BSG fic announcement: The Absolutely, Positively True (Sort Of) Fictional Adventures...part 1
Title: The Absolutely, Positively True (Sort Of) Fictional Adventures of Hot Pilots in Love
Author: Widget
Pairing: Lee/Kara
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 22,432
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be (otherwise Lee would be dressed in that towel permanently! Mmmm…towel). No money is being made.
Spoilers: set shortly after “Final Cut” (episode 2.08). Hard spoilers for that episode
Summary: Truth is stranger than fiction and sometimes both can benefit from a little editorial intervention
Notes: This story came out of an LJ discussion which pondered the not so erudite question “What if Lee and Kara got their hands on fanfic?” Now, technically, in this context it would be closer to RPF since they are “real” characters in their world, but it’s not really true RPF because the author has taken *ahem* artistic license. The resulting story is intended as a parody and should be taken with a grain of salt, a sense of humor and tequila if possible (that grain of salt will come in handy there). Rampant silliness and blatant abuse of fannish tropes abound and may occasionally get out of hand. In other words, this fic isn’t bad, it’s just written that way. Thanks to ancarett and gloryliberty for beta duty.
Posted in parts due to length
Part One
Kara has always liked to think of herself as a woman in the know. Back in her days at the Academy, she’d always known what was going on. She always knew who was shagging who, who was flunking out, who was responsible for the most recent prank/act of vandalism/sordid rumor. Nothing happened at the Academy without Kara Thrace hearing about it.
It’s the same aboard Galactica. Others might have higher rank or longer service at their disposal, but Kara’s the one with her finger on the pulse of Galactica, the one with the connections, both high and low. The only person who might know more is the old man himself, though it’s hard to tell. Adama’s a cagey bastard and he plays his cards close to the chest. That, she supposes, is just one of the reasons why he’s the commander and she’s not.
Still, Kara derives a certain amount of pride from the fact that she always knows what is going on aboard her ship and that nothing of importance or interest ever goes down without her knowing about it.
Until now.
It’s the strange looks that clue her in that something’s up. She’s not sure when they started, precisely. Kara’s used to being looked at. Piloting is a glamorous profession, and pilots, Viper pilots especially, attract a lot of attention. And given her reputation both inside and out of the cockpit, Kara’s well accustomed to speculative gazes and smiles that waver between invitation and challenge; after two years aboard Galactica, they pretty much just wash over her barely noticed.
This is different, though.
The first time she notices them is her shift in the repair bay that morning. She arrives shortly before the changeover and is surprised to see a large knot of mechanics clustered together near the back of the bay. It’s still technically ship’s night and she would have thought that anyone who has the option would be enjoying a little rack time. Apparently not.
Curious, Kara saunters over to the group, noticing the way they scatter and suddenly look very busy once they mark her approach. She isn’t sure if they’re afraid of getting busted by a senior officer for slagging off - Tyrol, she notes, is currently absent from the deck - or if there’s something else going down, but whatever it is she wants to get to the bottom of it. She scans the deck crew and zeroes in on Cally as the best source of intel.
“Hey, Cally,” she greets, her brightest smile in place.
Cally pokes her head out from the access panel she’s working on with sudden intensity and smiles back. “Morning, sir.”
“So, what’s going on?”
“Nothing, sir,” Cally replies a tad too quickly, blushing as she recognizes her error. “Really, sir, it was nothing. We were just goofing off a bit. You know how shift change is, sir. You won’t tell the Chief, will you?”
She seems so genuinely concerned, Kara decides to cut her some slack. “Nah, we all need a break now and then.” She tilts her head to the side. “So, any new gossip I should know about?”
Cally makes a small, choked sound and her cheeks darken again. “Sorry, sir, I got something in my throat. Metal dust.” She casts a quick look over her shoulder. “I should probably get back to work, sir.”
Kara eyes her cautiously, but Cally just gazes back at her as sweet faced and innocent as a porcelain doll. “Right, well, I better get to work myself.”
Cally nods, her expression still wide-eyed and earnest. “Yes, sir. Me, too, sir.”
Kara nods as well and walks over to where her own bird is waiting her attention. It isn’t until much later that Kara realizes that Cally had called her ‘sir’ more times in the course of that brief conversation than she would have in a typical week.
Kara could just chalk it up to embarrassment if it weren’t for the funny looks she gets for the rest of the shift. Nothing major, but every time she looks up there was a member of the deck crew smiling back at her. She starts to think that maybe they’d been quality testing the Chief’s newest batch of moonshine before she arrived on deck, but then she gets caught up in tracking an elusive short in the Viper’s control panel and soon enough she doesn’t have time to think about anything else.
She forgets about the incident entirely until she arrives in sickbay. There’s no sign of Cottle, but Kara catches sight of a group of medics huddled together over a clipboard. She just assumes they’re reviewing some patient’s chart until she hears a soft laugh. She whips her head around at the sound and sees three medics gazing back at her with eerily similar smiles.
“Morning,” she says because it’s the only thing she can think to say.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Thrace,” they reply in unison, their faces wreathed in smiles.
“Right,” she mutters to herself, ignoring them as they turn their attention back to the obviously fascinating contents of their clipboard. She thinks that maybe the Doc needs to put extra padlocks on the cabinets where he stores the happy pills, but otherwise doesn’t give it a second thought. Kara doesn’t have time to worry about the eccentricities of the medical staff.
For once, sick bay isn’t filled to capacity, something to be grateful for, Kara decides. Of course, she’d be ever happier if it had one fewer occupant.
She finds Kat sitting up in her bunk, scribbling something on a clipboard of her own. “Morning, Kat.”
Kat puts the clipboard aside and sits up a little straighter, offering Kara an awkward smile. “Morning, sir.”
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Kat blinks, follows Kara’s sightline. “Oh, no, sir. Just writing a letter to my mom.”
“So, how ya doin’?”
“Good. Doc wants to keep me for one more day of observation and then two days of light duty. After that, it’s up to the CAG to decide when I get to fly again.”
Kara nods. That’s pretty much what she expected. She rocks back on her heels; she sucks at this kind of touchy-feely crap and contemplates making a quick exit. Kat beats her to the punch.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” Kat bursts out. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m so, so sorry.”
Kara’s face hardens, anger and the ghost fear rising up inside her. “You should be. Of all the stupid assed stunts to pull…”
“I know, sir. It was really dumb, but I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Kara can hear the tremor in her voice. It just angers her more.
“What you do, nugget, is talk to me or the CAG if you’re feeling that rough. We need our pilots sharp and pilots hopped up on stims are more of a danger than an asset out there.”
Kat nods, eyes shining with tears. “I know, sir,” she swears fervently. “And I promise I’ll never do that again.”
“You’d better not, ‘cos so help me, I will kick your ass clear back to Caprica. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
Reassured, Kara’s expression softens again. She gives Kat’s thigh a quick, awkward pat. “All right then. You rest up and I’ll see if I can convince the CAG to let you back up there once Cottle clears you to fly.”
Kat beams up at her, looking all of twelve. Gods, was she ever that young? “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it, I promise!”
“Get better, Kat. The squadron misses you.” Kara leans in and gives Kat a conspiratorial look. “Besides, Hot Dog is being a pain in the ass and I think he needs someone to keep him in line.”
Kat’s laughter mingles with her own and by the time Kara leaves sick bay, her mood is lighter than it’s been in days. It’s almost enough to distract her from the odd looks she gets as she walks through the corridors.
Almost.
Kara doesn’t know what the frak people are so Gods damned happy about but she can feel her fists starting to twitch at her side from the urge to wipe away a few of those stupid smiles. It’s tempting; she hasn’t had the time to workout since Kat was pulled off the line and she could use the release. But getting herself thrown in hack when they’re already short on pilots is probably not the smartest thing, so she bites back on the urge and opts to go in search of what passes for food instead.
The mess is pretty quiet at the moment; it usually is at the end of midshift. Kara sees a couple of people sitting in pairs here and there and there’s a knot of people from the CIC - Kara recognizes Dee’s ponytail at once - huddled around the table in the far corner. She considers joining them for about half a second, but she’s just not up for a crowd, especially when she catches sight of Ensign Davies among the group; Davies is just too frakking chirpy for Kara to bear even on a good day and today isn’t one of those.
Then she spies Lee sitting alone at the table in the opposite corner, papers spread out across the table’s surface. Once again Kara prays that she never, ever gets stuck being CAG. The paperwork alone would drive her batfrakked insane. She never, ever dwells on the other things that such a promotion would imply. Without even thinking about it, she heads towards his table.
Halfway there, Kara hears a giggle. She’s sure that’s what it is, even if she hasn’t heard one in some time. She turns towards the direction of the sound and finds that several of CIC personnel have turned to look at her with amused expressions on their faces. They look away at once. Kara stays where she is and eyes them suspiciously, but decides she just can’t be bothered with them just then.
Kara puts her tray down and slides into the seat across from Lee.
“Hey.”
He looks up from the papers arrayed before him and offers her a faint smile.
“Hey.”
“Whatcha workin’ on?”
“Fuel distribution schedules.” Lee takes a sip of coffee from the mug sitting abandoned at his elbow and grimaces; probably gone cold.
Kara tastes a cautious spoonful of soup. Bland but not toxic. “Ah, Lee. You lead such a glamorous life.”
He chuckles. “Don’t we all.” Lee looks over at her and smiles. “Hungry, Kara?”
She nods, but doesn’t bother speaking around the mouthful of bread she’s chewing. It too falls into the bland but not toxic category. That practically makes it gourmet cuisine these days. “I’ve been in the repair bay most of the morning working on Windup’s Viper. I swear to the Gods, Lee, it’s a wonder he has any landing struts left the way he’ been bringing in his bird lately.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Lee promises. “He’s not the only one whose landings have been off lately.”
Kara nods, takes another mouthful of soup.
“I saw Kat this morning.”
She hadn’t meant to blurt it out quite like that. It sounds almost like it was an accusation rather than a casual comment. Lee goes very still for a moment, his face freezing, but otherwise he looks unfazed.
“How is she?” he asks, his voice painfully neutral.
“She’s OK. Embarrassed as hell for making an ass of herself in public. Sorry for letting everyone down.”
Lee nods and that’s painfully neutral, too.
On impulse, she reaches across the table and gives his wrist a little shake. “It’s not your fault, Lee.”
He nods again but she can see he doesn’t believe her. He can’t let himself believe because as CAG Kat’s his responsibility and he let her down. She understands that, really she does, but looking back, even knowing what she knows, Kara isn’t entirely sure anyone would have caught it. Maybe an older and more experienced CAG might have had a clue; maybe a CAG who wasn’t pulling fifteen hours shifts and doing additional duty shifts in CIC, working the repair bay, acting as the President’s military advisor, falling apart at the seams in slow motion with no sign of a reprieve in sight…
She feels Lee’s hand twist in her grip, his fingers wrapping around her wrist.
“It’s not you fault either, Kara.”
She smiles gamely back at him, but she knows he’s no more convinced by her show than she was by his. Lee might be the CAG, but Kat was her student. Kara had trained her and had cleared her to fly Vipers. Kara should have seen it coming. But she hadn’t and that’s just another bit of guilt she gets to carry around with her.
Lee is still looking at her, his eyes intent. “Kat’s an adult, Kara. She makes her own choices and on this occasion she made an incredibly bad one. She survived and hopefully she’ll know better in the future.”
“She shouldn’t have been in the position to make that kind of choice in the first place,” Kara says, her voice low.
“No, she shouldn’t have, but that’s a luxury we can’t afford anymore. She’ll be all right. You should cut yourself a break.”
Kara gives a small laugh, but it’s a bitter thing. “Maybe you should take your own advice, Lee.”
“I’m trying,” he replies. His candor takes her by surprise, making her body ease a little and it’s only then that she realizes that Lee’s rubbing his thumb across her knuckles, the movement light and soothing.
Kara feels the skin on the back of her neck prickle and she knows without looking that she’s being watched. She swings around suddenly, just fast enough to catch the CIC crowd watching her and Lee with stupid grins on their faces. They startle like rabbits and return to their huddle, but Kara is pretty sure she hears smothered laughter just the same. She glares at their bowed heads for a few seconds longer before turning around again.
“Lee, have you noticed anything strange?”
“Like what?”
His expression is so open and earnest and utterly clueless that she hesitates, brow furrowing. Maybe she’s turning paranoid. Overwork and a mountain of stress will do that to a person. But then she remembers the looks and she knows she’s not imagining them.
“I dunno. People have been acting odd, is all. They keep staring. And laughing.”
Lee blinks then follows her gaze over to the table in the corner. Kara catches sight of Petty Officer Morton stealing a peek at them only to duck her head again like a gopher going to ground.
“Now that you mention it…” his voice trails off.
“What?”
Lee’s frowning now as well. “It’s probably nothing but I’ve been seeing it, too. I just assumed it was fallout from the documentary…”
Kara’s mouth stretches into a broad, lazy grin. “Ah, yes…the infamous towel. You know, Lee, the entire fleet was hoping to get a good look at the Arrow of Apollo. You could almost hear the wails of disappointment when your towel didn’t slip farther down. Such a blow to morale.”
Lee shoots her a dark look which she promptly ignores. He glares a few moments longer, mostly on principle she suspects, before sighing and shaking his head ruefully. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
Kara flashes him her brightest grin. “Nope.”
Lee shakes his head again, but she can see the ghost of a smile on his face.
“So…?” she prompts.
“Oh.” He gives a small shrug. “It’s like you were saying. Lots of dopey smiles. People staring but breaking eye contact as soon as I catch them looking. Laughter that turns into a cough when I look their way. I’d just figured it was that stupid documentary, but maybe it’s something else.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking.”
Now it’s Lee’s turn to smile. “Are you sure they’re not all admiring your boxing technique, Lieutenant Thrace? After all, you put on quite a display for the documentary crew yourself.”
Kara’s eyes narrow. “And who was it who sent Biers to me in the first place?”
Lee raises his hands in mock surrender. “I just told her that if she had any questions about how pilots are trained, she needed to talk to the flight instructor, who, if I remember correctly is you.” Lee’s lips twitch in amusement. “It’s not my fault she caught you in the middle of your workout. Besides, I don’t know what you’re complaining about; at least you were fully clothed, if a bit hot and sweaty.”
Feeling suddenly reckless, she decides to meet provocation with provocation, Kara leans in, pleased to see Lee mirror the movement. “And do you like me hot and sweaty, Apollo?” she purrs.
He waggles his brows in response. “You know I do, Starbuck.”
“Well, I love laying you out.”
His smile turns decidedly lecherous. “You know I’m always happy to be on my back for you.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Please do.”
She knows they probably shouldn’t keep doing this. Things have been better since they came back from Kobol, but there’s still a lot of unresolved stuff between them and Kara can’t entirely forget the last time they squared off. They’ll have to deal with it sometime, but Lee seems no more inclined to do so than she, so for now they just fall back into the familiar patterns of fighting and flirting. And if there is a little extra current running through their exchanges these days, well, Kara won’t worry about that just yet.
The playful mood is shattered by the sound of muffled laughter from the other side of the mess. Kara jerks back in her seat and shoots a glare in the direction of the huddle. She starts to rise from her seat, but Lee places a restraining hand on her arm.
“Don’t,” he warns her in a low voice. “You’ll only encourage them. It’ll pass, whatever it is. Just ignore it.”
He’s right, of course, but it still goes against the grain to sit there and do nothing. She gives him a faint nod and slumps back in her seat, studiously ignoring the group at the other table.
“Here,” Lee says, sliding some of his paperwork towards her. “You can help me finish the refueling schedule.”
She shoots him a wary look. “I’m not doing your homework for you, Apollo.”
“It won’t kill you to help. Besides, if I can finish this up quick, I’ll have some free time before CAP. C’mon, be a sport. I’ll let you beat up on me,” he offers with a smile.
That draws a bark of laughter from her. Only Lee Adama would think to bribe her with a sparring match. It’s kind of twisted, but it’s them to a tee. It’s also exactly what she needs. It should probably scare her that he knows that, but right now she’s surprisingly okay with it.
“Gimme those,” she says taking the papers from him and pushing her tray aside. “Your ass is so gonna be mine, Adama.”
“Promises, promises.”
They both laugh before hunkering down to work.
Kara never even notices when the CIC gang leaves the mess.
[][][]
She finds it by accident.
At least she thinks it was by accident, because surely no one would be stupid enough to leave it lying around where anyone - Kara in particular - could find it.
She finds it on a trip to the officers’ head. When she goes to wash her hands, there it is, sitting on one of the sinks, wedged up against the mirror. Kara frowns a little when she notices it just sitting there, a seemingly innocuous sheath of pages that have been rolled up tightly, their edges a little dog eared from handling.
Kara’s not entirely sure why she stops to look; maybe it’s the memory of Lee pouring over fuel distribution schedules and the accompanying thought that this could, in fact, be something important; maybe she’s just plain nosy. Either way, she shakes the water from her hands and retrieves the pages, unrolling them carefully.
A snort of laughter escapes her when she reads the cover page.
On the Wings of Passion:
A romance
By cylonh8r
Oh Gods, she’s stumbled upon somebody’s cheesy amateur fiction. Idly she wonders who “cylonh8r” is because she can get a whole lot of mileage out of this. Her amusement, however, only lasts about as long as it takes Kara to read the first paragraph of the story.
Lieutenant Mara “Moondoe” Pace strode onto the flight deck as if she owned it because she did. She was, after all, the best pilot in the fleet, and everyone knew better than to get in her way. Her hips swayed suggestively as she walked, drawing admiring glances from the pilots and crew assembled their, but no one was foolish enough to approach her. Mara Pace was a Viper goddess, as dangerous out of the cockpit as she was in it. But more than that, Mara’s heart belonged to another, even if she wouldn’t admit that truth even to herself.
Kara blinks, a feeling of unease creeping through her. She knows she should stop right there, toss the pages in the trash and pretend that she’d never seen this. That would be the sensible thing to do. But then, Kara had never been very good at doing the sensible thing.
So naturally she keeps reading.
Mara let her hand glide lovingly across the side of her Viper. It was a lethal machine, but in Mara’s hands it was a thing of deadly beauty. She handled it with a preternatal confidence, maneuvering it as if it was an extension of her own body. For her, flying was an erotic experience, a headier rush than sex. No one could match her in the sky. No one, that is, but him.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Pace,” a rich, sexy voice came from behind her, making her shiver in anticipation. “Are you ready to kick some Cylon ass?”
Her heart beating loudly in her chest, Mara turned to find herself face to face with him: Captain Vee “Adonis” Dodonna, her CAG and best friend and the object of her most romantic fantasies. Mara was in love with Vee, but it was a hopeless, doomed passion. Not only did the regulations forbid it, but there was a deep, dark and painful history between them of which they never spoke, but which kept them apart.
As she gazed up into the most perfect blue eyes she’d ever seen, Mara found herself once again wanting to throw caution to the wing and kiss him with all the love, passion, tenderness, yearning and desire within her very being, but as always Mara held back.
What if Vee didn’t feel the same? She knew he cared for her, but did he, could he love her? Oh, if only he could! But Mara was afraid. She couldn’t risk their friendship, it meant too much to her. Once again, Mara pushed aside her feelings for Vee.
She loved him too muck to risk losing him.
Mara smiled brightly, every inch, the brash, cocky ace pilot everyone expected her to be. “You betcha, captain! Those Cylon bastards don’t stand a chance against us!”
Vee smiled back at her and Mara and she felt herself melt from the warmth of his beautiful smile. ‘Oh, Vee,’ she thought sadly, ‘if only our love wasn’t doomed!’.
Kara stares horrified at the page in front of her. No frakking way. She didn’t just read what she thought she read. She couldn’t be. And yet, there it is, in black and white, lurid prose, misspellings and all.
Someone is going to die. Slowly and painfully. What she’s already read is enough to earn the mystery author a death warrant, but once again, morbid curiosity urges Kara to read on.
By the time she reaches the scene in which Mara and Vee consummate their passion in the conveniently empty - and apparently soundproofed - showers, she’s ready to dismember the culprit. By the time she reaches the even more improbable sex in a Viper cockpit scene, she’s thinking water torture was the way to go. And by the time she reaches the end of the story with the gushing, saccharine declarations of true and everlasting love, she’s torn between the desire to hurl the contents of her stomach and to sink through the decking in utter mortification.
Because now it all makes sense. The smiles, the giggling, the funny looks, all of it was due to this story making the rounds of the Galactica. It might be a work of fiction, but it didn’t exactly take an advanced degree in astrophysics to figure out who the characters of Mara and Vee were supposed to be.
It would actually be funny as hell if it were someone else, anyone other than her and Lee because now everyone who was reading this - and based upon the looks she’d been getting that was the better part of Galactica’s crew - was going to come to the same completely erroneous conclusion, namely that she and Lee were lovers. And apparently they were going at it like bunnies on stims.
If only.
Frak.
Frak, frak, frak.
Crumpling the offending pages in her fist, Kara exits the head in search of her partner in non-crime.
The look on Kara’s face as she strides through the ship’s corridors is apparently enough to send crewmen scampering frantically out of her path. On any other occasion, Kara would have been gratified by this, but right now she has bigger concerns.
She checks Lee’s office first, only to come up empty. Her second guess, however, proves a winner. He’s in the ready room, inscribing the duty roster on the whiteboard in neat, block letters, the motion of his arm precise and economical.
“Have you seen this?” she says without preamble, her voice uncomfortably loud in the quiet of the empty room.
Lee startles, but regains control with admirable speed. “And what would ‘this’ be, Starbuck?” he asks in a voice that is somehow both patient and amused.
She crosses the ready room until she’s standing in front of him. “This!” she repeats, pressing the crumpled pages against his chest with more force than is justified. Lee seizes them before they fell, unrolling the pages to read the contents.
“On the Wings of Passion?” He looks up at her bemused. “What is this?”
“Just read.”
Lee shoots her a curious look but does as instructed. His eyebrows jump almost at once.
“Mara Pace?” He’s smiling, clearly amused. She wonders how long that will last.
“Keep reading.”
He does so.
Kara is watching his face carefully so she knows the precise moment that he encounters his own alter ego. That irritating smirk vanishes entirely to be replaced by a frown. He continues reading silently, flipping page after page. When his cheeks suddenly flame, she knows he’s reached the shower scene; when his eyebrows practically reach his hairline, she knows he’s hit the sex in a Viper cockpit scene.
He looks up at her in amazement. “A Viper cockpit? Is that even possible?”
“It is if you balance just right and you’re very limber.”
“How do you…?” his eyes widen and his cheeks go even pinker. “I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Probably not. Just keep reading.”
He nods and returns his attention to the sordid tale before him. When he finishes, he carefully realigns the pages into a tidy pile and hands them back to her.
“Well?”
“Well, that’s…interesting, to say the least.” His carefully neutral voice is a perfect match for his expression. “Where did you get that?”
“I found it in the officers’ head.”
Lee frowns thoughtfully. “A prank?”
She shakes her head. “I’m thinking more general entertainment for the crew.”
Understanding dawns. “All the smiles and funny looks we’ve been getting.”
“Yep. Congratulations, Apollo. You’re a porn star.”
She expects outrage or at the very least embarrassment. What she doesn’t expect is for Lee, Captain Tightass himself, to start laughing.
She stares at him, feeling her own irritation staring to rise again. “You think this is funny?”
“Don’t you?”
She frowns at him, bewildered by his reaction. “It’s slander!”
“Well, technically, it would be libel since slander refers to speech and this is a written text.”
She glares at him.
“I’m just trying to be precise,” he replies sounding almost defensive. “Besides I’m not entirely sure this is libel.”
“What do you mean? Of course it is! People,” she waves the papers in her hand for emphasis, “are saying that you and I are frakking!”
“No, people are saying that Mara and Vee are frakking.”
“It’s the same thing!”
“No it’s not. At least, not according to Colonial law, anyway. This,” he points to the pages that are starting to get crumpled in her increasingly tight grip, “is fiction.”
“Fiction that is clearly based on us. Mara and Vee? Adonis and Moondoe? And what kind of call sign is Moondoe, anyway?”
Lee shakes his head, lips twitching in amusement. “First you’re outraged by the existence of this story and now you’re pissed because your fictional counterpart has a silly call sign? There’s just no pleasing you, is there, Kara?”
“Well, it’s easy for you to say, Adonis.” She gives a contemptuous snort. “Like anyone would think you deserve that call sign!”
Lee smirks at her and waggles his eyebrows. “Apparently yours is the minority opinion.”
She considers wiping the smug expression off his face, settles for another glare instead.
Lee just keeps smirking, the bastard.
“Aren’t you annoyed by this?” she asks with more than a hint of accusation in her voice.
He shrugs. “I’m not thrilled by it, but frankly it’s no worse than finding the pilots’ duty locker plastered with images of myself dressed in nothing but a towel.”
He shoots her a pointed look and she has the grace to look sheepish for about three seconds before her moral indignation flares again.
“That’s entirely different.”
“Oh? And how’s that?”
“Well, you’re always running around quarters half-naked…”
Lee glares at her. “What do you mean always?”
Kara ignores both his interruption and his obvious exasperation and continues on her rant. “…but this is total fabrication! We,” she waves her hand back and forth between them, “are not frakking!”
“No, we’re not, but it’s not like people haven’t been thinking it.” He gives her a serious look. “C’mon, Kara, you’ve heard the rumors. It’s not like it’s anything new. Remember that time in our third year at the Academy when we accidentally got locked in the science lab overnight and everyone was sure we’d spent the entire night frakking?”
“Which was your fault, as I recall.”
Lee shakes his head. “Beside the point. I’m just saying that people tend to gossip about us. And don’t even try to tell me that you don’t know about the pool Joker’s been running about when we’ll finally get over ourselves and do the deed.”
Kara rolls her eyes “Well, of course I know about the pool! I’m just surprised that you do.”
“I’m the CAG, remember?” he replies more than a little smugly. “I know all.”
“Right. Omniscience and an endless supply of paperwork. That’s a sweet gig you got there, Lee.”
“It pays the bills.”
Kara shakes her head, some of her irritation bleeding away in the face of Lee’s tolerance.
“And you’re really OK with this?”
He shrugs again. “It’s not a matter of being OK with it or not. It’s already out there and short of busting the heads of all the people reading this stuff, there’s not a whole lot either you or I can do about it. Hell, even that’s not an option; people would probably just see it as proof that something is going on and we’re trying to cover it up.”
She nods. He’s right, of course. He usually is. That doesn’t mean she has to like it, though. Something must show on her face, because Lee’s expression softens.
“Look, Kara, people are just bored. They’re looking for something pleasant to distract them from all the crap and right now, this is it. It’ll blow over soon enough. Either that or they’ll find a new target. Maybe whoever it is will decide to write steamy porn involving Ellen Tigh and Doc Cottle.”
Kara’s jaw practically hits the floor. “That’s just…” she flounders, horrified, as her brain cheerfully supplies an unwanted visual. “You are one sick bastard, Lee Adama!”
She scrunches her eyes shut, but it does nothing to dislodge the terrifying image that Lee has put there.
He chuckles. “I try my best. After all, it’s not every day I get to freak you out.”
She punches him on the arm, hard. “Well stop it! Ugh! I just ate,” she adds shivering dramatically.
“You’ll live. After all, Moondoe wouldn’t let something as trivial as a scary visual slow her down, would she?”
“Lee? I just moved past the urge to beat the crap out of you. Don’t make me change my mind.”
Lee raised his hands in surrender, but there was not a hint of submission on his face.
“Just let it go, Kara. People will have forgotten about this before you even realize it.”
[][][]
Lee is usually right. That’s a touchstone in Kara’s existence. An irritating one, maybe, but it’s still reassuring in its own way, especially after the end of the world when nothing is certain. Lee being right is strangely soothing, though she’ll never tell him that. His head is already plenty big in her opinion.
Lee is usually right. Except when he is spectacularly wrong.
His prediction that people would get bored with their fictional sex lives in short order is so far off the mark it’s not even in the same solar system. Either people are even more starved for distraction (and steamy porn) than he’d realized or people were just sick, twisted frakkers.
Kara suspects it’s a little of both.
Eventually she decides that she’s OK with it. Well, maybe OK is too strong a term, but she can deal. Of course, she did have to kick a few asses to reach that new plane of enlightenment. A few junior personnel found themselves on the receiving end of duty shifts cleaning the heads for not showing the proper respect to a senior officer. And then there was Hyper who learned the hard way that it wasn’t wise to call her Moondoe even as a joke. When asked later on, he would claim that he got his black eye from walking into his locker door. Kara’s pretty sure that Lee didn’t buy that explanation but he let it pass without question. Once word began to circulate, most people figured it was better to keep their yaps shut, at least within hearing range of Starbuck.
So, it got better.
Until it got worse. Because Lee was wrong. Spectacularly, amazingly wrong.
Not only did people not tire of the romantic escapades of Mara and Vee, they turned them into a fill-fledged phenomenon. Despite its utter lack of artistic merit, originality or meticulous spelling, On the Wings of Passion became the first not so official blockbuster of what passes as post-apocalyptic literature. It proved so popular, in fact, that the mystery author decided to pen a sequel.
Full Throttle, a multi-chapter, work-in-progress, romantic epic, is every bit as lurid as its precursor. It’s cheesy and over the top and makes a complete hash of every trite convention of romance literature known to man or womankind. Clearly the author has never met a cliché that she - or he, since the gender along with the identity of the author remains a secret - didn’t like. The only discernible difference between this story and the original is that the grammar is better. Lee suggests that the author must have found an editor somewhere along the way.
Kara doesn’t give a flying frak about any of that. She doesn’t care about the technical proficiency of the author. She doesn’t care that the story is horribly clichéd, unoriginal claptrap. She doesn’t even care that people are moronic enough to enjoy this crap.
No, what really pisses Kara off is the characterization.
Or, to be more precise her characterization.
“I don’t frakking believe this!”
Lee looks up from the flight roster he’s been working on. “What?” his manner is decidedly cautious. Lee knows when to tread lightly.
“This!” she says waving the pages she’s holding as if the very gesture is sufficient to explain everything.
Lee sighs. “I’m not a mind reader, Kara. What ‘this’ are you talking about?”
She shoots him an exasperated look and rolls out of her bunk to stand next to the table where he’s sitting. “This!” she repeats, setting the pages down in front of him with a flourish.
Lee reads the title; that’s enough. He rubs at his temple and looks back up at her.
“Why are you even reading that? If I remember correctly, you said this was - and I quote - ‘the biggest pile of horseshit ever written’?”
And there was Lee being right again, damn him to the seven hells.
“It is. But if people are going to write stuff about me I figure I have a right to know what it is.”
“Do I even want to know where you got it from?”
“I got it from Hot Dog. I told him to turn over the bad porn or I’d hurt him into next week. The nugget’s got a healthy sense of self-preservation.”
Lee snorts at that remark. “So what is it this time?”
She stares at him, equally torn between irritation and gratitude that he isn’t taking this seriously. “It’s this lame ass plot. Apparently Mara’s plane is hit by a Cylon Raider and she crash lands on a planet.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“It is, except for the part where Mara just sits on her ass and waits for Vee to rescue her rather than managing it herself.”
“Ah,” Lee says, his voice painfully, carefully neutral. It doesn’t slow Kara down at all.
“I mean what the frak? As if I would ever just twiddle my thumbs and wait for you to rescue me like some frakking…girl!”
She’s pacing now, her arms moving in broad sweeps as her tirade builds. “And when the hell have you ever saved me anyway?”
“Well, I have sprung you from hack a few times…”
“That hardly counts as a rescue.”
Lee looks like he might want to object, but seeing her expression wisely opts for silence.
“In fact, I seem to recall that I’m the one who usually rescues your sorry ass. Who was the one that blew up that missile that was about to destroy your Viper, huh?” she asks, gesturing wildly with both hands. “Who was the one who plowed into your damaged Viper after you’d lost an engine and your power started to fail and got you home safe and sound?”
“That would be you on both accounts,” he replies affably.
“Damn straight!” Kara crosses her arms over her chest as she stares down at him as if in challenge. “So what the frak is this all about!” she hisses, gesturing towards the story on the table in front of him
“Kara…”
“Read this!” she says pointing her finger imperiously to a spot halfway down the page.
Lee’s eyes scan to the beginning of the paragraph; finding it, he begins to read:
Mara rushed forward, tears streaming down her alabaster cheeks.
“Oh, Vee! Thank the Gods you found me at last! I was so afraid I’d never see you again!”
Vee wrapped his powerful, masculine arms around her, crushing her soft body to his manly chest. He could feel her trembling against him, her full breasts rising and falling with her breathes. He looked into her beautiful green eyes, shimmering with tears and felt his heart swell with his love for her.
“I would never leave you behind, Mara. As long as I draw breath, I will never be parted from you. Never!” he swore ardently before taking Mara’s mouth in a feverish kiss.
“Oh, Vee,” Mara murmured happily against his neck, melting into his embrace. “I love you so much!”
Vee cradled her exquisite face in his strong hands and gazed at her devotedly. “I feel the same way, my dearest, darling Mara!”
They fell into one another’s arms, embracing rapturously until it was time to return to their home in the stars.
Lee covers his mouth is a poor attempt to hide his smile. Kara glares at him.
“Oh sure, go ahead and laugh Vee.”
“Well, you do have to admit, the language is rather, erm, colorful.”
“The hell I do!”
Lee shakes his head, his expression one of fond exasperation. “Do I need to explain to you again that these are fictional characters, Kara, living out fictional events? Whatever superficial resemblance they might have to us, that’s all it is. They aren’t us.”
“I know that!”
“Then why are you throwing a tantrum?”
Her eyes narrow dangerously. “I am not throwing a tantrum!”
Lee’s answering look speaks volumes.
“I’m not!” she protests, secretly pleased at how even her voice sounds. “I’m just pissed that this character - and yes, I know she’s fictional but she’s still clearly based on me - is such a wuss.”
“Yes, but she’s not you, Kara. Nobody would even think for a moment that you’d behave like that.”
“Really?” She hates the faint note of desperation that creeps into her voice and hopes he doesn’t notice.
Lee just smiles back at her, the skin around his eyes crinkling a little. “Trust me on that, Kara. No one will ever make the mistake of confusing you and your fictional counterpart. Everyone knows you’re more likely to deck me than swoon into my arms.”
“Good,” she replies firmly. “That’s good.”
It’s exactly what she wanted to hear. So why doesn’t it make her feel any better?
Author: Widget
Pairing: Lee/Kara
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 22,432
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be (otherwise Lee would be dressed in that towel permanently! Mmmm…towel). No money is being made.
Spoilers: set shortly after “Final Cut” (episode 2.08). Hard spoilers for that episode
Summary: Truth is stranger than fiction and sometimes both can benefit from a little editorial intervention
Notes: This story came out of an LJ discussion which pondered the not so erudite question “What if Lee and Kara got their hands on fanfic?” Now, technically, in this context it would be closer to RPF since they are “real” characters in their world, but it’s not really true RPF because the author has taken *ahem* artistic license. The resulting story is intended as a parody and should be taken with a grain of salt, a sense of humor and tequila if possible (that grain of salt will come in handy there). Rampant silliness and blatant abuse of fannish tropes abound and may occasionally get out of hand. In other words, this fic isn’t bad, it’s just written that way. Thanks to ancarett and gloryliberty for beta duty.
Posted in parts due to length
Part One
Kara has always liked to think of herself as a woman in the know. Back in her days at the Academy, she’d always known what was going on. She always knew who was shagging who, who was flunking out, who was responsible for the most recent prank/act of vandalism/sordid rumor. Nothing happened at the Academy without Kara Thrace hearing about it.
It’s the same aboard Galactica. Others might have higher rank or longer service at their disposal, but Kara’s the one with her finger on the pulse of Galactica, the one with the connections, both high and low. The only person who might know more is the old man himself, though it’s hard to tell. Adama’s a cagey bastard and he plays his cards close to the chest. That, she supposes, is just one of the reasons why he’s the commander and she’s not.
Still, Kara derives a certain amount of pride from the fact that she always knows what is going on aboard her ship and that nothing of importance or interest ever goes down without her knowing about it.
Until now.
It’s the strange looks that clue her in that something’s up. She’s not sure when they started, precisely. Kara’s used to being looked at. Piloting is a glamorous profession, and pilots, Viper pilots especially, attract a lot of attention. And given her reputation both inside and out of the cockpit, Kara’s well accustomed to speculative gazes and smiles that waver between invitation and challenge; after two years aboard Galactica, they pretty much just wash over her barely noticed.
This is different, though.
The first time she notices them is her shift in the repair bay that morning. She arrives shortly before the changeover and is surprised to see a large knot of mechanics clustered together near the back of the bay. It’s still technically ship’s night and she would have thought that anyone who has the option would be enjoying a little rack time. Apparently not.
Curious, Kara saunters over to the group, noticing the way they scatter and suddenly look very busy once they mark her approach. She isn’t sure if they’re afraid of getting busted by a senior officer for slagging off - Tyrol, she notes, is currently absent from the deck - or if there’s something else going down, but whatever it is she wants to get to the bottom of it. She scans the deck crew and zeroes in on Cally as the best source of intel.
“Hey, Cally,” she greets, her brightest smile in place.
Cally pokes her head out from the access panel she’s working on with sudden intensity and smiles back. “Morning, sir.”
“So, what’s going on?”
“Nothing, sir,” Cally replies a tad too quickly, blushing as she recognizes her error. “Really, sir, it was nothing. We were just goofing off a bit. You know how shift change is, sir. You won’t tell the Chief, will you?”
She seems so genuinely concerned, Kara decides to cut her some slack. “Nah, we all need a break now and then.” She tilts her head to the side. “So, any new gossip I should know about?”
Cally makes a small, choked sound and her cheeks darken again. “Sorry, sir, I got something in my throat. Metal dust.” She casts a quick look over her shoulder. “I should probably get back to work, sir.”
Kara eyes her cautiously, but Cally just gazes back at her as sweet faced and innocent as a porcelain doll. “Right, well, I better get to work myself.”
Cally nods, her expression still wide-eyed and earnest. “Yes, sir. Me, too, sir.”
Kara nods as well and walks over to where her own bird is waiting her attention. It isn’t until much later that Kara realizes that Cally had called her ‘sir’ more times in the course of that brief conversation than she would have in a typical week.
Kara could just chalk it up to embarrassment if it weren’t for the funny looks she gets for the rest of the shift. Nothing major, but every time she looks up there was a member of the deck crew smiling back at her. She starts to think that maybe they’d been quality testing the Chief’s newest batch of moonshine before she arrived on deck, but then she gets caught up in tracking an elusive short in the Viper’s control panel and soon enough she doesn’t have time to think about anything else.
She forgets about the incident entirely until she arrives in sickbay. There’s no sign of Cottle, but Kara catches sight of a group of medics huddled together over a clipboard. She just assumes they’re reviewing some patient’s chart until she hears a soft laugh. She whips her head around at the sound and sees three medics gazing back at her with eerily similar smiles.
“Morning,” she says because it’s the only thing she can think to say.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Thrace,” they reply in unison, their faces wreathed in smiles.
“Right,” she mutters to herself, ignoring them as they turn their attention back to the obviously fascinating contents of their clipboard. She thinks that maybe the Doc needs to put extra padlocks on the cabinets where he stores the happy pills, but otherwise doesn’t give it a second thought. Kara doesn’t have time to worry about the eccentricities of the medical staff.
For once, sick bay isn’t filled to capacity, something to be grateful for, Kara decides. Of course, she’d be ever happier if it had one fewer occupant.
She finds Kat sitting up in her bunk, scribbling something on a clipboard of her own. “Morning, Kat.”
Kat puts the clipboard aside and sits up a little straighter, offering Kara an awkward smile. “Morning, sir.”
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Kat blinks, follows Kara’s sightline. “Oh, no, sir. Just writing a letter to my mom.”
“So, how ya doin’?”
“Good. Doc wants to keep me for one more day of observation and then two days of light duty. After that, it’s up to the CAG to decide when I get to fly again.”
Kara nods. That’s pretty much what she expected. She rocks back on her heels; she sucks at this kind of touchy-feely crap and contemplates making a quick exit. Kat beats her to the punch.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” Kat bursts out. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m so, so sorry.”
Kara’s face hardens, anger and the ghost fear rising up inside her. “You should be. Of all the stupid assed stunts to pull…”
“I know, sir. It was really dumb, but I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Kara can hear the tremor in her voice. It just angers her more.
“What you do, nugget, is talk to me or the CAG if you’re feeling that rough. We need our pilots sharp and pilots hopped up on stims are more of a danger than an asset out there.”
Kat nods, eyes shining with tears. “I know, sir,” she swears fervently. “And I promise I’ll never do that again.”
“You’d better not, ‘cos so help me, I will kick your ass clear back to Caprica. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
Reassured, Kara’s expression softens again. She gives Kat’s thigh a quick, awkward pat. “All right then. You rest up and I’ll see if I can convince the CAG to let you back up there once Cottle clears you to fly.”
Kat beams up at her, looking all of twelve. Gods, was she ever that young? “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it, I promise!”
“Get better, Kat. The squadron misses you.” Kara leans in and gives Kat a conspiratorial look. “Besides, Hot Dog is being a pain in the ass and I think he needs someone to keep him in line.”
Kat’s laughter mingles with her own and by the time Kara leaves sick bay, her mood is lighter than it’s been in days. It’s almost enough to distract her from the odd looks she gets as she walks through the corridors.
Almost.
Kara doesn’t know what the frak people are so Gods damned happy about but she can feel her fists starting to twitch at her side from the urge to wipe away a few of those stupid smiles. It’s tempting; she hasn’t had the time to workout since Kat was pulled off the line and she could use the release. But getting herself thrown in hack when they’re already short on pilots is probably not the smartest thing, so she bites back on the urge and opts to go in search of what passes for food instead.
The mess is pretty quiet at the moment; it usually is at the end of midshift. Kara sees a couple of people sitting in pairs here and there and there’s a knot of people from the CIC - Kara recognizes Dee’s ponytail at once - huddled around the table in the far corner. She considers joining them for about half a second, but she’s just not up for a crowd, especially when she catches sight of Ensign Davies among the group; Davies is just too frakking chirpy for Kara to bear even on a good day and today isn’t one of those.
Then she spies Lee sitting alone at the table in the opposite corner, papers spread out across the table’s surface. Once again Kara prays that she never, ever gets stuck being CAG. The paperwork alone would drive her batfrakked insane. She never, ever dwells on the other things that such a promotion would imply. Without even thinking about it, she heads towards his table.
Halfway there, Kara hears a giggle. She’s sure that’s what it is, even if she hasn’t heard one in some time. She turns towards the direction of the sound and finds that several of CIC personnel have turned to look at her with amused expressions on their faces. They look away at once. Kara stays where she is and eyes them suspiciously, but decides she just can’t be bothered with them just then.
Kara puts her tray down and slides into the seat across from Lee.
“Hey.”
He looks up from the papers arrayed before him and offers her a faint smile.
“Hey.”
“Whatcha workin’ on?”
“Fuel distribution schedules.” Lee takes a sip of coffee from the mug sitting abandoned at his elbow and grimaces; probably gone cold.
Kara tastes a cautious spoonful of soup. Bland but not toxic. “Ah, Lee. You lead such a glamorous life.”
He chuckles. “Don’t we all.” Lee looks over at her and smiles. “Hungry, Kara?”
She nods, but doesn’t bother speaking around the mouthful of bread she’s chewing. It too falls into the bland but not toxic category. That practically makes it gourmet cuisine these days. “I’ve been in the repair bay most of the morning working on Windup’s Viper. I swear to the Gods, Lee, it’s a wonder he has any landing struts left the way he’ been bringing in his bird lately.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Lee promises. “He’s not the only one whose landings have been off lately.”
Kara nods, takes another mouthful of soup.
“I saw Kat this morning.”
She hadn’t meant to blurt it out quite like that. It sounds almost like it was an accusation rather than a casual comment. Lee goes very still for a moment, his face freezing, but otherwise he looks unfazed.
“How is she?” he asks, his voice painfully neutral.
“She’s OK. Embarrassed as hell for making an ass of herself in public. Sorry for letting everyone down.”
Lee nods and that’s painfully neutral, too.
On impulse, she reaches across the table and gives his wrist a little shake. “It’s not your fault, Lee.”
He nods again but she can see he doesn’t believe her. He can’t let himself believe because as CAG Kat’s his responsibility and he let her down. She understands that, really she does, but looking back, even knowing what she knows, Kara isn’t entirely sure anyone would have caught it. Maybe an older and more experienced CAG might have had a clue; maybe a CAG who wasn’t pulling fifteen hours shifts and doing additional duty shifts in CIC, working the repair bay, acting as the President’s military advisor, falling apart at the seams in slow motion with no sign of a reprieve in sight…
She feels Lee’s hand twist in her grip, his fingers wrapping around her wrist.
“It’s not you fault either, Kara.”
She smiles gamely back at him, but she knows he’s no more convinced by her show than she was by his. Lee might be the CAG, but Kat was her student. Kara had trained her and had cleared her to fly Vipers. Kara should have seen it coming. But she hadn’t and that’s just another bit of guilt she gets to carry around with her.
Lee is still looking at her, his eyes intent. “Kat’s an adult, Kara. She makes her own choices and on this occasion she made an incredibly bad one. She survived and hopefully she’ll know better in the future.”
“She shouldn’t have been in the position to make that kind of choice in the first place,” Kara says, her voice low.
“No, she shouldn’t have, but that’s a luxury we can’t afford anymore. She’ll be all right. You should cut yourself a break.”
Kara gives a small laugh, but it’s a bitter thing. “Maybe you should take your own advice, Lee.”
“I’m trying,” he replies. His candor takes her by surprise, making her body ease a little and it’s only then that she realizes that Lee’s rubbing his thumb across her knuckles, the movement light and soothing.
Kara feels the skin on the back of her neck prickle and she knows without looking that she’s being watched. She swings around suddenly, just fast enough to catch the CIC crowd watching her and Lee with stupid grins on their faces. They startle like rabbits and return to their huddle, but Kara is pretty sure she hears smothered laughter just the same. She glares at their bowed heads for a few seconds longer before turning around again.
“Lee, have you noticed anything strange?”
“Like what?”
His expression is so open and earnest and utterly clueless that she hesitates, brow furrowing. Maybe she’s turning paranoid. Overwork and a mountain of stress will do that to a person. But then she remembers the looks and she knows she’s not imagining them.
“I dunno. People have been acting odd, is all. They keep staring. And laughing.”
Lee blinks then follows her gaze over to the table in the corner. Kara catches sight of Petty Officer Morton stealing a peek at them only to duck her head again like a gopher going to ground.
“Now that you mention it…” his voice trails off.
“What?”
Lee’s frowning now as well. “It’s probably nothing but I’ve been seeing it, too. I just assumed it was fallout from the documentary…”
Kara’s mouth stretches into a broad, lazy grin. “Ah, yes…the infamous towel. You know, Lee, the entire fleet was hoping to get a good look at the Arrow of Apollo. You could almost hear the wails of disappointment when your towel didn’t slip farther down. Such a blow to morale.”
Lee shoots her a dark look which she promptly ignores. He glares a few moments longer, mostly on principle she suspects, before sighing and shaking his head ruefully. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
Kara flashes him her brightest grin. “Nope.”
Lee shakes his head again, but she can see the ghost of a smile on his face.
“So…?” she prompts.
“Oh.” He gives a small shrug. “It’s like you were saying. Lots of dopey smiles. People staring but breaking eye contact as soon as I catch them looking. Laughter that turns into a cough when I look their way. I’d just figured it was that stupid documentary, but maybe it’s something else.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking.”
Now it’s Lee’s turn to smile. “Are you sure they’re not all admiring your boxing technique, Lieutenant Thrace? After all, you put on quite a display for the documentary crew yourself.”
Kara’s eyes narrow. “And who was it who sent Biers to me in the first place?”
Lee raises his hands in mock surrender. “I just told her that if she had any questions about how pilots are trained, she needed to talk to the flight instructor, who, if I remember correctly is you.” Lee’s lips twitch in amusement. “It’s not my fault she caught you in the middle of your workout. Besides, I don’t know what you’re complaining about; at least you were fully clothed, if a bit hot and sweaty.”
Feeling suddenly reckless, she decides to meet provocation with provocation, Kara leans in, pleased to see Lee mirror the movement. “And do you like me hot and sweaty, Apollo?” she purrs.
He waggles his brows in response. “You know I do, Starbuck.”
“Well, I love laying you out.”
His smile turns decidedly lecherous. “You know I’m always happy to be on my back for you.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Please do.”
She knows they probably shouldn’t keep doing this. Things have been better since they came back from Kobol, but there’s still a lot of unresolved stuff between them and Kara can’t entirely forget the last time they squared off. They’ll have to deal with it sometime, but Lee seems no more inclined to do so than she, so for now they just fall back into the familiar patterns of fighting and flirting. And if there is a little extra current running through their exchanges these days, well, Kara won’t worry about that just yet.
The playful mood is shattered by the sound of muffled laughter from the other side of the mess. Kara jerks back in her seat and shoots a glare in the direction of the huddle. She starts to rise from her seat, but Lee places a restraining hand on her arm.
“Don’t,” he warns her in a low voice. “You’ll only encourage them. It’ll pass, whatever it is. Just ignore it.”
He’s right, of course, but it still goes against the grain to sit there and do nothing. She gives him a faint nod and slumps back in her seat, studiously ignoring the group at the other table.
“Here,” Lee says, sliding some of his paperwork towards her. “You can help me finish the refueling schedule.”
She shoots him a wary look. “I’m not doing your homework for you, Apollo.”
“It won’t kill you to help. Besides, if I can finish this up quick, I’ll have some free time before CAP. C’mon, be a sport. I’ll let you beat up on me,” he offers with a smile.
That draws a bark of laughter from her. Only Lee Adama would think to bribe her with a sparring match. It’s kind of twisted, but it’s them to a tee. It’s also exactly what she needs. It should probably scare her that he knows that, but right now she’s surprisingly okay with it.
“Gimme those,” she says taking the papers from him and pushing her tray aside. “Your ass is so gonna be mine, Adama.”
“Promises, promises.”
They both laugh before hunkering down to work.
Kara never even notices when the CIC gang leaves the mess.
[][][]
She finds it by accident.
At least she thinks it was by accident, because surely no one would be stupid enough to leave it lying around where anyone - Kara in particular - could find it.
She finds it on a trip to the officers’ head. When she goes to wash her hands, there it is, sitting on one of the sinks, wedged up against the mirror. Kara frowns a little when she notices it just sitting there, a seemingly innocuous sheath of pages that have been rolled up tightly, their edges a little dog eared from handling.
Kara’s not entirely sure why she stops to look; maybe it’s the memory of Lee pouring over fuel distribution schedules and the accompanying thought that this could, in fact, be something important; maybe she’s just plain nosy. Either way, she shakes the water from her hands and retrieves the pages, unrolling them carefully.
A snort of laughter escapes her when she reads the cover page.
On the Wings of Passion:
A romance
By cylonh8r
Oh Gods, she’s stumbled upon somebody’s cheesy amateur fiction. Idly she wonders who “cylonh8r” is because she can get a whole lot of mileage out of this. Her amusement, however, only lasts about as long as it takes Kara to read the first paragraph of the story.
Lieutenant Mara “Moondoe” Pace strode onto the flight deck as if she owned it because she did. She was, after all, the best pilot in the fleet, and everyone knew better than to get in her way. Her hips swayed suggestively as she walked, drawing admiring glances from the pilots and crew assembled their, but no one was foolish enough to approach her. Mara Pace was a Viper goddess, as dangerous out of the cockpit as she was in it. But more than that, Mara’s heart belonged to another, even if she wouldn’t admit that truth even to herself.
Kara blinks, a feeling of unease creeping through her. She knows she should stop right there, toss the pages in the trash and pretend that she’d never seen this. That would be the sensible thing to do. But then, Kara had never been very good at doing the sensible thing.
So naturally she keeps reading.
Mara let her hand glide lovingly across the side of her Viper. It was a lethal machine, but in Mara’s hands it was a thing of deadly beauty. She handled it with a preternatal confidence, maneuvering it as if it was an extension of her own body. For her, flying was an erotic experience, a headier rush than sex. No one could match her in the sky. No one, that is, but him.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Pace,” a rich, sexy voice came from behind her, making her shiver in anticipation. “Are you ready to kick some Cylon ass?”
Her heart beating loudly in her chest, Mara turned to find herself face to face with him: Captain Vee “Adonis” Dodonna, her CAG and best friend and the object of her most romantic fantasies. Mara was in love with Vee, but it was a hopeless, doomed passion. Not only did the regulations forbid it, but there was a deep, dark and painful history between them of which they never spoke, but which kept them apart.
As she gazed up into the most perfect blue eyes she’d ever seen, Mara found herself once again wanting to throw caution to the wing and kiss him with all the love, passion, tenderness, yearning and desire within her very being, but as always Mara held back.
What if Vee didn’t feel the same? She knew he cared for her, but did he, could he love her? Oh, if only he could! But Mara was afraid. She couldn’t risk their friendship, it meant too much to her. Once again, Mara pushed aside her feelings for Vee.
She loved him too muck to risk losing him.
Mara smiled brightly, every inch, the brash, cocky ace pilot everyone expected her to be. “You betcha, captain! Those Cylon bastards don’t stand a chance against us!”
Vee smiled back at her and Mara and she felt herself melt from the warmth of his beautiful smile. ‘Oh, Vee,’ she thought sadly, ‘if only our love wasn’t doomed!’.
Kara stares horrified at the page in front of her. No frakking way. She didn’t just read what she thought she read. She couldn’t be. And yet, there it is, in black and white, lurid prose, misspellings and all.
Someone is going to die. Slowly and painfully. What she’s already read is enough to earn the mystery author a death warrant, but once again, morbid curiosity urges Kara to read on.
By the time she reaches the scene in which Mara and Vee consummate their passion in the conveniently empty - and apparently soundproofed - showers, she’s ready to dismember the culprit. By the time she reaches the even more improbable sex in a Viper cockpit scene, she’s thinking water torture was the way to go. And by the time she reaches the end of the story with the gushing, saccharine declarations of true and everlasting love, she’s torn between the desire to hurl the contents of her stomach and to sink through the decking in utter mortification.
Because now it all makes sense. The smiles, the giggling, the funny looks, all of it was due to this story making the rounds of the Galactica. It might be a work of fiction, but it didn’t exactly take an advanced degree in astrophysics to figure out who the characters of Mara and Vee were supposed to be.
It would actually be funny as hell if it were someone else, anyone other than her and Lee because now everyone who was reading this - and based upon the looks she’d been getting that was the better part of Galactica’s crew - was going to come to the same completely erroneous conclusion, namely that she and Lee were lovers. And apparently they were going at it like bunnies on stims.
If only.
Frak.
Frak, frak, frak.
Crumpling the offending pages in her fist, Kara exits the head in search of her partner in non-crime.
The look on Kara’s face as she strides through the ship’s corridors is apparently enough to send crewmen scampering frantically out of her path. On any other occasion, Kara would have been gratified by this, but right now she has bigger concerns.
She checks Lee’s office first, only to come up empty. Her second guess, however, proves a winner. He’s in the ready room, inscribing the duty roster on the whiteboard in neat, block letters, the motion of his arm precise and economical.
“Have you seen this?” she says without preamble, her voice uncomfortably loud in the quiet of the empty room.
Lee startles, but regains control with admirable speed. “And what would ‘this’ be, Starbuck?” he asks in a voice that is somehow both patient and amused.
She crosses the ready room until she’s standing in front of him. “This!” she repeats, pressing the crumpled pages against his chest with more force than is justified. Lee seizes them before they fell, unrolling the pages to read the contents.
“On the Wings of Passion?” He looks up at her bemused. “What is this?”
“Just read.”
Lee shoots her a curious look but does as instructed. His eyebrows jump almost at once.
“Mara Pace?” He’s smiling, clearly amused. She wonders how long that will last.
“Keep reading.”
He does so.
Kara is watching his face carefully so she knows the precise moment that he encounters his own alter ego. That irritating smirk vanishes entirely to be replaced by a frown. He continues reading silently, flipping page after page. When his cheeks suddenly flame, she knows he’s reached the shower scene; when his eyebrows practically reach his hairline, she knows he’s hit the sex in a Viper cockpit scene.
He looks up at her in amazement. “A Viper cockpit? Is that even possible?”
“It is if you balance just right and you’re very limber.”
“How do you…?” his eyes widen and his cheeks go even pinker. “I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Probably not. Just keep reading.”
He nods and returns his attention to the sordid tale before him. When he finishes, he carefully realigns the pages into a tidy pile and hands them back to her.
“Well?”
“Well, that’s…interesting, to say the least.” His carefully neutral voice is a perfect match for his expression. “Where did you get that?”
“I found it in the officers’ head.”
Lee frowns thoughtfully. “A prank?”
She shakes her head. “I’m thinking more general entertainment for the crew.”
Understanding dawns. “All the smiles and funny looks we’ve been getting.”
“Yep. Congratulations, Apollo. You’re a porn star.”
She expects outrage or at the very least embarrassment. What she doesn’t expect is for Lee, Captain Tightass himself, to start laughing.
She stares at him, feeling her own irritation staring to rise again. “You think this is funny?”
“Don’t you?”
She frowns at him, bewildered by his reaction. “It’s slander!”
“Well, technically, it would be libel since slander refers to speech and this is a written text.”
She glares at him.
“I’m just trying to be precise,” he replies sounding almost defensive. “Besides I’m not entirely sure this is libel.”
“What do you mean? Of course it is! People,” she waves the papers in her hand for emphasis, “are saying that you and I are frakking!”
“No, people are saying that Mara and Vee are frakking.”
“It’s the same thing!”
“No it’s not. At least, not according to Colonial law, anyway. This,” he points to the pages that are starting to get crumpled in her increasingly tight grip, “is fiction.”
“Fiction that is clearly based on us. Mara and Vee? Adonis and Moondoe? And what kind of call sign is Moondoe, anyway?”
Lee shakes his head, lips twitching in amusement. “First you’re outraged by the existence of this story and now you’re pissed because your fictional counterpart has a silly call sign? There’s just no pleasing you, is there, Kara?”
“Well, it’s easy for you to say, Adonis.” She gives a contemptuous snort. “Like anyone would think you deserve that call sign!”
Lee smirks at her and waggles his eyebrows. “Apparently yours is the minority opinion.”
She considers wiping the smug expression off his face, settles for another glare instead.
Lee just keeps smirking, the bastard.
“Aren’t you annoyed by this?” she asks with more than a hint of accusation in her voice.
He shrugs. “I’m not thrilled by it, but frankly it’s no worse than finding the pilots’ duty locker plastered with images of myself dressed in nothing but a towel.”
He shoots her a pointed look and she has the grace to look sheepish for about three seconds before her moral indignation flares again.
“That’s entirely different.”
“Oh? And how’s that?”
“Well, you’re always running around quarters half-naked…”
Lee glares at her. “What do you mean always?”
Kara ignores both his interruption and his obvious exasperation and continues on her rant. “…but this is total fabrication! We,” she waves her hand back and forth between them, “are not frakking!”
“No, we’re not, but it’s not like people haven’t been thinking it.” He gives her a serious look. “C’mon, Kara, you’ve heard the rumors. It’s not like it’s anything new. Remember that time in our third year at the Academy when we accidentally got locked in the science lab overnight and everyone was sure we’d spent the entire night frakking?”
“Which was your fault, as I recall.”
Lee shakes his head. “Beside the point. I’m just saying that people tend to gossip about us. And don’t even try to tell me that you don’t know about the pool Joker’s been running about when we’ll finally get over ourselves and do the deed.”
Kara rolls her eyes “Well, of course I know about the pool! I’m just surprised that you do.”
“I’m the CAG, remember?” he replies more than a little smugly. “I know all.”
“Right. Omniscience and an endless supply of paperwork. That’s a sweet gig you got there, Lee.”
“It pays the bills.”
Kara shakes her head, some of her irritation bleeding away in the face of Lee’s tolerance.
“And you’re really OK with this?”
He shrugs again. “It’s not a matter of being OK with it or not. It’s already out there and short of busting the heads of all the people reading this stuff, there’s not a whole lot either you or I can do about it. Hell, even that’s not an option; people would probably just see it as proof that something is going on and we’re trying to cover it up.”
She nods. He’s right, of course. He usually is. That doesn’t mean she has to like it, though. Something must show on her face, because Lee’s expression softens.
“Look, Kara, people are just bored. They’re looking for something pleasant to distract them from all the crap and right now, this is it. It’ll blow over soon enough. Either that or they’ll find a new target. Maybe whoever it is will decide to write steamy porn involving Ellen Tigh and Doc Cottle.”
Kara’s jaw practically hits the floor. “That’s just…” she flounders, horrified, as her brain cheerfully supplies an unwanted visual. “You are one sick bastard, Lee Adama!”
She scrunches her eyes shut, but it does nothing to dislodge the terrifying image that Lee has put there.
He chuckles. “I try my best. After all, it’s not every day I get to freak you out.”
She punches him on the arm, hard. “Well stop it! Ugh! I just ate,” she adds shivering dramatically.
“You’ll live. After all, Moondoe wouldn’t let something as trivial as a scary visual slow her down, would she?”
“Lee? I just moved past the urge to beat the crap out of you. Don’t make me change my mind.”
Lee raised his hands in surrender, but there was not a hint of submission on his face.
“Just let it go, Kara. People will have forgotten about this before you even realize it.”
[][][]
Lee is usually right. That’s a touchstone in Kara’s existence. An irritating one, maybe, but it’s still reassuring in its own way, especially after the end of the world when nothing is certain. Lee being right is strangely soothing, though she’ll never tell him that. His head is already plenty big in her opinion.
Lee is usually right. Except when he is spectacularly wrong.
His prediction that people would get bored with their fictional sex lives in short order is so far off the mark it’s not even in the same solar system. Either people are even more starved for distraction (and steamy porn) than he’d realized or people were just sick, twisted frakkers.
Kara suspects it’s a little of both.
Eventually she decides that she’s OK with it. Well, maybe OK is too strong a term, but she can deal. Of course, she did have to kick a few asses to reach that new plane of enlightenment. A few junior personnel found themselves on the receiving end of duty shifts cleaning the heads for not showing the proper respect to a senior officer. And then there was Hyper who learned the hard way that it wasn’t wise to call her Moondoe even as a joke. When asked later on, he would claim that he got his black eye from walking into his locker door. Kara’s pretty sure that Lee didn’t buy that explanation but he let it pass without question. Once word began to circulate, most people figured it was better to keep their yaps shut, at least within hearing range of Starbuck.
So, it got better.
Until it got worse. Because Lee was wrong. Spectacularly, amazingly wrong.
Not only did people not tire of the romantic escapades of Mara and Vee, they turned them into a fill-fledged phenomenon. Despite its utter lack of artistic merit, originality or meticulous spelling, On the Wings of Passion became the first not so official blockbuster of what passes as post-apocalyptic literature. It proved so popular, in fact, that the mystery author decided to pen a sequel.
Full Throttle, a multi-chapter, work-in-progress, romantic epic, is every bit as lurid as its precursor. It’s cheesy and over the top and makes a complete hash of every trite convention of romance literature known to man or womankind. Clearly the author has never met a cliché that she - or he, since the gender along with the identity of the author remains a secret - didn’t like. The only discernible difference between this story and the original is that the grammar is better. Lee suggests that the author must have found an editor somewhere along the way.
Kara doesn’t give a flying frak about any of that. She doesn’t care about the technical proficiency of the author. She doesn’t care that the story is horribly clichéd, unoriginal claptrap. She doesn’t even care that people are moronic enough to enjoy this crap.
No, what really pisses Kara off is the characterization.
Or, to be more precise her characterization.
“I don’t frakking believe this!”
Lee looks up from the flight roster he’s been working on. “What?” his manner is decidedly cautious. Lee knows when to tread lightly.
“This!” she says waving the pages she’s holding as if the very gesture is sufficient to explain everything.
Lee sighs. “I’m not a mind reader, Kara. What ‘this’ are you talking about?”
She shoots him an exasperated look and rolls out of her bunk to stand next to the table where he’s sitting. “This!” she repeats, setting the pages down in front of him with a flourish.
Lee reads the title; that’s enough. He rubs at his temple and looks back up at her.
“Why are you even reading that? If I remember correctly, you said this was - and I quote - ‘the biggest pile of horseshit ever written’?”
And there was Lee being right again, damn him to the seven hells.
“It is. But if people are going to write stuff about me I figure I have a right to know what it is.”
“Do I even want to know where you got it from?”
“I got it from Hot Dog. I told him to turn over the bad porn or I’d hurt him into next week. The nugget’s got a healthy sense of self-preservation.”
Lee snorts at that remark. “So what is it this time?”
She stares at him, equally torn between irritation and gratitude that he isn’t taking this seriously. “It’s this lame ass plot. Apparently Mara’s plane is hit by a Cylon Raider and she crash lands on a planet.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“It is, except for the part where Mara just sits on her ass and waits for Vee to rescue her rather than managing it herself.”
“Ah,” Lee says, his voice painfully, carefully neutral. It doesn’t slow Kara down at all.
“I mean what the frak? As if I would ever just twiddle my thumbs and wait for you to rescue me like some frakking…girl!”
She’s pacing now, her arms moving in broad sweeps as her tirade builds. “And when the hell have you ever saved me anyway?”
“Well, I have sprung you from hack a few times…”
“That hardly counts as a rescue.”
Lee looks like he might want to object, but seeing her expression wisely opts for silence.
“In fact, I seem to recall that I’m the one who usually rescues your sorry ass. Who was the one that blew up that missile that was about to destroy your Viper, huh?” she asks, gesturing wildly with both hands. “Who was the one who plowed into your damaged Viper after you’d lost an engine and your power started to fail and got you home safe and sound?”
“That would be you on both accounts,” he replies affably.
“Damn straight!” Kara crosses her arms over her chest as she stares down at him as if in challenge. “So what the frak is this all about!” she hisses, gesturing towards the story on the table in front of him
“Kara…”
“Read this!” she says pointing her finger imperiously to a spot halfway down the page.
Lee’s eyes scan to the beginning of the paragraph; finding it, he begins to read:
Mara rushed forward, tears streaming down her alabaster cheeks.
“Oh, Vee! Thank the Gods you found me at last! I was so afraid I’d never see you again!”
Vee wrapped his powerful, masculine arms around her, crushing her soft body to his manly chest. He could feel her trembling against him, her full breasts rising and falling with her breathes. He looked into her beautiful green eyes, shimmering with tears and felt his heart swell with his love for her.
“I would never leave you behind, Mara. As long as I draw breath, I will never be parted from you. Never!” he swore ardently before taking Mara’s mouth in a feverish kiss.
“Oh, Vee,” Mara murmured happily against his neck, melting into his embrace. “I love you so much!”
Vee cradled her exquisite face in his strong hands and gazed at her devotedly. “I feel the same way, my dearest, darling Mara!”
They fell into one another’s arms, embracing rapturously until it was time to return to their home in the stars.
Lee covers his mouth is a poor attempt to hide his smile. Kara glares at him.
“Oh sure, go ahead and laugh Vee.”
“Well, you do have to admit, the language is rather, erm, colorful.”
“The hell I do!”
Lee shakes his head, his expression one of fond exasperation. “Do I need to explain to you again that these are fictional characters, Kara, living out fictional events? Whatever superficial resemblance they might have to us, that’s all it is. They aren’t us.”
“I know that!”
“Then why are you throwing a tantrum?”
Her eyes narrow dangerously. “I am not throwing a tantrum!”
Lee’s answering look speaks volumes.
“I’m not!” she protests, secretly pleased at how even her voice sounds. “I’m just pissed that this character - and yes, I know she’s fictional but she’s still clearly based on me - is such a wuss.”
“Yes, but she’s not you, Kara. Nobody would even think for a moment that you’d behave like that.”
“Really?” She hates the faint note of desperation that creeps into her voice and hopes he doesn’t notice.
Lee just smiles back at her, the skin around his eyes crinkling a little. “Trust me on that, Kara. No one will ever make the mistake of confusing you and your fictional counterpart. Everyone knows you’re more likely to deck me than swoon into my arms.”
“Good,” she replies firmly. “That’s good.”
It’s exactly what she wanted to hear. So why doesn’t it make her feel any better?