C. #3 Fic: Blood (BSG, PG-13)
Title: Blood
Author: lepetitarsenic
Rating: PG-13? I am sorry for the non-sex.
Words: Roughly ten million and a half. Or 2,076.
Characters: Kara 'n Lee, without being explicitly Kara/Lee. Though I ship seekritly.
A/N: Written for a sf_friday48 challenge. I looked at the picture for the longest time and was like "Nebula? Yeah, maybe, file that one away. Cigarette in viewing room? Nah, light's too blue. Nuclear sunset? No, no- OMG IT LOOKS JUST LIKE THE RAIDER GUTS IN SPACE." And so this.
A/N two: I have no idea what the mechanics of the canopy release are, but let's say for the sake of my story and physics that it works something like an airlock. In which case I am going to play fast and loose with science and say that the pressure release made the cylon guts spray all over the place and that a bunch of them had bunched up in the part where her viper met the canopy. Dude, I failed basic algebra; clearly I also failed the "use of semicolons" part of English. Resistance is futile.
A/N the third: THE MIDDLE WOULD NOT WRITE ITSELF. I am sorry if it sucks; this is the first BSG fic I've ever actually managed to finish and publish, due largely to my crippling lack of plot writing skill. It is very late. And I am done with excuses.
---------
Speed pressing the straps of the seat hard into her chest, Kara Thrace pulled another perfect landing in an enviable series of perfect landings onto the flight deck of the battlestar Galactica. This one was a rare one; bright. She couldn't wait to get out of the cockpit and get trashed on some homebrew and soak up all the lazy smiles of her pilots and the crew. It'd been so long since they had anything; add up the Laura and the virus beat and blasting cylons out of the sky for a change and, well. Enough days like this and they just might keep going long enough to find Earth.
The viper dropped onto the deck and Kara was shrugging out of her flight suit before she even felt the jolt. Absently, she flipped the canopy release switch, and with nothing more than a low hissing sound for warning was deluged with enough hot liquid to fill her cockpit two inches deep.
"Frak!" she spat, jumping quickly to her feet. She wiped the liquid out of her eyes and looked down at her flight suit; it was covered completely in the stuff. Whatever it was dripped off the polymer easy enough, but her tanks and what it could get to of her sweats were an entirely different story.
Cally- whose bright orange jumpsuit had suffered from no small amount of spray itself- shook her head, moving closer to the viper for a better look. "I think it's blood, Sir."
"Of course it isn't blood," she snapped, dropping to the floor of the flight deck from the wing of her bird with little grace. She lifted a soaked hand up to her eyes for closer inspection; no, it wasn't blood. It was thicker. Brighter. More... orange.
"Cylon guts," said Lee grimly, passing them by on his way to the corridor out. "It doesn't freeze like water. Leave your flight suit, the Chief said he'd hose 'em down."
She watched him go; he sounded tired. He hadn't met her eyes.
Kara shrugged out of the rest of her suit, leaving it in a messy heap on the floor. It smelled like hell, exposed to the oxygen and warmth of the flight deck. She didn't envy Cally.
"I'll be back for CAP," she said by way of apology, finding just enough of her good mood left to manage a wry smile. Cally sighed. Kara- feeling about as disgusting as she had since Caprica- headed directly for senior officer's quarters. Frak the liquor. If there wasn't hot water and an empty head waiting for her, there'd be hell real soon.
-------
It's not blood, she told herself, grimacing as it came off on the door to her quarters. It certainly was not blood; blood wouldn't stay this warm or this wet on someone's skin for so long. Kara Thrace knew well how fast blood dried; especially on the Galactica, where there was hardly any moisture in the air. She was alone- in retrospect, it was standard procedure to keep your helmet and suit pressurized until the canopy was open- but frak that, she was hardly one for standards. Or procedure.
And it's got you covered in Cylon guts. Nice call, Starbuck.
It was disconcerting how much that nagging little voice in her head sounded like Lee. Not a drop of cylon on him.
He'd be reporting to the XO for at least another ten minutes; quarters were empty, and that meant the head was, too.
Frak it.
Grabbing a towel and her last sliver of soap, Kara kicked her shoes off in the middle of the floor and stepped into the head. Still a bit of steam left; whoever'd been held back for lack of vipers from the last deployment was probably heading out on CAP now. Knowing it was a waste of water and fully not giving a damn, she stepped into a stall, turned on the shower, and stood under the hot spray fully clothed.
The water was warmer than usual; everyone else had been out, of course, out to blast those frakking raiders and not get blasted, which was a change. She hadn't thought about dying once yet; you didn't in the air. Everything was soaked now, and she could feel it running down her face, through her hair, all over her body. She felt tired- the fabric of her tanks was heavy under the weight of the water and whatever-it-was. Everyone was probably knocking back homebrew and-
'cept Lee. The thought of him briefing Tigh made her smile a little, even.
She stripped off her clothes, finally, once they were mostly washed clean, and let them pool at the drain so the water would soak out through them. Kara was exhausted; too exhausted to hang them out to dry, and Lee would be back in a few minutes, anyway. She wrapped a towel around her body, shook out her hair and crawled into her rack.
It was only seconds until she was out. Faint echoing screams of triumph rang too-loudly in her ears.
--------
When she woke it was late; late enough that a couple more of the few senior pilots had crawled into their racks (Palladino's conspicuously empty, Lee nowhere to be found,) reeking of liquor and day-old sweat. It was warmer than it usually ever got on the Galactica; all that body heat. Her shoes had been set primly side by side at the edge of her rack and she'd bet good ambrosia that her clothes were hung out to dry in the head.
Too warm to waste sleeping. She was out again before she could even wonder where he was without her at this time of night.
--------
When he found her, she was furiously scrubbing away at her viper, inch by painstaking inch. The cylon blood- the cylon guts, whatever it was, she recognized that smell from the raider they'd caught, it was thicker than water but it isn't- it reacted differently to different material. It wasn't warm on her viper, just sticky as all hell; a wire sponge got it out with solvent, but you had to scrub and scrub. Her hands were red.
"You should be in bed," he said. He looked haggard and she'd gotten more sleep than she'd had in weeks; from anyone but Lee Adama it would have been a joke.
"Five more minutes, daddy?" she jeered, the cigar dangling out of the corner of her mouth slipping dangerously low. "I want a story."
Not bothering to retort, Lee slowly pulled himself up on the equipment rack next to her viper. She could tell he was sore by the way his muscles moved. He was too tired to be on his feet; the CAG didn't have the luxury of rest after missions. He'd have gone to the head for a shower after reporting to Tigh- a minefield on the best of days- then to the mess to beam out those frakking smiles and congratulations at a celebration he'd feel like clawing his eyes out through. And now he was here getting torn up by her for caring too much. The Gods did have a sense of humor.
"No?" she cooed when he didn't respond. "I've got one- once upon a time, there was a little girl named Kara Actia Thrace, and she and her buddy Apollo shot toasters up way out in space." Lee smiled and she faltered; but she went on. He needed to know. There was no one else that would.
"She liked it 'cause she got to fly fighter planes- this little girl didn't like anything as much as flying- and all of her friends were there, even some of 'em that she'd thought were dead once." She took a drag off her cigar and continued scrubbing. "It wasn't so bad, except for the dying, and she didn't mind the dying so much because she was killing. But then the toasters she was blowing up for fun grew faces. Faces of friends of hers and they started acting like it hurt when you pulled out what should be a comm wire in them and talking and getting frakking pregnant by humans who loved them. And all of a sudden they didn't seem like toasters anymore. Especially when you blew them up and they bled blood."
She slammed the wire sponge violently into the side of the bird, a dull echo ringing out against the hollow metal. It left a smear of blood when she pulled it away. Hers was darker.
"This wasn't the Olympic Carrier," he said, after a long silence. She bit off a laugh.
"I know that. She didn't do a damn thing, Lee. She could have killed me and Helo a thousand times over on Caprica, but she didn't- she saved my ass more than once, and now this- virus-"
"Kara-"
"I can't just act like she's some thing anymore. That's Helo's kid in that frakking toaster and we can't just keep parading her around in the hallways and pumping her full of drugs and-"
"Kara."
"What?"
"I'm with you."
She stopped in mid-scrub, the hanger bay eerily silent without the screeching sound of metal on metal. With the stars in view, it was almost peaceful.
"You pull a gun on her every time she turns a corner, Lee."
"Just because I don't trust her doesn't mean I think she's just... metal. There's too much evidence to the contrary. None of them act like they should.
He looked defeated; as lost as she is. She set the sponge down.
"I'm just-" she tried to smile, "you'll laugh, but I'm tired of drowning it all. I'm not the XO."
Lee exhaled, settling back against the clean part of her viper. He closed his eyes; there were centuries and centuries of questions like hers written into the lines of his face.
"His way's easier."
"Yeah?" she mumbled, meaning obscured through the cigar in her mouth. She slid down to sit beside him and pressed it into Lee's fingers, a hint of an old smile finally breaking through features. "Anything you can do, I can do better."
He took a welcome drag, and allowed a short smile back. "Not this."
----------
They staggered back to their quarters together, sore and tired in exactly the same places, and Lee for the first time thought he could actually get used to things this way. No man had ever accused Starbuck of being rational, but he knew Kara Thrace better than any man, alive or dead.
She kicked off her shoes, he kicked them under the rack, she grinned at him, and he kicked that ever-present need to touch her to the back of his mind with a worn and practiced motion. But not tonight. As he made to climb the ladder to his bunk she tugged plaintively on his arm.
They struggled to get under tangled sheets and he pressed his lips to the back of her neck, fully chaste. He molded his body to hers with an almost involuntary sigh; he wanted to do this always, but he'd never- she pressed her hips back against him and pulled one of his arms over the curve of her waist and he was asleep before he could think.
----------
When Kara woke up, Lee was gone.
----------
When she reported for CAP an hour later, her bird was as bright and shiny as a frakking Caprican skyscraper. Some of the deck crew had stopped to stare. Cally grinned at her. Lee's bird was positioned to enter the launch tube opposite hers, the CAG himself perched on top with dirty hands and faintly orange tanks. He was writing furiously on a clipboard, oblivious to anything and looking tired as hell. A ghost of a smile touched Kara's lips.
They could keep going on like this for a pretty damn long time.
Author: lepetitarsenic
Rating: PG-13? I am sorry for the non-sex.
Words: Roughly ten million and a half. Or 2,076.
Characters: Kara 'n Lee, without being explicitly Kara/Lee. Though I ship seekritly.
A/N: Written for a sf_friday48 challenge. I looked at the picture for the longest time and was like "Nebula? Yeah, maybe, file that one away. Cigarette in viewing room? Nah, light's too blue. Nuclear sunset? No, no- OMG IT LOOKS JUST LIKE THE RAIDER GUTS IN SPACE." And so this.
A/N two: I have no idea what the mechanics of the canopy release are, but let's say for the sake of my story and physics that it works something like an airlock. In which case I am going to play fast and loose with science and say that the pressure release made the cylon guts spray all over the place and that a bunch of them had bunched up in the part where her viper met the canopy. Dude, I failed basic algebra; clearly I also failed the "use of semicolons" part of English. Resistance is futile.
A/N the third: THE MIDDLE WOULD NOT WRITE ITSELF. I am sorry if it sucks; this is the first BSG fic I've ever actually managed to finish and publish, due largely to my crippling lack of plot writing skill. It is very late. And I am done with excuses.
---------
Speed pressing the straps of the seat hard into her chest, Kara Thrace pulled another perfect landing in an enviable series of perfect landings onto the flight deck of the battlestar Galactica. This one was a rare one; bright. She couldn't wait to get out of the cockpit and get trashed on some homebrew and soak up all the lazy smiles of her pilots and the crew. It'd been so long since they had anything; add up the Laura and the virus beat and blasting cylons out of the sky for a change and, well. Enough days like this and they just might keep going long enough to find Earth.
The viper dropped onto the deck and Kara was shrugging out of her flight suit before she even felt the jolt. Absently, she flipped the canopy release switch, and with nothing more than a low hissing sound for warning was deluged with enough hot liquid to fill her cockpit two inches deep.
"Frak!" she spat, jumping quickly to her feet. She wiped the liquid out of her eyes and looked down at her flight suit; it was covered completely in the stuff. Whatever it was dripped off the polymer easy enough, but her tanks and what it could get to of her sweats were an entirely different story.
Cally- whose bright orange jumpsuit had suffered from no small amount of spray itself- shook her head, moving closer to the viper for a better look. "I think it's blood, Sir."
"Of course it isn't blood," she snapped, dropping to the floor of the flight deck from the wing of her bird with little grace. She lifted a soaked hand up to her eyes for closer inspection; no, it wasn't blood. It was thicker. Brighter. More... orange.
"Cylon guts," said Lee grimly, passing them by on his way to the corridor out. "It doesn't freeze like water. Leave your flight suit, the Chief said he'd hose 'em down."
She watched him go; he sounded tired. He hadn't met her eyes.
Kara shrugged out of the rest of her suit, leaving it in a messy heap on the floor. It smelled like hell, exposed to the oxygen and warmth of the flight deck. She didn't envy Cally.
"I'll be back for CAP," she said by way of apology, finding just enough of her good mood left to manage a wry smile. Cally sighed. Kara- feeling about as disgusting as she had since Caprica- headed directly for senior officer's quarters. Frak the liquor. If there wasn't hot water and an empty head waiting for her, there'd be hell real soon.
-------
It's not blood, she told herself, grimacing as it came off on the door to her quarters. It certainly was not blood; blood wouldn't stay this warm or this wet on someone's skin for so long. Kara Thrace knew well how fast blood dried; especially on the Galactica, where there was hardly any moisture in the air. She was alone- in retrospect, it was standard procedure to keep your helmet and suit pressurized until the canopy was open- but frak that, she was hardly one for standards. Or procedure.
And it's got you covered in Cylon guts. Nice call, Starbuck.
It was disconcerting how much that nagging little voice in her head sounded like Lee. Not a drop of cylon on him.
He'd be reporting to the XO for at least another ten minutes; quarters were empty, and that meant the head was, too.
Frak it.
Grabbing a towel and her last sliver of soap, Kara kicked her shoes off in the middle of the floor and stepped into the head. Still a bit of steam left; whoever'd been held back for lack of vipers from the last deployment was probably heading out on CAP now. Knowing it was a waste of water and fully not giving a damn, she stepped into a stall, turned on the shower, and stood under the hot spray fully clothed.
The water was warmer than usual; everyone else had been out, of course, out to blast those frakking raiders and not get blasted, which was a change. She hadn't thought about dying once yet; you didn't in the air. Everything was soaked now, and she could feel it running down her face, through her hair, all over her body. She felt tired- the fabric of her tanks was heavy under the weight of the water and whatever-it-was. Everyone was probably knocking back homebrew and-
'cept Lee. The thought of him briefing Tigh made her smile a little, even.
She stripped off her clothes, finally, once they were mostly washed clean, and let them pool at the drain so the water would soak out through them. Kara was exhausted; too exhausted to hang them out to dry, and Lee would be back in a few minutes, anyway. She wrapped a towel around her body, shook out her hair and crawled into her rack.
It was only seconds until she was out. Faint echoing screams of triumph rang too-loudly in her ears.
--------
When she woke it was late; late enough that a couple more of the few senior pilots had crawled into their racks (Palladino's conspicuously empty, Lee nowhere to be found,) reeking of liquor and day-old sweat. It was warmer than it usually ever got on the Galactica; all that body heat. Her shoes had been set primly side by side at the edge of her rack and she'd bet good ambrosia that her clothes were hung out to dry in the head.
Too warm to waste sleeping. She was out again before she could even wonder where he was without her at this time of night.
--------
When he found her, she was furiously scrubbing away at her viper, inch by painstaking inch. The cylon blood- the cylon guts, whatever it was, she recognized that smell from the raider they'd caught, it was thicker than water but it isn't- it reacted differently to different material. It wasn't warm on her viper, just sticky as all hell; a wire sponge got it out with solvent, but you had to scrub and scrub. Her hands were red.
"You should be in bed," he said. He looked haggard and she'd gotten more sleep than she'd had in weeks; from anyone but Lee Adama it would have been a joke.
"Five more minutes, daddy?" she jeered, the cigar dangling out of the corner of her mouth slipping dangerously low. "I want a story."
Not bothering to retort, Lee slowly pulled himself up on the equipment rack next to her viper. She could tell he was sore by the way his muscles moved. He was too tired to be on his feet; the CAG didn't have the luxury of rest after missions. He'd have gone to the head for a shower after reporting to Tigh- a minefield on the best of days- then to the mess to beam out those frakking smiles and congratulations at a celebration he'd feel like clawing his eyes out through. And now he was here getting torn up by her for caring too much. The Gods did have a sense of humor.
"No?" she cooed when he didn't respond. "I've got one- once upon a time, there was a little girl named Kara Actia Thrace, and she and her buddy Apollo shot toasters up way out in space." Lee smiled and she faltered; but she went on. He needed to know. There was no one else that would.
"She liked it 'cause she got to fly fighter planes- this little girl didn't like anything as much as flying- and all of her friends were there, even some of 'em that she'd thought were dead once." She took a drag off her cigar and continued scrubbing. "It wasn't so bad, except for the dying, and she didn't mind the dying so much because she was killing. But then the toasters she was blowing up for fun grew faces. Faces of friends of hers and they started acting like it hurt when you pulled out what should be a comm wire in them and talking and getting frakking pregnant by humans who loved them. And all of a sudden they didn't seem like toasters anymore. Especially when you blew them up and they bled blood."
She slammed the wire sponge violently into the side of the bird, a dull echo ringing out against the hollow metal. It left a smear of blood when she pulled it away. Hers was darker.
"This wasn't the Olympic Carrier," he said, after a long silence. She bit off a laugh.
"I know that. She didn't do a damn thing, Lee. She could have killed me and Helo a thousand times over on Caprica, but she didn't- she saved my ass more than once, and now this- virus-"
"Kara-"
"I can't just act like she's some thing anymore. That's Helo's kid in that frakking toaster and we can't just keep parading her around in the hallways and pumping her full of drugs and-"
"Kara."
"What?"
"I'm with you."
She stopped in mid-scrub, the hanger bay eerily silent without the screeching sound of metal on metal. With the stars in view, it was almost peaceful.
"You pull a gun on her every time she turns a corner, Lee."
"Just because I don't trust her doesn't mean I think she's just... metal. There's too much evidence to the contrary. None of them act like they should.
He looked defeated; as lost as she is. She set the sponge down.
"I'm just-" she tried to smile, "you'll laugh, but I'm tired of drowning it all. I'm not the XO."
Lee exhaled, settling back against the clean part of her viper. He closed his eyes; there were centuries and centuries of questions like hers written into the lines of his face.
"His way's easier."
"Yeah?" she mumbled, meaning obscured through the cigar in her mouth. She slid down to sit beside him and pressed it into Lee's fingers, a hint of an old smile finally breaking through features. "Anything you can do, I can do better."
He took a welcome drag, and allowed a short smile back. "Not this."
----------
They staggered back to their quarters together, sore and tired in exactly the same places, and Lee for the first time thought he could actually get used to things this way. No man had ever accused Starbuck of being rational, but he knew Kara Thrace better than any man, alive or dead.
She kicked off her shoes, he kicked them under the rack, she grinned at him, and he kicked that ever-present need to touch her to the back of his mind with a worn and practiced motion. But not tonight. As he made to climb the ladder to his bunk she tugged plaintively on his arm.
They struggled to get under tangled sheets and he pressed his lips to the back of her neck, fully chaste. He molded his body to hers with an almost involuntary sigh; he wanted to do this always, but he'd never- she pressed her hips back against him and pulled one of his arms over the curve of her waist and he was asleep before he could think.
----------
When Kara woke up, Lee was gone.
----------
When she reported for CAP an hour later, her bird was as bright and shiny as a frakking Caprican skyscraper. Some of the deck crew had stopped to stare. Cally grinned at her. Lee's bird was positioned to enter the launch tube opposite hers, the CAG himself perched on top with dirty hands and faintly orange tanks. He was writing furiously on a clipboard, oblivious to anything and looking tired as hell. A ghost of a smile touched Kara's lips.
They could keep going on like this for a pretty damn long time.