In the Whole World: Chapter 7, "The Beach House"
“The Beach House”
Chapter 7/13
Word Count: 2,101
Karl's gaze darted back and forth between the exit Lee'd disappeared through and Kara's furious scowl. "He treating you OK?"
"Like a frakking princess."
He raised a brow. "You treating him OK?"
Kara's shoulders slumped. "Well as I can."
"That bad, huh?"
Kara leaned into the cooler in the "kitchen" she and Lee had added onto the tent a week before, pulled out two beers she'd filched from Manny's bar over on the commons. Manny was a religious nutjob, a demographic she appreciated now that they were the group of people most likely to see her "savior of humankind" status as a reason to either give her favors or stay the hell out of her way.
She handed him a bottle. "Have a seat, boss, and tell me what's wrong. I'm guessing your problems are worse than mine."
Karl had looked in a mirror that morning, so he knew what she saw; he was pale and haggard and sleep-deprived. So he sat down, let her change the subject. "It's the weirdest frakking thing, Kara," He slouched down in the chair she offered, and confirmed to her it was bad when he didn't object to drinking this early in the morning. "Sharon won't talk to me at all anymore, these last few days. She just huddles up, obsessively opening boxes of our things and touching them, filing them, folding and refolding them. I can't get her to go with me on a CAP for anything. And Hera…" He shook his head. "She knows something is up, too. She's stopped calling her 'Mama,' for one thing."
"She's… what?"
Kara's put her feet up on the metal stool that she'd smuggled off of the old flight deck, a beer bottle in her hands, her arm around her knees. She was noticing that the two marines Lee had put on duty outside their door were there, standing guard. How much did they hear? They were reminding her of another itch she hadn't scratched in a while, namely the urge to carry a sidearm, and to shoot it at someone.
But that was the first itch talking again. I should make Lee move out. Do the right frakking thing for once.
"What is…" Kara smoothed her fatigues on her shins, got herself together, "what is she calling Sharon, then?"
"Vee-vee? Or sometimes it sounds like Lee-lee?" Helo shook his head abstractedly. "Sharon says it's because it's her doll's name, and Hera's just… transferred it to her. And she says it doesn't hurt her feelings. That Hera knows she's her mother and will go back to 'Mama' when she feels like it, but…"
"You think whatever's going on with Sharon is taking a toll on Hera, too."
"I know it is. It's just… gods. Ever since Boomer…"
Kara's voice was gentle, but her words weren't. "Since you frakked Boomer without realizing she wasn't your wife."
"Yeah." He rubbed his hands over his head briskly, rubbing off an invisible touch. "Since then."
"Which means-ever since you arrived here on Earth, things have been strained between you two."
"She's been treating me like a stranger since we first pitched a tent here. But for the last couple weeks, I don't know. They're worse. She goes to a place I can't reach. Sometimes I come in and she's just sitting in a chair, shivering like it's the dead of winter. Or I tell her some old joke of ours and she just looks at me blankly, like I'm speaking a foreign language. What I did… I mean, it's pretty unforgiveable, right? And now she's just so unhappy. And it's just eating me up, you know, that I can't do anything about it."
"So whatcha gonna do? Are you just gonna give up after all you guys have been through?"
Helo shook his head automatically. "Of course not. But she won't talk to me. I don't know what else I can say, what else I can do."
A grin broke over Kara's face as she got an idea. "Sounds like you two need to get away."
"Get away?" Helo lips tilted up reflexively at that whimsical suggestion, hearing the echo in it of another time so long gone that conjuring it up was like imagining his life as fiction. "What, you mean like rent a hotel on some beach near Mangala for the solstice? I give her a dozen pink roses, she buys some skimpy lingerie?"
"You ain't gonna make it to Canceron in time for the solstice, buddy. But there is the Beach House." Hoshi's team had set up a military observation outpost on the ocean, sixty miles away, weeks ago, which the Galactica crew had promptly nicknamed. "I'm sure we can talk Lee into letting you take a Raptor-supposing you do some fishing, bring back some specimens for the good Dr. Baltar and his Cylon assistants? Right, Lee?" She called, loud enough that Lee could hear her at the tent's other end.
Lee neither looked up from his paperwork nor made any pretense that he hadn't been eavesdropping. "Just don't let your make-up fraks damage the controls. Too little tylium left to send a rescue mission after you."
"Mmm," Kara saw her opportunity to rile him as much as she was riled, "unlike the last time you frakked in a Raptor. Let's see. Did we ever decide whether it was you who cracked that gyroscope cover while we -"
"Kara. Don't start again. "
"Or did I accidentally hit it with my knee?" She turned back to Helo. "He probably can't remember-locks away all his dirty, sinful thoughts in a black box at the corner of his brain. But take my advice, don't frak directly on the nav panel, it's way too-"
"Cool it, Starbuck, I've got no interest in being in the epicenter of another war." Helo's dry tone was the desert underneath the wind of his gaze, which swept over the two coffee mugs on the table. The two chairs he and Kara were sitting on. The two, separate piles of paperwork on the desk at which Lee was working. And, most pointedly, the two pillows on the large bed he'd requisitioned for them weeks before. "And I gotta say, I don't know if it's a great idea to leave Hera with the two of you."
Lee got up, came back over. "She'll be fine. We're her godsparents."
If Helo had thought about it, he wouldn't have said his next words: "You mean you and Dee are her godsparents." Lee turned his face away, at that reminder; Kara schooled her face to remain absolutely still. And Helo, belatedly seeing the many sore spots he'd just touched, endeavored to steer the conversation swiftly away. "I just don't know if this is the best place for a three-year-old, is all."
"Oh, it'll be fine. Hera and I'll share the bed. Not like Lee was making much use of it anyway," Kara recovered, disappointed that Lee didn't even flinch at the jibe. She didn't even know what reaction she was hoping to get out of him, anymore. It was like a reflex.
She withered somewhat under Karl's admonishing glare, though.
But ultimately, he didn't have a lot of choices about who he could trust with his kid. "You'll keep 'em out of trouble, Apollo?"
Karl's skepticism was beginning to rankle Kara. She answered for Lee. "One three-year-old, a couple of days. We can handle it. You just enjoy the Beach House."
"Observation outpost," Lee corrected automatically.
Kara rolled her eyes. "That's Lee Adama for 'we'll be fine.'"
"You're sure? Because you couldn't even handle two hours the last time you tried to babysit, remember? When Sharon and I tried to go out to dinner on Cloud Nine? You called in reinforcements literally twenty minutes after we left, all because Hera had kicked off her blanket in her sleep and you didn't want to be the one to cover her back up." His tone was teasing, but his eyes were grave; he knew better than most what she'd been afraid of.
Kara flushed at how exposed she felt suddenly, but carried on. "And I'll call in reinforcements again, if I have to."
"We'll be fine." Lee said it literally this time. "You and Sharon work on getting your marriage back on track. We'll keep Hera safe and sound."
"Alright." Karl was willing to be convinced, had the appearance of a man who knew he had to something. "I'll drop her off in the morning, if the Raptor'll be ready by then?"
Lee nodded. "I'll see to it."
And then he was gone. The silence that filled the space Helo had occupied was larger, even, than that man was himself, and considerably more imposing. Lee took advantage of it to slide down into the chair right next to her, close enough that he could feel the slight tremor that went through her legs as he moved close. He let the silence build until he began to be too aware of his own heartbeat. And folded.
"Your move, Kara."
She looked at him, the Starbuck in her eyes-wary and angry at once. And then floored him. "I think we should build that cabin, Lee."
Nothing about his posture changed, except he was suddenly gripping the edge of the table, and there were tiny white lines around his mouth. "So you'll get a divorce?"
She drew back sharply, and it told him all he needed to know.
"Great, Kara, so show me the floor plans of our new place. A second bedroom for your husband? Or I guess we could just install him right in the living room. Kitchen big enough for three. And, of course, a back door for me to sneak in and out of at night." She couldn't read him. He sounded more disgusted than angry, and he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were turned in toward himself.
She shuddered. "You're right, I was wrong. Lee. You should probably… find somewhere else to live."
He looked at her now. Far from those amber spikes that had been tearing up his flesh all morning, her eyes were pools of maple syrup, large and sad. "That would be the right thing, probably," he said eventually.
"Yeah." Her shoulders slumped.
"But the right thing's really frakked us over a bunch of times. So… nah."
"'Nah'?" she echoed faintly.
"Ask me to stay, Kara."
"Are you… are you not listening, Apollo? I don't want you to stay."
"C'mon. All you have to do is ask. Kara."
When she looked up, his eyes were… laughing at her? A slow grin spread over her face. "What's so funny?" she demanded, trying and failing to tamp down her widest smile.
"Oh, just thinking about how much louder you're gonna have to be, the next time you tell me you love me. So I'll believe you."
She felt those words skitter up her spine and in her wrists like ice, and the shock of it, the panic, made her laugh. "Look at you, Lee-daring the gods."
"Somebody has to keep those assholes honest."
"Blasphemy! From an Adama! I'm shocked."
He laughed. "At least I've become a believer."
"No! You, a convert? Alert the oracles!" He'd turned to her now, squeezed her thigh between his knees. "What made you change your mind?"
He grabbed her hands and pressed them, too, between his. His mouth was still smiling, but his eyes had turned grave. "There was this dead pilot who had a set of codes that jumped Galactica directly into paradise." He squeezed her fingers. "Everyone believes in the gods, now. If I'd never met you, I'd believe in them." Then he laughed again. "I just think it's a shame that I'm never gonna get to punch a single one of them in the face." He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. "I have that meeting. Be back in a few hours."
He was halfway out the door-right in between the Marines, and they were definitely listening, would definitely talk about all of this later, but Kara didn't care. "Hey-Lee?"
He heard the name she used and mentally rolled some dice. "Yeah?"
"You'll-stay?" She swallowed. "'Til the end, I mean?"
He made a decision to be happy about what he didn't hear, instead of terrified by what he did. It was the luckiest and the unluckiest roll-Viper eyes. So he laughed again. "Count on it."
As he walked away, she sank down on their bed, her knees shaking, hoping this new truce was more manageable than their last ones.
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