Unwound (2/4)
Because I'm a nice girl... and it's Monday somewhere.
Title: Unwound (2/4)
Author: icedteainthebag
Word Count: 3,627
Rating: MA
Pairings: Bill Adama/Carolanne Adama, Bill Adama/Ellen Tigh
Summary: Unwinding the labyrinth.
Notes: tjonesy bought my services in the help_haiti auction and requested a story in which Bill and Ellen frakked. This is what happened. Thanks to her for inspiring me to write it and putting her foot up my ass to finish it. My love and overly affectionate praise go out to larsfarm77 and somadanne for the amazing betas.
Link to: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
A tiny fist-the smallest thing he’s ever seen-barely wraps around his finger.
Lee looks like her. He’s thankful for that.
He’s never felt more unsure of himself as when he’s looking into his son’s blue eyes. He doesn’t want to fail at this.
He doesn’t want to become his father.
x x x x
Bill hears from Carolanne rarely when he’s shipside. The frequent telegraph transmissions and phone calls to discuss their daily lives petered off to communications deemed necessary or important. Bought a new refrigerator. Lee took his first steps. The gardener is doing a shitty job at weeding and she wishes he were there to deal with it so that she didn’t have to-just another example of how his absence causes irritation and frustration in her life.
He’s stopped trying to explain to her the logic, in his defense, that the only reason she has these things is because he’s on a frakking Battlestar, working his ass off.
He used to miss hearing from her, but instead, now, he buries himself in his work, running training operations and squadron exercises, plotting defensive strategies, his head in the stars. They’re completely worthless wastes of time that keep his mind occupied. He walks the hallways, listening to the oxygen scrubbers, feeling the ship’s energy around him, vibrating inside of him.
He loves her.
Shipboard, he attends promotion parties for his pilots, pats their backs, listens to their stories and tells his own. For some of them he’s the only father they’ve had; a lot of them came into the military down on their luck and looking for something or someone to believe in. That’s where he comes in. Sometimes, he thinks he’ll never be able to be there for Lee in the same way that he’s here for these kids. It doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it should; this fact alone keeps him up every so often, on the rare night that the guilt hits him like a sucker punch to the gut until he numbs it with a drink.
He considers it dumb luck that Carolanne got pregnant again the one time they actually managed to frak on his last shore leave. It will be one more son he doesn’t get to see as much as he feels like he should. At least they have a mother around; they’ve got that going for them. Their father may be absent, but at least their mother is there.
It’s more than he had.
x x x x
It’s summertime and he’s off rotation; they head to the beach with a picnic basket and the boys in tow. She’d suggested the outing and he agreed. He usually agrees to her ideas. It gives her some semblance of control and he’s too tired anymore to deal with what happens when he disagrees with her.
It’s just the beach. He can do the beach.
Lee and Zak barrel down the sandy incline to the shore, taunting each other over who will reach the water first. He lays out the blanket and they sit side by side. Carolanne wraps her arms around her legs. He doesn’t; he stretches out, leaning back on his arms. It’s been a long time since he felt the sun warm on his skin.
“Nice to be home,” he says, closing his eyes.
“You don’t have to pretend this feels like home for you anymore,” she responds.
The sun is warm on his skin. He breathes in. The air is fresh.
She’s right. It doesn’t.
x x x x
In the picture, they’re smiling. They’re young. It was the way it was before.
He wraps their wedding photo in an undershirt and stuffs it deep into his bag. He hopes she won’t notice that it’s gone. He doesn’t want her to realize he’s taken it with him; she might demand he give it back. It’s been so long since he’s seen her look at it. It doesn’t mean anything to her.
It still means something to him.
I know you want to leave, so just do it.
He was always leaving. Sometimes he felt guilty; sometimes he didn’t. She’d been telling him this in a dozen different ways over the past year, ways that he could so easily ignore when he spent about three-quarters of that year shipside. But hearing her say the words made it suddenly real. She couldn’t stand it when he wasn’t around, and now she can’t wait to see him gone.
It was this ascent into command that pulled him away from her, this ascent that pushed her away from him. He takes responsibility for that. The lure of this mistress was more than he could resist. It became more fulfilling to wake up alone in a cramped rack, surrounded by the hum of his ship and his family there, than it was to wake up with her breath in his ear.
He never cheated on her-he’s not that type of person, loyalty ground into him from day one. This affair is less physical than emotional. He fell in love with being needed.
Carolanne didn’t need him anymore; she didn’t want the person he’d become. He didn’t want the person she’d become. It still hurt, regardless of the reality of things.
He knew when they started to fight about how much time he stayed away from home that his reaction to her desperation-anger, frustration, confusion-meant he had to choose one or the other... his wife or his ship.
It took him too long to acknowledge that he’d known what he wanted for a long time.
He’d been raised in an environment where business and family were irrevocably intertwined. Hard as he tried, he could never work out the perfect combination when it came to the Fleet and Carolanne and the boys. But this was a different kind of business.
They both had their responsibilities to everyone but each other.
This is what he’s meant to be doing. He knows it in his gut. It’s the feeling he gets every time he walks into the hangar at the Caprican Air Base and sees his Battlestar, waiting for him to come home.
So, this afternoon that started out like any other with the kids in the pool and the two of them watching the seemingly indestructible joy of youth, he tells her they should get a divorce.
He isn’t around enough, he drove her to drink, he’s left her to raise their kids alone-he tells her these things and she’s nodding, agreeing with him as he flays himself right in front of her. She’s probably been waiting years for this day. He’s failed at the one thing he was desperate not to fail at, but he told her from the beginning that it was impossible to have it both ways.
It’s what she wants; he gives in again.
It’s not what he wants; it’s a choice he’s willing to live with.
He tells his kids goodbye with a Fleet-issue duffel bag over his shoulder. He tells himself they don’t know the difference between this time and all the other times he’s left. The difference is, this is the first time there are tears in his eyes, and there’s a note of recognition in Lee’s face that he chooses to ignore. He takes the outside stairs more carefully than usual because his vision has blurred.
He isn’t coming back.
x x x x
Bill sits in his car alongside a nondescript residential road with his phone in his hand. He ended up here as he drove aimlessly for hours until he needed to stop moving, and this street with the cookie-cutter houses and the landscaped lawns and families outside enjoying the sun is where he landed. The irony doesn’t escape him.
He knows he can count on Saul for anything, but it doesn’t make it any easier to dial his number.
“It better be good, you old frakker. I’m watching the pyramid pre-game.”
Bill smiles; it could be more of a grimace. “Hey. I’ve had some... there’s some shit that went down today and I need a place to land for a while.”
“What’d you do now?”
Bill stares out the windshield at a boy and a girl tossing a bright pink ball in a front yard, back and forth, three times, four times. “Not enough.”
x x x x
He arrives at Saul’s apartment. It’s a cramped two-bedroom on the east side of Caprica City. Bill spent a lot of time on this side of town as a kid, mostly to his chagrin, and though there’s been an attempt at revitalization in the past few years, there are some stains you just can’t work out no matter how hard you try. But the apartment, despite its abject surroundings, is a place to go to and frankly, he doesn’t have anywhere else. It seems serendipitous that he met Saul when he did. He’s not one to believe in luck or fates or whatever else brought them into this arrangement, but it’s worked out, especially today.
Saul greets him awkwardly. He’s moving in. They’re going to live together. This is not something that grown guys normally do. Bill reminds himself that they used to bunk together on the freighter all the time. He’s also seen Saul in a much worse state than what just arrived on his doorstep.
They don’t judge each other for their decisions or their mistakes. They never have.
“Hey. Everything all right?” Saul asks, stepping aside, allowing him in.
“Yeah,” Bill says, hefting the duffel bag over his shoulder. “Fine.”
“’Kay,” Saul grunts.
He follows Saul up the narrow staircase and down the hallway to the apartment. Looks like he made an attempt at cleaning since the last time they had beers and watched the pyramid game a week ago. At least he can see the surface of the kitchen island. In some spots.
“Here’s the guest room. Your room.” Saul quickly corrects himself, opening the door. Bill walks in. It’s a tight space with a desk, a nightstand and a bed. There’s a small window with a faded curtain and he can hear the droning of cars on the city street two floors below. Dust dances in the slivers of light that are cast down onto the worn carpet under his feet. He watches it until he hears Saul clear his throat, pulling him out of his stupor.
“Thanks,” Bill says, tossing his bag onto the comforter. He stares at it, disbelief swirling deep in the pit of his stomach. Reality’s sinking in, and it’s a bitch.
“You need anything, don’t even ask, just get it.” Saul’s hanging back in the doorway, like the room isn’t his property any more.
Bill looks at him over his shoulder. “All right.”
“I’m no housewife, Adama.”
A burst of deep laughter escapes him; it feels good. “You mean I can’t expect dinner on the table by six?”
“If you think dinner’s a bottle of liquor and a couplea tumblers, you’re in the right place.”
It’s been a while since he felt like he was in the right place, but this isn’t half bad.
x x x x
“Stick to what you know until you find something better.”
There’s a little bar down the street from Saul’s apartment building in a strip of nondescript brick buildings with windows shuttered to the street. Nobody wants to be seen here and everybody’s trying to escape the world outside.
It’s the only place he feels like he wants to be at this point. He’d sat in the guest room until he couldn’t take the isolation and sat in the living room with Saul until it felt uncomfortable enough for him to leave.
He didn’t really have a place at the moment; he might as well commingle with others of the same affliction.
There’s no secret knock to get in the door, but Bill knows the area well enough to know it’s generally accepted that there are certain people who belong here and certain people who don’t. There’s music blaring, a hip hop mix that was more popular when he was younger. Whatever it is, it’s playing too loudly. Normally it would bother him, but the noise is a welcome distraction from the silence of his room back at Saul’s or the second-guessing and self-pity whirring around inside his head.
It’s surprising to him, given the environment, that a tall blonde woman walks into the room and doesn’t turn around and walk right back out. She’s dressed to the nines. He’s sitting on a barstool while he still has the balance, sucking down his second glass of whiskey, and he eyes her speculatively as she strides up to the long, pitted wood countertop.
“A blonde walks into a bar... ” the bartender says under his breath.
She looks at the bartender, unfazed. “You got a phone?”
“For customers,” the bartender says, sliding her an empty glass.
“Frak.” She heaves her black bag up on the counter, rummaging until she finds a few cubits and slaps them down. “Give me whatever this’ll get me, and then give me your phone.”
Bill takes another draw on his drink and watches the bartender fill her glass with second-rate Gemenese liquor that’s not at all worth the money she just put down. She eyes the bottle, then picks up the glass and looks at it as the bartender walks away.
“Highway frakkin’ robbery,” she announces, loud enough to be heard over the music.
He watches as she drinks it anyway, her nose wrinkling in distaste. She taps her fingernails on the top of the bar and watches the bartender’s back, her look scathing until he returns with the phone. Bill sees her expression instantly change upon meeting the bartender’s eyes again.
“Thank you so much,” she drawls, half a smile turning up the corner of her mouth as she takes it from him. She begins to dial and then looks straight at Bill. Her scowl has returned. “Am I really that captivating?”
He looks straight down at his drink with an embarrassed chuckle. “No.”
“Oh, so you’re saying I’m not captivating.”
He looks back up at her but her back is already turned, the phone to her ear. He wants to hear what she’s saying, but the music and the barroom ruckus are overpowering. Instead, he orders another drink, a request the bartender doesn’t mind filling.
Her conversation is short and she appears to be more exasperated when she turns back around to face the bar. She scoots up onto the barstool next to him with a soft grunt, spinning the phone on its back on the countertop. “You can have your godsdamned phone back,” she says loudly, “not that it did me any frakkin’ good. Not a cab in this city’s willing to come down here at this hour.”
He winces and now intentionally avoids looking at her as she holds this conversation with nobody in particular. She’s obviously not familiar with the area and she’s pretty lucky the wrong people didn’t hear her declaration of how unsuitable she was finding her surroundings. He smells the faint scent of her perfume-a heavy, complicated floral mix-as she shifts on the chair, her elbow propping her up on the bar. He sees her face him out of his peripheral vision.
“You look like you need some company,” she says.
He regards her sharply, having a sudden realization as to why a pretty woman like her would walk into a place like this. “I don’t think so,” he says, sipping his drink. “I’ll pass.”
“The frak... ” She pushes her hair back from her face. She obviously knows what he’s thinking. “You think I’m a whore or something?”
The alcohol may be buzzing through his system, but he knows better than to call a woman a whore to her face, even if she’s suspect of it. “I didn’t say that.”
“No,” she answers. “But you thought it. And that makes you” -she waves the bartender down with a flick of her wrist-“a frakkin’ asshole.”
“I’m a frakkin’ asshole because I thought a pretty woman walking into a shithole like this looking like a million cubits and saddling up to the most lonely-looking frakker in the joint seemed suspicious?”
The bartender grabs the cheap bottle of Gemenese liquor and she covers the glass with her hand. “Frak that shit, buster,” she commands. “Give me what he’s having. Put it on his tab.”
The bartender looks at him. She’s good-she knows he’ll look like a pathetic frak if he says no. “Fine. Pour the lady a drink.”
“With an olive,” she adds.
He looks at her curiously.
They both watch as the bartender fills up her glass completely with the amber liquid that matches his own, then places an olive on a bright red sword on the side with no comment. He sips, enjoying the burn and the mounting buzz he feels slowly taking over his body.
“What did I just order?” she asks.
“Aerelon whiskey,” he replies.
Her hum is low and appreciative. “You are a man of distinguished taste,” she says, raising the glass. “And deep pockets.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
“I knew you needed some company, didn’t I?”
“And you needed a phone.” He takes another drink.
She takes a long, slow draw off her whiskey and he’s impressed at her straight face. She’s a drinker. There’s no way anyone else could have taken it that easily. “I needed to call my pimp.”
He deserved that one. He takes his lumps with a grin, convincing himself it’s okay to smile. He needs to relax; that’s why he came out tonight.
“Bad date. I escaped on foot,” she explains. She seems indignant, like she needs to suddenly justify her presence.
“That’s a pretty bad date.”
“Never had the greatest taste in men.” She drinks more whiskey, her tongue flicking over her lips, eyes closed. He takes too long to look away from her mouth, but his reaction time isn’t the greatest at the moment. “So, how about you? Waiting for someone?”
“No.”
“Looking for someone?”
“Not really.”
Thirty minutes ago, his answer would have been a resolute ‘no.’
“Nobody goes to the bar to get drunk by themselves,” she declares. It’s no amazing revelation she’s making, but she sounds like she’s impressed with herself. He realizes this woman seems to only have one volume: loud.
“I came to watch the pyramid semifinals.”
It’s true, in a way. It’s on the television above the bar, and he’d been glancing at it, but every time he did, it only made him more depressed. The Panthers were getting assfrakked by the Libran Leopards.
The Libran frakking Leopards, he thinks, sucking down the rest of his drink.
“I hope you’re cheering for the Leopards, for your sake.”
“Who cheers for them?”
“Good point. Frakkin’ bullshit, the Panthers this year.”
Like she’s reading his mind.
“Tumolt needs to come back from retirement,” he says with a heavy sigh.
“So say we all. Wasn’t that a mistake. He’ll come back. Betcha next season, already. He won’t be able to keep himself away.”
“Panthers’ll offer him a couple million cubits.”
“Not if the Bucs sweep him up first.”
“Frakkin’ Bucs.”
She takes a drink. “So, a Panthers fan, huh?”
“Yeah. Never really been into the Bucs. My dad used to know the owner.”
“Really.” She doesn’t seem nearly as interested in the name-dropping as he expected. She sucks the olive off the tiny red sword and arches her eyebrow. “Are you trying to impress me?”
“Maybe.”
He decides to be honest. He might as well; he doesn’t have anything to lose. He doesn’t know why he’s trying to make a good show of it, but the ideas that are starting to overrun his mind aren’t good ideas at all right now for a lot of reasons.
“Well, if you’re trying to impress me... what do you do?”
“Nothing I’m real passionate about, as of late.”
“Okay, the impression I’m getting is not the impression you want me to have. Of that, I am sure.”
He chuckles. “Colonial Fleet.”
“Well, I coulda told you that already.”
His tongue is starting to tingle, about to go numb. Not a bad feeling after the day he’s had. “How?”
“You Fleet guys are all the same.” She pokes his biceps with her red sword. “You wanna tell me what you do for the Fleet?”
“If you know so much, why don’t you tell me?”
“You’re an officer. But you don’t command your own ship.” She examines him, then drops her miniature weapon into her empty glass. “Not yet.”
“You’re good,” he answers. “I’m the Executive Officer on the Columbia.”
“Good for you, ’cause I’ve got a thing for XO’s.”
“Why’s that good for me?”
She laughs. “I’ll let you guess.”
He ignores the tightening he feels in his groin at the undercurrent of seduction he hears in her words. “You looking for a ride home or something?”
“I don’t know. You want to give me a ride?”
For a couple of seconds he’s not sure what she means, but any perplexity exacerbated by the alcohol is no match for the slide of her palm over the denim that’s tight across his thigh.
There’s a decision to be made, he realizes as he feels the heavy weight of her hand press down on his leg. Anticipation flutters in his gut as he looks down at her slender fingers, then into her eyes.
She really does have bad taste in men, he thinks.
“I’m in no state to drive,” he says. “But I live a couple blocks away.”
She’s the cat that ate the canary.
/chapter two
Title: Unwound (2/4)
Author: icedteainthebag
Word Count: 3,627
Rating: MA
Pairings: Bill Adama/Carolanne Adama, Bill Adama/Ellen Tigh
Summary: Unwinding the labyrinth.
Notes: tjonesy bought my services in the help_haiti auction and requested a story in which Bill and Ellen frakked. This is what happened. Thanks to her for inspiring me to write it and putting her foot up my ass to finish it. My love and overly affectionate praise go out to larsfarm77 and somadanne for the amazing betas.
Link to: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
A tiny fist-the smallest thing he’s ever seen-barely wraps around his finger.
Lee looks like her. He’s thankful for that.
He’s never felt more unsure of himself as when he’s looking into his son’s blue eyes. He doesn’t want to fail at this.
He doesn’t want to become his father.
x x x x
Bill hears from Carolanne rarely when he’s shipside. The frequent telegraph transmissions and phone calls to discuss their daily lives petered off to communications deemed necessary or important. Bought a new refrigerator. Lee took his first steps. The gardener is doing a shitty job at weeding and she wishes he were there to deal with it so that she didn’t have to-just another example of how his absence causes irritation and frustration in her life.
He’s stopped trying to explain to her the logic, in his defense, that the only reason she has these things is because he’s on a frakking Battlestar, working his ass off.
He used to miss hearing from her, but instead, now, he buries himself in his work, running training operations and squadron exercises, plotting defensive strategies, his head in the stars. They’re completely worthless wastes of time that keep his mind occupied. He walks the hallways, listening to the oxygen scrubbers, feeling the ship’s energy around him, vibrating inside of him.
He loves her.
Shipboard, he attends promotion parties for his pilots, pats their backs, listens to their stories and tells his own. For some of them he’s the only father they’ve had; a lot of them came into the military down on their luck and looking for something or someone to believe in. That’s where he comes in. Sometimes, he thinks he’ll never be able to be there for Lee in the same way that he’s here for these kids. It doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it should; this fact alone keeps him up every so often, on the rare night that the guilt hits him like a sucker punch to the gut until he numbs it with a drink.
He considers it dumb luck that Carolanne got pregnant again the one time they actually managed to frak on his last shore leave. It will be one more son he doesn’t get to see as much as he feels like he should. At least they have a mother around; they’ve got that going for them. Their father may be absent, but at least their mother is there.
It’s more than he had.
x x x x
It’s summertime and he’s off rotation; they head to the beach with a picnic basket and the boys in tow. She’d suggested the outing and he agreed. He usually agrees to her ideas. It gives her some semblance of control and he’s too tired anymore to deal with what happens when he disagrees with her.
It’s just the beach. He can do the beach.
Lee and Zak barrel down the sandy incline to the shore, taunting each other over who will reach the water first. He lays out the blanket and they sit side by side. Carolanne wraps her arms around her legs. He doesn’t; he stretches out, leaning back on his arms. It’s been a long time since he felt the sun warm on his skin.
“Nice to be home,” he says, closing his eyes.
“You don’t have to pretend this feels like home for you anymore,” she responds.
The sun is warm on his skin. He breathes in. The air is fresh.
She’s right. It doesn’t.
x x x x
In the picture, they’re smiling. They’re young. It was the way it was before.
He wraps their wedding photo in an undershirt and stuffs it deep into his bag. He hopes she won’t notice that it’s gone. He doesn’t want her to realize he’s taken it with him; she might demand he give it back. It’s been so long since he’s seen her look at it. It doesn’t mean anything to her.
It still means something to him.
I know you want to leave, so just do it.
He was always leaving. Sometimes he felt guilty; sometimes he didn’t. She’d been telling him this in a dozen different ways over the past year, ways that he could so easily ignore when he spent about three-quarters of that year shipside. But hearing her say the words made it suddenly real. She couldn’t stand it when he wasn’t around, and now she can’t wait to see him gone.
It was this ascent into command that pulled him away from her, this ascent that pushed her away from him. He takes responsibility for that. The lure of this mistress was more than he could resist. It became more fulfilling to wake up alone in a cramped rack, surrounded by the hum of his ship and his family there, than it was to wake up with her breath in his ear.
He never cheated on her-he’s not that type of person, loyalty ground into him from day one. This affair is less physical than emotional. He fell in love with being needed.
Carolanne didn’t need him anymore; she didn’t want the person he’d become. He didn’t want the person she’d become. It still hurt, regardless of the reality of things.
He knew when they started to fight about how much time he stayed away from home that his reaction to her desperation-anger, frustration, confusion-meant he had to choose one or the other... his wife or his ship.
It took him too long to acknowledge that he’d known what he wanted for a long time.
He’d been raised in an environment where business and family were irrevocably intertwined. Hard as he tried, he could never work out the perfect combination when it came to the Fleet and Carolanne and the boys. But this was a different kind of business.
They both had their responsibilities to everyone but each other.
This is what he’s meant to be doing. He knows it in his gut. It’s the feeling he gets every time he walks into the hangar at the Caprican Air Base and sees his Battlestar, waiting for him to come home.
So, this afternoon that started out like any other with the kids in the pool and the two of them watching the seemingly indestructible joy of youth, he tells her they should get a divorce.
He isn’t around enough, he drove her to drink, he’s left her to raise their kids alone-he tells her these things and she’s nodding, agreeing with him as he flays himself right in front of her. She’s probably been waiting years for this day. He’s failed at the one thing he was desperate not to fail at, but he told her from the beginning that it was impossible to have it both ways.
It’s what she wants; he gives in again.
It’s not what he wants; it’s a choice he’s willing to live with.
He tells his kids goodbye with a Fleet-issue duffel bag over his shoulder. He tells himself they don’t know the difference between this time and all the other times he’s left. The difference is, this is the first time there are tears in his eyes, and there’s a note of recognition in Lee’s face that he chooses to ignore. He takes the outside stairs more carefully than usual because his vision has blurred.
He isn’t coming back.
x x x x
Bill sits in his car alongside a nondescript residential road with his phone in his hand. He ended up here as he drove aimlessly for hours until he needed to stop moving, and this street with the cookie-cutter houses and the landscaped lawns and families outside enjoying the sun is where he landed. The irony doesn’t escape him.
He knows he can count on Saul for anything, but it doesn’t make it any easier to dial his number.
“It better be good, you old frakker. I’m watching the pyramid pre-game.”
Bill smiles; it could be more of a grimace. “Hey. I’ve had some... there’s some shit that went down today and I need a place to land for a while.”
“What’d you do now?”
Bill stares out the windshield at a boy and a girl tossing a bright pink ball in a front yard, back and forth, three times, four times. “Not enough.”
x x x x
He arrives at Saul’s apartment. It’s a cramped two-bedroom on the east side of Caprica City. Bill spent a lot of time on this side of town as a kid, mostly to his chagrin, and though there’s been an attempt at revitalization in the past few years, there are some stains you just can’t work out no matter how hard you try. But the apartment, despite its abject surroundings, is a place to go to and frankly, he doesn’t have anywhere else. It seems serendipitous that he met Saul when he did. He’s not one to believe in luck or fates or whatever else brought them into this arrangement, but it’s worked out, especially today.
Saul greets him awkwardly. He’s moving in. They’re going to live together. This is not something that grown guys normally do. Bill reminds himself that they used to bunk together on the freighter all the time. He’s also seen Saul in a much worse state than what just arrived on his doorstep.
They don’t judge each other for their decisions or their mistakes. They never have.
“Hey. Everything all right?” Saul asks, stepping aside, allowing him in.
“Yeah,” Bill says, hefting the duffel bag over his shoulder. “Fine.”
“’Kay,” Saul grunts.
He follows Saul up the narrow staircase and down the hallway to the apartment. Looks like he made an attempt at cleaning since the last time they had beers and watched the pyramid game a week ago. At least he can see the surface of the kitchen island. In some spots.
“Here’s the guest room. Your room.” Saul quickly corrects himself, opening the door. Bill walks in. It’s a tight space with a desk, a nightstand and a bed. There’s a small window with a faded curtain and he can hear the droning of cars on the city street two floors below. Dust dances in the slivers of light that are cast down onto the worn carpet under his feet. He watches it until he hears Saul clear his throat, pulling him out of his stupor.
“Thanks,” Bill says, tossing his bag onto the comforter. He stares at it, disbelief swirling deep in the pit of his stomach. Reality’s sinking in, and it’s a bitch.
“You need anything, don’t even ask, just get it.” Saul’s hanging back in the doorway, like the room isn’t his property any more.
Bill looks at him over his shoulder. “All right.”
“I’m no housewife, Adama.”
A burst of deep laughter escapes him; it feels good. “You mean I can’t expect dinner on the table by six?”
“If you think dinner’s a bottle of liquor and a couplea tumblers, you’re in the right place.”
It’s been a while since he felt like he was in the right place, but this isn’t half bad.
x x x x
“Stick to what you know until you find something better.”
There’s a little bar down the street from Saul’s apartment building in a strip of nondescript brick buildings with windows shuttered to the street. Nobody wants to be seen here and everybody’s trying to escape the world outside.
It’s the only place he feels like he wants to be at this point. He’d sat in the guest room until he couldn’t take the isolation and sat in the living room with Saul until it felt uncomfortable enough for him to leave.
He didn’t really have a place at the moment; he might as well commingle with others of the same affliction.
There’s no secret knock to get in the door, but Bill knows the area well enough to know it’s generally accepted that there are certain people who belong here and certain people who don’t. There’s music blaring, a hip hop mix that was more popular when he was younger. Whatever it is, it’s playing too loudly. Normally it would bother him, but the noise is a welcome distraction from the silence of his room back at Saul’s or the second-guessing and self-pity whirring around inside his head.
It’s surprising to him, given the environment, that a tall blonde woman walks into the room and doesn’t turn around and walk right back out. She’s dressed to the nines. He’s sitting on a barstool while he still has the balance, sucking down his second glass of whiskey, and he eyes her speculatively as she strides up to the long, pitted wood countertop.
“A blonde walks into a bar... ” the bartender says under his breath.
She looks at the bartender, unfazed. “You got a phone?”
“For customers,” the bartender says, sliding her an empty glass.
“Frak.” She heaves her black bag up on the counter, rummaging until she finds a few cubits and slaps them down. “Give me whatever this’ll get me, and then give me your phone.”
Bill takes another draw on his drink and watches the bartender fill her glass with second-rate Gemenese liquor that’s not at all worth the money she just put down. She eyes the bottle, then picks up the glass and looks at it as the bartender walks away.
“Highway frakkin’ robbery,” she announces, loud enough to be heard over the music.
He watches as she drinks it anyway, her nose wrinkling in distaste. She taps her fingernails on the top of the bar and watches the bartender’s back, her look scathing until he returns with the phone. Bill sees her expression instantly change upon meeting the bartender’s eyes again.
“Thank you so much,” she drawls, half a smile turning up the corner of her mouth as she takes it from him. She begins to dial and then looks straight at Bill. Her scowl has returned. “Am I really that captivating?”
He looks straight down at his drink with an embarrassed chuckle. “No.”
“Oh, so you’re saying I’m not captivating.”
He looks back up at her but her back is already turned, the phone to her ear. He wants to hear what she’s saying, but the music and the barroom ruckus are overpowering. Instead, he orders another drink, a request the bartender doesn’t mind filling.
Her conversation is short and she appears to be more exasperated when she turns back around to face the bar. She scoots up onto the barstool next to him with a soft grunt, spinning the phone on its back on the countertop. “You can have your godsdamned phone back,” she says loudly, “not that it did me any frakkin’ good. Not a cab in this city’s willing to come down here at this hour.”
He winces and now intentionally avoids looking at her as she holds this conversation with nobody in particular. She’s obviously not familiar with the area and she’s pretty lucky the wrong people didn’t hear her declaration of how unsuitable she was finding her surroundings. He smells the faint scent of her perfume-a heavy, complicated floral mix-as she shifts on the chair, her elbow propping her up on the bar. He sees her face him out of his peripheral vision.
“You look like you need some company,” she says.
He regards her sharply, having a sudden realization as to why a pretty woman like her would walk into a place like this. “I don’t think so,” he says, sipping his drink. “I’ll pass.”
“The frak... ” She pushes her hair back from her face. She obviously knows what he’s thinking. “You think I’m a whore or something?”
The alcohol may be buzzing through his system, but he knows better than to call a woman a whore to her face, even if she’s suspect of it. “I didn’t say that.”
“No,” she answers. “But you thought it. And that makes you” -she waves the bartender down with a flick of her wrist-“a frakkin’ asshole.”
“I’m a frakkin’ asshole because I thought a pretty woman walking into a shithole like this looking like a million cubits and saddling up to the most lonely-looking frakker in the joint seemed suspicious?”
The bartender grabs the cheap bottle of Gemenese liquor and she covers the glass with her hand. “Frak that shit, buster,” she commands. “Give me what he’s having. Put it on his tab.”
The bartender looks at him. She’s good-she knows he’ll look like a pathetic frak if he says no. “Fine. Pour the lady a drink.”
“With an olive,” she adds.
He looks at her curiously.
They both watch as the bartender fills up her glass completely with the amber liquid that matches his own, then places an olive on a bright red sword on the side with no comment. He sips, enjoying the burn and the mounting buzz he feels slowly taking over his body.
“What did I just order?” she asks.
“Aerelon whiskey,” he replies.
Her hum is low and appreciative. “You are a man of distinguished taste,” she says, raising the glass. “And deep pockets.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
“I knew you needed some company, didn’t I?”
“And you needed a phone.” He takes another drink.
She takes a long, slow draw off her whiskey and he’s impressed at her straight face. She’s a drinker. There’s no way anyone else could have taken it that easily. “I needed to call my pimp.”
He deserved that one. He takes his lumps with a grin, convincing himself it’s okay to smile. He needs to relax; that’s why he came out tonight.
“Bad date. I escaped on foot,” she explains. She seems indignant, like she needs to suddenly justify her presence.
“That’s a pretty bad date.”
“Never had the greatest taste in men.” She drinks more whiskey, her tongue flicking over her lips, eyes closed. He takes too long to look away from her mouth, but his reaction time isn’t the greatest at the moment. “So, how about you? Waiting for someone?”
“No.”
“Looking for someone?”
“Not really.”
Thirty minutes ago, his answer would have been a resolute ‘no.’
“Nobody goes to the bar to get drunk by themselves,” she declares. It’s no amazing revelation she’s making, but she sounds like she’s impressed with herself. He realizes this woman seems to only have one volume: loud.
“I came to watch the pyramid semifinals.”
It’s true, in a way. It’s on the television above the bar, and he’d been glancing at it, but every time he did, it only made him more depressed. The Panthers were getting assfrakked by the Libran Leopards.
The Libran frakking Leopards, he thinks, sucking down the rest of his drink.
“I hope you’re cheering for the Leopards, for your sake.”
“Who cheers for them?”
“Good point. Frakkin’ bullshit, the Panthers this year.”
Like she’s reading his mind.
“Tumolt needs to come back from retirement,” he says with a heavy sigh.
“So say we all. Wasn’t that a mistake. He’ll come back. Betcha next season, already. He won’t be able to keep himself away.”
“Panthers’ll offer him a couple million cubits.”
“Not if the Bucs sweep him up first.”
“Frakkin’ Bucs.”
She takes a drink. “So, a Panthers fan, huh?”
“Yeah. Never really been into the Bucs. My dad used to know the owner.”
“Really.” She doesn’t seem nearly as interested in the name-dropping as he expected. She sucks the olive off the tiny red sword and arches her eyebrow. “Are you trying to impress me?”
“Maybe.”
He decides to be honest. He might as well; he doesn’t have anything to lose. He doesn’t know why he’s trying to make a good show of it, but the ideas that are starting to overrun his mind aren’t good ideas at all right now for a lot of reasons.
“Well, if you’re trying to impress me... what do you do?”
“Nothing I’m real passionate about, as of late.”
“Okay, the impression I’m getting is not the impression you want me to have. Of that, I am sure.”
He chuckles. “Colonial Fleet.”
“Well, I coulda told you that already.”
His tongue is starting to tingle, about to go numb. Not a bad feeling after the day he’s had. “How?”
“You Fleet guys are all the same.” She pokes his biceps with her red sword. “You wanna tell me what you do for the Fleet?”
“If you know so much, why don’t you tell me?”
“You’re an officer. But you don’t command your own ship.” She examines him, then drops her miniature weapon into her empty glass. “Not yet.”
“You’re good,” he answers. “I’m the Executive Officer on the Columbia.”
“Good for you, ’cause I’ve got a thing for XO’s.”
“Why’s that good for me?”
She laughs. “I’ll let you guess.”
He ignores the tightening he feels in his groin at the undercurrent of seduction he hears in her words. “You looking for a ride home or something?”
“I don’t know. You want to give me a ride?”
For a couple of seconds he’s not sure what she means, but any perplexity exacerbated by the alcohol is no match for the slide of her palm over the denim that’s tight across his thigh.
There’s a decision to be made, he realizes as he feels the heavy weight of her hand press down on his leg. Anticipation flutters in his gut as he looks down at her slender fingers, then into her eyes.
She really does have bad taste in men, he thinks.
“I’m in no state to drive,” he says. “But I live a couple blocks away.”
She’s the cat that ate the canary.
/chapter two