Title: Wings
Characters: Tyrol & Gaeta, various pilots
Wordcount: ~ 500 words
Rating: Teen.
Spoilers: set after “Flight of the Phoenix”
Summary: Sometimes, in a situation like theirs, you had to help each other out.
Author’s Note:
lls-mutant requested fic about Gaeta & Tyrol. I took the liberty of borrowing Gaeta’s call sign from her. Mutant, this is not quite your Gaeta I realize, and it’s very short but I hope you’ll still enjoy it. :) Also, thanks very much to my beta
ebuchala.
Feedback is always very much appreciated of course.
Various people on Galactica thought Tyrol had lost it when he invited Felix Gaeta to take the Blackbird out for a spin. It wasn’t even that the two of them were friends, although Tyrol respected Gaeta and he knew that Gaeta respected him. He’d just made the decision on a whim. Sometimes, in a situation like theirs, you had to help each other out.
“He’s going to break her,” Cally said with a quiver in her voice when they watched Gaeta climb into the pilot’s seat, looking out of place in his flight gear. He nodded Figurski a thanks when the knuckledragger gave him a helmet, doing so with a more polite smile than anybody had ever received on this landing deck before.
“Am I the only one worried about the fact that his call sign is ‘Pinball’?” Racetrack added cautiously. “Are we really letting somebody called Pinball fly the Blackbird?”
“We let somebody called Starbuck fly the Blackbird,” Apollo pointed out wryly.
“You didn’t let me take her out,” Kat grumbled.
But Tyrol just grinned. He looked over at Starbuck and Helo, who were busy talking tech and didn’t even look around; it was a vote of confidence all on its own. Tyrol knew there was no reason to worry.
And half an hour later, when Gaeta made a pretty decent landing and wrestled out of his helmet with a broad, delighted grin on his face, Tyrol knew he’d been right to make the offer, as well. No matter what, Gaeta had his wings. Everyone who had wings loved flying, period.
“What did they expect?” Apollo was saying on the way to his ship with a headshake. “He’s a navigator, he can fly.”
“That’s right,” Helo agreed cheerfully. “Before we let them fly the big ones, we make sure they can handle the tiny ones.” Also, of course, the Admiral would never have cleared that flight if he weren’t confident in Gaeta’s ability to perform a combat landing, should the need arise. The nuggets should have realized that, at least.
But there was no combat landing today; for once, there wasn’t an emergency. There was just Gaeta, smiling broadly at Tyrol when he came over, sweaty curls sticking to his forehead. Tyrol smiled back, feeling satisfied. He’d built the Laura to make his life bearable again and she’d ended up making him happy, making all of Galactica happy, and proud.
Gaeta hadn’t been able to help them build the ship, working doubles and triples to hunt down that Cylon virus, even snapping at the Colonel in the process; or that’s what the rumor mill said. When he’d actually taken the trouble to come down to the landing deck to say how sorry he was that he hadn’t been able to offer a hand, Tyrol had offered him a ride.
They’d worked the kinks out of the thrusters after all, and if that was all it took to make the watch officer smile, Tyrol was happy to comply.