushes past me, she steps in close. And laughs softly.
I smile, just a bit.
*
He tells me his name is Whiplash. I introduce myself as Racetrack, which is odd, because I never call myself that. We're a motley crew, Mark II Vipers and beat up Raptors, Apollo with his flight suit half unzipped and Starbuck's messy little ponytail. And me, loose-lipped and strangely relaxed. "I fly one of the Raptors," I tell Whiplash, and he nods appreciatively as my gaze travels over the length of his body, and not just once, either.
What the hell are you...? Put your eyes back in your head, Meg! But for once I don't listen to myself, and it feels good.
I hear Starbuck's voice. She's doing what she does best, that familiar mix of sarcasm and derision that would sound silly coming from anyone else. "Is this a scorecard? You guys put scorecards on the side of your ships?"
"Oh, like you don't keep score." For half a second I wonder where that chiding remark came from, but then I notice the look on Starbuck's face and I realize that it was me. And what's interesting is that smug look again, the one that crosses her features just briefly when she looks over at me. Like she knew what I was going to say before I did.
And maybe she did. Because I wasn't expecting it. It's not my usual thing...but it didn't seem the least bit unusual.
"You don't see me painting them on the side like I'm bragging to the whole frakking universe." Her eyes glint in the harsh light of the hangar deck. There it is again. Can you handle it?
I can.
That's what's different.
But thanks to my new friend Whiplash, I don't get the chance to prove it. That's okay, I know that Starbuck knows. She turns the full force of her biting wit on the Pegasus pilot, and we all laugh.
The sound is music. We haven't laughed in months.
I haven't laughed in months.
I know the question now, the one I hadn't dared ask myself, and I know the answer, too. Why me, why her, why did I let her happen?
The answer is in my laughter.
Starbuck smiles at me, and it's easier to return it.
*
She brushes past me as she heads to her Viper, her last flight out of Galactica for who knows how long. Her hand lingers on my shoulder. "Take care of my squad, Meg," she says softly. I nod.
My smile comes easy this time.
**