![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millarificTitle: Going the Distance, Part 1/2
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
millari
Characters: Kara Thrace, Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza, Lee Adama, Alex "Crashdown" Quartararo, Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, other minor mentions of Zak Adama, various pilots and CIC folks.
Pairing: Kara/Hot Dog
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Beta:daybreak777 and trovia
Spoilers: This is an AU, so there aren't real spoilers, but it takes place in the middle of S1 sometime after "You Can't Go Home Again" but before "Colonial Day".
Summary: “I know it's the end of the world, Costanza,” Starbuck bit out with sardonic amusement. “But
seriously? You need a date this bad?”
A/N: This story was written fortrovia. It is a completed two-part fic.
Brendan couldn't quite believe she was even considering it.
“I know it's the end of the world, Costanza,” Starbuck bit out with sardonic amusement. “But seriously? You need a date this bad?”
Dee started giggling, and quickly took another swig of the ambrosia bottle on the table to cover.
Boomer, Crashdown and Gaeta were all hiding smirks too, but he didn't care. It was likely going to be the last card game of the night anyway, seeing as Brendan and Starbuck had managed to clean everyone else out. What did he have to lose?
They all watched Starbuck staring at the large pile of cubits on the table, fanning her cards a couple of times in a tight, nervous gesture, as she pondered whether to take his offer.
“Just one date and I'll let you call the hand,” he reiterated.
“Come on, Starbuck,” Crashdown egged her on. “You've put in all your cubits. You really want to lose them all without a fight?”
“A date? Really?” Starbuck's face was etched with suspicion.
“Win or lose,” Brendan replied with a smile, hoping she didn't think he'd planned this ahead of time like some kind of stalker.
She cast another rueful gaze at the pot. “Those are a hell of a lot of cubits,” she acknowledged..
“Well, looks like I'm finding somewhere else to sleep tonight,” Boomer cracked.
“Frak off, Sharon,” Starbuck said lightly. “If you don't like who I bring to bed, you could always volunteer for extra CAPs. Maybe then I wouldn't doing double shifts all the time.”
“You say that, but I think you like being stimulated.”
“Hah, not in that way,” she retorted.
“You're nuts, you know,” she shook her head, refocusing on Brendan. “Of course, I should've known it when you jumped in as my wing man on your first damn flight.”
“Does that mean yes?” he asked with a grin.
“Whatever.” She tossed her cards on the table. “It's your funeral, Hot Dog.”
Everyone at the table leaned forward to see: Full colors, as they'd all suspected. She had just barely beat his prince high red.
The group collectively groaned, and Boomer gave Brendan a sympathetic clap on the back, while Starbuck crowed with delight at her victory.
“Have fun, you two,” Crashdown snickered as the others began pulling away for the night, but Starbuck was too busy gathering her winnings around her like a pirate with her stash. Brendan sat across the table, happily watching her.
“What are you so thrilled about?” she demanded, gesturing at him with a cubit in her hand. “I'll warn you now: you're gettingone chance at a frak, that's it. If you're at all boring in bed, don't think I won't kick you right out.”
“You don't have to go out on a date with me.” he said earnestly.
At her surprised expression, he revised his statement. “I mean, I'm not saying I wouldn't be interested, but you don't actually have to. I don't want you to do something you don't want to do.”
She put down the cubit slowly. “So then what was that all about? I was out of cash. You could have won.”
He rose from his chair. “Yeah, but what fun would that have been?”.
Her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Wait. So you just threw away all your cubits, for … for what?”
He shrugged.“Cubits aren't worth anything anymore anyway.” He restrained a second grin at her gaping expression.
“I'll see you around, Starbuck.”
**
Brendan was about to enter the pilot's locker room when he felt a hand grab his collar and yank him out of the doorway and shove him hard against the metal wall.
“So what the hell was that crap you pulled last night?”
She was close enough that he could smell the aroma of sweat dripping from her body, like she'd been punching the bag, hard.
“Just get out of the gym, Starbuck?” he said hoarsely, struggling to regain his breath.
“Don't change the subject,” she ordered, her forearm pinning his chest. “Were you trying to be funny, Costanza?”
His eyebrows raised. “Funny?”
“We had a deal. You let me call without the cash, and I go out on a date with you. Then you reneged. I want to know why.”
“I didn't renege,” he protested. He was still having trouble breathing properly. “Hey,” he gasped, pointing at his throat, “uh, windpipe?”
She removed her arm, as roughly as she had put it there. He took a deep, grateful, inward breath.
“So you will go out on a date with me?” he choked out.
“You basically let me win. Why?”
Brendan's forehead crinkled, confused at her hostility. “I don't know. I didn't care about the cubits and you clearly did...”
“And?” Her brown-eyed glare pinned him to the wall as surely as her arm had a moment ago.
He straightened himself up, remembering how at times he'd found her eyes pretty, when they weren't scowling at him. “Well, uh, haven't you ever just gotten the idea to do something nice for someone?” he insisted.
She pursed her lips, apparently not trusting this answer. Brendan took a moment to think of one she'd like better. “And I wanted to make sure I saw your hand?” he tried.
She pulled away abruptly, considering him, her glare softening.
“Meet me on hangar deck B at 1600,” she said. “I know you're off-duty. I checked.”
He just stared at her, mystified. “You mean for a date?”
“A deal's a deal, Hot Dog,” she declared over her shoulder as she strode into the showers.
Brendan just stood by the door for a minute processing, then grinned to himself and continued on to the locker room. He had a date with Kara Thrace. The day was looking up.
**
Starbuck piloted their Raptor to the Chrion herself, despite Brendan's initial concerns about her knee.
"It's just a shuttle run inside the Fleet. It's not like we're pulling even two Gs to fly this thing,'' she insisted. "It's fine."
Navigating the meandering hallways of the Chrion, Brendan blurted out with excitement when he suddenly saw the neon sign up ahead - Chrion Cinema.
“A movie theater? When did we get movies?”
She seemed happy with his reaction. “I heard about it when I did a supply run here a few weeks ago. This used to be a luxury liner – you know for cruises – so they had a small theater on board. They keep it kind of quiet because they've only got one projector left and only a couple of movies.”
“What movie are we going to see?” Brendan said, thrilled.
“Dunno. Who cares?” Starbuck shrugged. “It's a movie, right?”
“Sure, I guess.”
Still, Brendan secretly hoped it was a comedy. Or maybe an action flick.
“No way!” he exclaimed as they got closer and saw a table with small bags of snacks for sale. “They have sour cherry sticks and …” His eyes widened. “There's popcorn?”
“Well, they charge an arm and a leg for it but yeah,” she groused, handing over ten cubits to a man behind a small portable cash register. She took a small bag of popcorn off the table and handed it to him. “Luckily, this is your money from last night,” she smirked. “So enjoy the last popcorn in the universe.”
Brendan knew he was grinning like an idiot as they walked in and found two seats in the middle of the darkened theater, but damn. He'd figured this kind of thing was gone forever. “I feel like I'm fifteen again,” he whispered in her ear as the film flickered to life.
“Good,” she whispered back. “Then you're just in the right mood for this.”
She grabbed the back of his head and dove in for a long, sloppy, wet kiss that left Brendan as breathless as when she'd pinned him to the wall by the showers.
He never did find out the name of the movie.
**
That night Kara dreamed for the first time in a long while of her father. In the dream, she was sitting at her father's piano, her small legs dangling in time to the music as her father played next to her one of his compositions. She had just eaten from a bag of sugar-covered sour cherries that her father had bought her and she could still taste the combination of sweet and sour on her lips as she listened.
She awoke teary-eyed and confused, the melody of father's piano seeming to follow her out of her dream and into the real world.
When she came to, Hot Dog quietly humming a tune to himself in the bed next to her.
“For Gods' sake, Hot Dog, what the hell time is it?” she grumbled, wiping away the tears at the edges of her eyes.
“0430,” he replied.
“Frak, really?” she complained. “What are you doing up? Did you take your stims or something?” whispered, suddenly aware of the sleeping pilots around them.
“No, I just grew up on a farm back on Libron,” he explained. “I can never sleep any later than this, pretty much no matter what time I go to bed.”
“Oh.” She rubbed sleep out of her eyes, remembering last night and Brendan's surprisingly audacious tongue between her legs and his fingers tracing up the length of her body. He hadn't been the best kisser ever, kind of overeager and a bit sloppy, but he had made up for it when they'd finally gotten back to her rack and stripped naked quickly without speaking. He'd been reverent and attentive to her needs, and had slowed the whole interaction down in a way she wasn't used to in her one night stands.
“Where did you learn that song you were humming just now?” she asked, remembering the tune in her dream.
He grinned. “Oh, I was lying here bored, so I was looking at the stuff up on your wall,” he explained.
“My Darling Kara,” he read the title aloud, pointing a lazy forefinger upward at the sheet music taped to the wall above her bed. “It's a pretty tune. Did a boyfriend write it for you?”
She bolted up in the bed, alert and slightly defensive. Oh. Of course.
“My dad wrote that. When I was a kid. He was a composer, performer. Played the piano.”
“Cool. Would I have ever heard of him?”
She reached for the pack of cigarettes she'd won in the card game and lit one, stuffing down the emotions that tune had called up into the soothing process of the first smoke of the morning. “I seriously doubt it. He never made the big time. Not that that ever stopped him from trying. He made a couple of recordings that went pretty much nowhere. I had one recording of his music back in my apartment on Caprica, and well...” She shrugged in resignation. “It's gone now.”
He nodded. She smoked one last drag and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray that sat on a small shelf, right by where her father's music was taped up, wondering why she was even sharing this with him. The only other person on this ship who knew this stuff was Helo, and to some extent, Lee.
“So wait,” she stopped short, her finger still applying pressure to the cigarette in the ashtray. “You're telling me that you were able to learn the tune to that piece just by looking at it?”
He reached for the pack of cigarettes and took one without asking. It was technically rude considering how more and more scarce luxuries like this were becoming, but the way he did it was so comfortable and unpresumptious, Kara wasn't offended. In this one way, he strangely reminded her of Helo.
“Well, don't spread this around,” he said, “but I actually was this close to becoming a musician myself.”
Kara scoffed. “You?”
He blew a retaliatory puff of smoke in her face for that. “Yeah, me. I went to a music conservatory and everything. I trained in voice, piano and guitar.”
“You're kidding,” she said flatly. “I thought you were a flight school washout.” He flinched imperceptibly at the remark. “I mean,” she tried to put it more gently, “If you were going to be a musician, how did you end up in flight school?”
“I had to leave conservatory before I finished,” he said simply.
“Why?”
He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then shrugged. “I had to support my mom and sister. I thought being a pilot would be a fun way to do it. Music didn't exactly work out for me anyway.”
He changed the subject, suddenly turning around in the bed and ending up on top of her. She was nude under the sheets.
“So hey,” he said. “We've got an hour and half before Reveille. Want a reprise?” he waggled his eyebrows at her meaningfully.
She groaned. “Reprise? Gods, Costanza, are you making a music pun?” When his eyebrows raised suggestively, she laughed. “You're such a dork.”
“Well, you're the dork who got that pun,” he teased her back, grinning. “You laughed,” he accused.
“Not really,” she retorted. “Unless you count groaning in pain as laughter.”
“I'll take it,” he retorted, and pulled down the sheets, getting down in between her legs, his breath tickling her inner thighs.
“So what do you say?” he insisted. “A reprise?”
She had to admit, he'd given her a couple of really great orgasms last night, one of them just with his fingers. She imagined them tinkling away at the keys of a piano or rapidly plucking the strings of a guitar. The prospect of a repeat performance was tempting, even at this hour.
She opened her legs wide and grinned back at him. “For a dork, you've definitely got skills.”
He snorted, but then apparently decided to let his fingers speak for him. Kara sighed as they played a well-appreciated symphony along her upper thighs.
**
To her surprise, Kara couldn't resist a second date, and then a third. What surprised her most was not so much that it was with Brendan Costanza, although truthfully, she wouldn't have guessed him to be worth more than a single frak.
No, the real issue was that she didn't go out on dates. The last person she had dated was Zak, and really, they had sort of jumped from a supposed one-night stand into a de facto relationship, and then at some point they had gotten engaged.
After losing Zak, she'd adopted a policy of one-night stands. It was easier that way. She had plenty of friends among the pilots, and now with both Lee and his father on this ship, it was even like having family, so Kara didn't need a romantic relationship with anyone. And she certainly didn't need anyone to know that this thing with Brendan had continued after their first date. But of course, Galactica was a deceptively small ship. News spread fast.
It wasn't long before Kara walked into the officers' head and into a trap. She had barely gotten through the doorway when Racetrack announced her presence:
”Missus Hot Dog is heeerree," she declared.
Kara was greeted by an impromptu, ironically teasing chorus: “Kara and Brendan, sitting in a tree.
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“Oh go frak yourselves,” she covered up her real annoyance with a more acceptable feigned version as she grabbed a towel, trying not to look affected by their suggestive hoots. “You're a bunch of ten-year-olds, you know that?”
“Now, come on guys,” Gaeta struggled to hold back laughter. “I'm sure Costanza's got hidden depths.” But Dee was smirking behind him.
“Seriously, Starbuck,” he continued. “I gotta know: What is it about Costanza that does it for you? Is it the rash or the dime-store haircut that you find such a turn-on?”
The group exploded in laughter. Kara glared at him. For all his prissy, follow-the-rules attitude, Gaeta had a talent for going straight for the jugular that she found annoying. He was pissing her off enough right now to want to deck him one, but she knew if she did, the ribbing would only get worse.
“Can it, Gaeta,” she warned him instead. “And anyway, what the frak are you and Dualla doing here in the pilots' showers?”
“They needed some decent singing voices,” Gaeta smirked.
Gaeta was closest, so she snapped at him with her towel to keep them all thinking that this was just banter, but truly, Kara was in a foul mood: She was exhausted from days of little sleep and the required dose of stims every third CAP. Triple shifts, even on stims, were a bitch and would continue to be until she finished training another round of Nuggets to fill Viper seats.
“Are you going to start wearing Costanza's flight pin now?” Racetrack cooed ironically at her as Kara attempted to escape into a shower stall.
“Or is he wearing yours?” Crashdown quipped.
“Yeah, come to think of it,” Gaeta quipped, “we should be calling Hot Dog Mr. Thrace.”
More laughter filled the room.
“You all are such a bunch of children,” she sang, trying to sound untroubled from behind the shower door as she spun the hot water faucet on to a pelting, steaming spray. It drowned out their voices, which at least felt like getting in the last word.
**
The jokes at their expense didn't go away for a while, but Kara and Brendan quickly settled anyway into an easy routine of meeting in the Mess whenever they had time and chatting about flying or music, or just the gossip of the day.
Then one day, Kara came back from a training run with the latest band of nuggets to find a single stargazer lily lying jauntily in the middle of her rack with a piece of cloth around it.
“What the hell?” she choked. She hadn't seen a real flower since before the apocalypse. This could have only come from the Fleet's botanical cruiser. And it must have cost a damn fortune.
“Hot Dog dropped that off earlier today,” smirked Boomer, lying on her rack, her eyes still on the book she was reading. “He was very cute about it too. He spent like two minutes positioning it just the way he wanted. There's a note with it.”
When she picked up the lily to retrieve the folded note underneath, she noticed the cloth was damp to keep the flower alive as long as possible.
Through dark of night 'til morning's break, the heavens kings of stars doth make. she read to herself.
"Kataris", she whispered to herself. Had she mentioned to Brendan that he was one of her favorite poets?
The paper fluttered from her hands, her expression stricken.
“I think Hot Dog's starting to fall for you,” Boomer remarked, eyes still on the page.
“Uh-huh,” Kara nodded absently, feeling incoherent, her mind stuck in the past. Zak used to like to do stuff like this for her, surprise her with a gift on her rack. something small, something unobtrusive, but something he knew she'd like – a fine cigar or chocolate bar, a bottle of liquor, always left with unsigned notes, because they couldn't risk anyone finding out they were a couple.
“That must have been a lot of damn cubits out of your pocket,” remarked later that day when they met at Mess for one of their lunches, projecting an air of casual scorn she'd perfected long ago living with her mother.
Brendan shrugged. “Yeah, well,” he acknowledged, “it was fun to have something to spend them on besides losing at Triad. He leaned in over his bowl of noodles. “So did you like it?”
She felt the impulse to make a cutting remark about how it was just going to die soon enough anyway and he'd wasted his money, but to her surprise, she just couldn't do it. His expression looked so earnest.
Kara looked away. “Yeah,” she said quietly.
She suddenly found herself wondering if they were doing these lunches too often.
“Then it was definitely worth every cubit.”
She felt like at any given moment, she could crush Brendan Costanza, she ought to crush him, get rid of whatever this thing between them was between them, once and for all.
So she wondered why that didn't happen. In fact, right afterwards, she and Brendan started sleeping in one or the other's rack almost every night. They never at any point agreed to it, they never even discussed it. Every day, Kara told herself she was going to end the relationship because the last thing she needed was a rookie pilot dragging her down. But then each day was over and they were still together and Kara was lying in his arms, listening to his breathing in the dark.
After a while, she just refused to think about it anymore. Life would find a way to separate her and Brendan eventually anyway, she decided. It always did one way or the other.
**
Crashdown had clearly been planning this ambush for a while, because Brendan noticed that he had an awful lot of questions ready.
“So is she as good in bed as everyone says she is?” he began without warning in the middle of a game of Cylon Raider that at one point someone had convinced Gaeta to hack and upload onto a computer in the pilots' ready room so they could play the shoot-em-up game on the large viewing screen.
Brendan almost lost his Viper to a rogue enemy ship lurking behind a civilian ship caught in the crossfire that Brendan was most definitely not supposed to hit. “Do you really think I'm the type to kiss and tell, Crash?” he murmured, eyes on the game, even if his head wasn't anymore.
“Oh, come on. It's Starbuck. From what I hear, I could go ask half the pilots in the fleet this question, but...”
“Then you probably should,” Brendan cut him off, shooting an oncoming Raider and missing. “Frak!” he exclaimed. His whole body moved with his joystick as his Viper rolled and barely dodged retaliatory fire.
Crashdown zoomed his Viper across the screen just in time to save Brendan's Viper where it had gotten trapped by a second attacking Raider. He shot the Raider out of the sky and it dramatically rolled several times and burst into flames. “Nice!” Brendan complimented. “Thanks.”
Crashdown grinned. “No problem. So, now that I so kindly saved your ass, maybe you could at least give me something about Starbuck: “Let me guess: She likes being on top?”
Brendan rolled his eyes. “Forget it, Alex. I'm not the kind of guy who does that.”
“Does what?”
“You know, talk about details like that, like you do about Ensign Davis.”
“Oh, she doesn't mind,” he dismissed the buried accusation. “I'm sure Starbuck wouldn't care either.”
Brendan shook his head, shooting at a basestar and missing. “My mom raised me not to talk about my time with ladies,” he insisted.
“Ladies?” Crashdown snickered. “Brendan, Starbuck's no lady.”
Brendan kept his eyes on the screen. “I think she's beautiful, actually.” he murmured.
The comment surprised Crashdown enough to hit the pause button on the game.
“Hey!” Brendan protested. “What the frak?”
Crashdown stared him down. “Is this serious, man?” he asked. “Are you serious about her?”
Brendan punched the button back to “on,” and made a sharp bank with his Viper to turn for a surprise attack on a hornet's nest of Raiders behind him. The ones at the center exploded in a satisfying burst of white flame.
“Maybe. Dunno. Dunno yet.” His eyes stayed firmly back on the screen.
“'Cause from what I hear, Starbuck's a good frak, but fall for her and she'll eat you alive. Haven't you seen how she's been messing with Doctor Baltar's head, lately?”
“Yeah, but that's just flirting.” He'd killed most of the Raiders in the center of the cluster, but the outer ring of them that had avoided death were now forming an attack circle with Brendan at the center. “She's just having fun making him think he has a chance with her. She's not serious about him.”
“Hot Dog, Starbuck's not serious about anyone.” He paused, examining him. “You are falling for her!”
“Oh frak,” Brendan interrupted. The Raiders were preparing to fire. Crashdown's Viper was too far away to come to his aid.
“Frak, Brendan. I'm sorry, man. You're doomed,” he said.
Brendan's Viper exploded in a hailstorm of bright colors and noise, while Crashdown's Viper sailed on unharmed to the next level.
“Aw, that sucks,” Crashdown said sympathetically.
Brendan gave him a tight, unconvincing shrug. “I'm used to it.” He threw the joystick onto the desk on which the computer was sitting.
“You really think we don't have a chance?” he asked, watching Crashdown blow up more Raiders.
“Who? You and Starbuck? I don't know man. It's not exactly a winner's bet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she's not the type to stick to one guy and don't take this the wrong way, but she's kind of out of your league.”
“You think so? I mean, I asked her out on a date on the spur of the moment at first, but we haven't had any fights yet or anything. We always have stuff to talk about. The sex is great.”
“Well, she's kind of getting a lot of shit for dating you.” The computer played a victory tune to announce Crashdown ascending a level.
“She is?”
“Sure,” Crashdown said good-naturedly, to let Brendan know he shouldn't take it personally. “I mean, who can resist a chance to take the legendary Starbuck down a harmless peg or two? After all, you're the first guy she's slept with twice in a row that anyone knows about.”
Brendan thought about this.
“It's been so easy between us,” he remarked. “I really hope it goes somewhere, Alex.”
“Well, that's how Starbuck likes things,” he warned, “nice and easy.
“Keep it light,” he advised. “Don't let things get serious between you two and you should be okay.”
“Huh,” was all Brendan could think to say.
**
“Do you ever think about what Earth will look like?” he asked her one day while they were lying in her rack, naked in each other's arms, half-falling asleep.
“Not really,” she said. “I expect it'll look like any other place that can support human life – oceans, forests, plains. Cities too, probably. Why?”
“They've gotta have farms too, right? I mean, people have gotta get food somewhere, stands to reason.”
She thought about that. “I guess, sure. Why?”
There was silence for a moment. “Oh nothing. I was just thinking about what it might be like to have a farm. You know, on Earth, when we finally get there.”
She lifted her head up to look him in the eye, amused. “You want to be a farmer?”
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “It'd be something I already know how to do, you know, in case they don't need Viper pilots on Earth. I mean, they probably got their own pilots already, and besides, their jets are probably different tech than ours, right? I can barely handle a Viper as it is.”
She kissed him full on the mouth. “Don't sell yourself short. Whatever the tech, I'm sure you could learn. Can't be that hard. When you get down to it, flying is flying.”
“Yeah, I guess.” But he stayed lost in his thoughts. “Still,” he reflected after a while, “being a farmer might be a nice thing to do for a while. It might be a nice rest from everything.”
Kara shrugged with a deep yawn. She'd never been all that big on rest and relaxation. It often led to thinking, and that led to memories, and well, that hardly ever led anywhere good.
“Farmer Costanza,” she rolled around the title on her tongue with an overtired giggle. She'd done yet another triple shift, and she could feel the stims wearing off quickly. Pretty soon, she was going to crash hard.
“It's just an idea,” he grumbled, as if annoyed. But she was too tired to think straight, and the idea just kept getting funnier and funnier as she imagined Brendan in farmer's overalls, with a pitchfork in his hand, like in those tacky paintings you saw of Aerilon farmers in cheap motels.
“Old Farmer Hot Dog.” Another giggle overtook her, until his naked body was vibrating with her laughter.
“Shut up, Kara,” he complained and flipped himself onto his side, facing away from her, suddenly quiet. It took another minute for her laughter to die down, and by then, he had a suspiciously sudden interest in sleep.
He was giving her the silent treatment, she realized. Whatever. He'd forget about it by morning, and she was rapidly descending into exhaustion anyway.
**
The paper targets were of the Cylon they'd all known as Aaron Doral, scans of his file photo from when he'd been serving as Galactica's public relations chief. Each picture had a bullseye target superimposed on top. Both Kara and Lee shot at their own copy with focused concentration, silently competing as always to see who could get more shots dead center.
When they'd shot off twelve rounds, the machine automatically sent the papers traveling towards them. They inspected them with anticipation.
“Hah!” Kara exclaimed gleefully. “Nine out of twelve! Beat that, Apollo!” She heard a defensive half-laugh in the back of his throat and couldn't help gloating inwardly at it.
“It's not a competition, Kara,” he protested.
“You're just saying that because you lost.” She knew Lee far too well by now and how to push his buttons. “And how many did you get?”
He rolled his eyes. “Seven.”
“Oh, and look at that! I win again!” She pretended to count on her fingers. “Let's see. That makes one, two three, four, five, six times in a row I've beat your ass at this.”
Lee reloaded his gun with a dismissive snort, as if he thought her quite pathetic. “You're actually keeping score?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “You'd be too if you were winning.”
Lee just shook his head and clicked the machine knob back to start and waited for Kara to reload. This time, Kara shot eleven targets, while Lee got only five. Kara showed him the courtesy of holding her tongue about it.
But this time around, Lee didn't set the machine again. He put the gun down, motioning for her to do the same.
“So uh, listen Kara,” he hesitated. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Oh?” she quirked an eyebrow. Whatever it was, Lee was certainly taking his time about it, busying his hands with turning down the machine's knobs, unloading the ammo from his gun, taking off his goggles and putting the gun neatly back in its security case.
“Yeah.” Lee's face took on that strained look like he was about to bring up something distasteful.
“Just spit it out, Lee.”
“Well, it's about Hot Dog,” he began.
“Yeah? What about him?”
“Well,” Lee hesitated. “I heard that you two have become an item.”
Her eyes narrowed just a bit. “So?”
His lips pursed with an air of nervousness. “Well, I was just wondering if you two are ...” He struggled for an appropriate word, “getting … serious.”
She kept her tone light, but the words came out with a slow deliberation that betrayed her true feelings. “Lee?” she said quietly. “Are you asking me as my friend, or as my CAG?”
He made a small grunting noise. “Both.” He paused. “Well, mostly as your CAG, but I'm speaking to you as a friend.”
“I don't see how it's your business.” Her words turned clipped. “We're not breaking any rules.”
“No, no,” Lee said hastily. “I'm not saying that. It's just that … well, even though Hot Dog is the same rank as you, he is still pretty green in the pilot's seat and something could happen to him in combat, and I'm just worried that if you two are getting close ...”
Kara's lips pressed themselves into a thin line. “Look, just say what you're gonna say, Lee.”
He frowned. “Kara, the reality is that Hot Dog's the best we could find in the civilian fleet, but he's still going to need time and work to become independent, and he might make a rookie mistake one day that gets him killed.”
“Sure,” she shrugged. “So could Kat. Or Boomer. So could any of us, really.”
“So obviously, I can't tell you to end this,” Lee barreled on, “because it doesn't break any rules. But as your CAG, I'm strongly advising you to reconsider having a relationship with Hot Dog because I don't know how you'd react if he got hurt or killed.”
He was going there. She forced herself to focus on reloading her gun.
“Funny,” she said, after a cold, meaningful silence, “you don't sound like you're trying to be my CAG or my friend.” She shook her head. “In fact, I don't know what you sound like.”
Lee shook his head. “Kara...” he admonished, “we're playing for all the marbles here – the survival of the human race. You're our best pilot, and Hot Dog's … well, he's still learning. I can't afford in combat to have you making mistakes or emotional decisions about him. If we're going to survive the Cylons and find Earth, we can't lose you. We'll never make it. Simple as that. So I can't have my best pilot taking an insane risk that gets her killed because she was trying to save her boyfriend from a Cylon Raider.”
She smiled at Lee humorlessly. “You know, in another minute, you're going to start pissing me off. Don't think I don't know what this is really about,” she threatened.
“Well,” he laughed self-consciously. “Then you can tell me, because I certainly don't know.”
The glare she fixed on him could take down a rhino at a half-klick. “You're a shitty liar, Lee. It's obvious what you're thinking of.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, can you blame me?”
Kara couldn't look at him for a moment. “This isn't anything like Zak,” she bit out. “I'm not training Brendan anymore. He's a full-fledged pilot.”
“Of course he is,” Lee retorted, clearly determined to say his piece. “But he's still green, and I know you well enough to see that you're falling in love with him.”
Kara's eyes widened. “You don't know what the frak you're talking about. Her voice turned harsh and higher-pitched. “We're dating, Lee, that's it.”
Another ironic laugh in the back of his throat. “Kara Thrace, I saw you too many times with my brother to not know when you've fallen for someone.”
She turned away.
“I know I can't order you to stop this relationship,” he acknowledged. “I can only strongly suggest it. And believe me, I like seeing you happy. I do. I haven't seen you this genuinely happy since .. well, since Zak.” His face took on a strained look.
“Look, as your CAG, I'm asking you: could you at least promise me that you'll keep your head?”
She blinked, still unable to look at him. Her hands reached over to turn on the dials he had shut off. The targeting machine rumbled back to life.
“I wasn't done shooting yet.” She spoke to the device rather than speak to him. “And my head's just fine, Lee.”
She pressed the button to set up a fresh target. Lee stared at her in helpless silence before leaving, When she heard the hatch shut, she took aim for twelve shots in sharp, angry succession.
Eleven out of twelve were dead center, but still, Kara ripped her goggles off her head and let them clang to the metal floor with an angry sound. She knew better than to get bogged down into a situation she'd eventually mess up anyway. When the time came, she told herself, when she really needed to, she'd break up with Brendan, move on, keep her head straight.
She always did.
**
“Frak! How the hell could I lose a sock in a rack so small?”
Kara woke up late the next morning with only ten minutes to make it to the ready room. One bare foot dangled over Brendan's rack while her hands scrambled around his shelves looking for the missing sock.
Brendan grinned at her from under the sheets. “You got Nuggets right now, don't you?”
“Yeah,” she said, still searching frantically. “I'll be glad when this round is over. Doing triples plus teaching basic flight is seriously messing with my patience.” She looked under her pillow again, even though she had already looked there twice. “Frak!”
Brendan laughed. “Teach 'em with one sock, who cares? You gave them the 'You can call me God' speech already, right?” She kept searching without looking up. “Yeah, so?”
“So, God can teach with one sock if she wants, can't she?”
“You're a laugh riot, Costanza.” She exhaled deeply with frustration as she hopped off his bunk and stood on the one below to survey the entire mattress.
“Shove over,” she ordered and dug under in a last-ditch search, ignoring Beehive's sleepy protests from the next bunk below at Kara's feet suddenly invading her rest. Brendan moved obligingly to allow Kara better access.
She came back up from under the mattress with not a missing sock, but two bottles of unopened stims with Brendan's name typed on them. Her eyes wide, she held them up in front of him, her quest forgotten.
“What are these doing here?” she accused.
A streak of guilt crossed his face. “Oh, I guess I just lost them under there.” He took them back with poorly-hid reluctance. “Thanks.”
Her eyebrows arched. The seal on the bottles hadn't been cracked.
“Don't tell me you're doing triples without stims,” she whispered so the others wouldn't hear.
He folded his arms across his chest, his eyes narrowing for a fight. “You're always saying that you hate stims, because they blunt your reflexes...”
“...and your reaction time,” she finished in an angry whisper. “Yeah and it's true, but guess what? I take them anyway. You know why? Because we're still down by nine pilots, and we're all flying triple shifts every third CAP. If it's a choice between my reflexes and making sure I don't fall asleep in a Viper, I'll take staying alive any day.”
“I've been managing just fine, obviously, Kara.” She didn't miss the buried hostility there.
“You've been lucky, you idiot!” she hissed. “I don't care who you are. Unless you're a Cylon, you can't withstand a triple shift without stims!”
He narrowed his eyes. “I won't take them, Kara,” he said quietly. “I just won't.” He reached out to stroke her cheek in an affectionate gesture, but she pulled away.
“You don't take 'em, you don't get to fly. Simple as that.” She paused in realization. “I gotta tell Lee about this.”
He bolted upright. “Kara, he'll pull me off flight status...”
“As well he should. On a triple shift, even with the blunted reaction times, you're still better off stimulated, you know.”
“I'm sorry, but I can't take them,” he said. “I would if I could, but I can't. It'd be worse if I did, trust me.”
They both stared at each other, unwavering. Kara looked at her watch.
“Frak,” she spat. “Listen, you've got exactly two minutes to convince me why I shouldn't go to the CAG today and tell him.”
Brendan closed his eyes. “It's a long story you don't have time for.”
“Then give me the edited version.” She hopped off the bottom rack and stood on the floor, hand on her hip, waiting.
He rubbed his temples and lowered his voice to a whisper. “You remember how I told you I went to a music conservatory?” he began.
“Yeah?” she prompted, shoving her bare foot into her boot, lowering her voice in concert with him. His eyes darted around at all the bunks surrounding them.
“Frak,” he griped, and pulled on the boxer shorts and tanks he'd drunkenly shoved against the wall of his rack last night. He rolled off the mattress onto the floor and signaled with a crooked finger to the linen closet near the showers. “Come with me.”
“What the frak?” she complained.
“Kara, I'm serious,” he said. “Come with me if you want to hear about this.”
He pulled them both into the closet and shut the door, pulled the bare bulb's drawstring.
“All right. Here it is: In my final year at conservatory, I had a girlfriend – her name was Dorie. I loved her like crazy. I thought we might get married one day, both work for the same orchestra. But she fell into a bad crowd of students. A drug crowd.
“They took almost anything they could get our hands on, if they could shoot it or smoke it or wash down a pill,” he explained. “I hung out with them too, although I didn't take anything, because I was with Dorie. But eventually, after a while, the whole scene got pretty out of control.”
Kara looked up at the bulb impatiently. “Frak, Brendan. I understand being against taking drugs. I am too. But these are extraordinary circumstances. And these are not drugs you take behind the school. These are like, like … medicine.”
“I haven't told you everything,” he warned.
She raised her eyebrows at her and tapped her watch meaningfully. “Okay, but hurry.”
“Well, Dorie kept egging me on to try stuff with her. I resisted at first, but I really thought I loved her, so I finally broke down and tried it. I took some stims.”
Kara sighed and tried to speed up the story. “Are you going to tell me you got addicted to stims and now you can't take them? Why didn't you just say that in the first place?”
“Not that simple,” he said. “See, I took them only twice. The first time, I loved it. I felt like I was the most powerful guy in the entire universe. I thought I'd been an idiot for holding out so long. Dorie was thrilled. The second time I took them, same feeling. But this time, I was at a party her friends were having in the woods. A guy who was there taking dream blossom was having a bad trip. He was hallucinating like crazy, thinking he was Perseus and that Dorie was a gorgon about to attack him.”
Brendan's eyes streaked with pain at the memory.
“I turned around for just a minute and when I looked back, he had Dorie by the neck, choking her, yelling to his friends to look away so she wouldn't turn them into stone. Next thing I knew I had run over to Dorie and yanked the guy off her. But I was already on a good, full-blown stims high, and it was like I forgot she was even there. I didn't check on her or even talk to her. I just let her go and started punching at this guy like a crazy person.”
“Well, sounds like he deserved it,” Kara shrugged.
“They tried to pull me off, but with the stims, I was getting such an adrenaline rush, they couldn't do anything,” Brendan continued, as if he hadn't really heard her. “I was so angry for what he'd done to Dorie, and the stims made me feel like a god. I kept punching and punching him, even when I could see his face getting all bloody. It was like I wanted to kill him.” He looked away, his forehead creased with shame. “I put that guy into a coma for the rest of his life. He was seventeen.”
Kara breathed in deeply, then breathed out again before she responded. “Oh.”
“The emergency room doctor they took me to said I had a genetically unusual reaction to stims and that I shouldn't ever take them again. But I got kicked out of school three months before I finished anyway, and I don't blame them. I deserved it for what I did. Anyway, a year and a half after that, I enrolled in flight school, thinking it'd be a good way to earn money for a regular college, so I could pay my family back the money they'd spent on me at the conservatory. I'd heard you could make a lot of cubits driving civilian transport ships between the Twelve Worlds. But I couldn't even handle flight school. Being in school just reminded me all the time of being in conservatory and how I'd ended that guy's life, and so I washed out.”
“Brendan, it's okay.” Kara reached out to try and touch him, but he pulled away, his body stiff with guilt and self-loathing.
“It's not okay. It never will be okay, Kara. He didn't know what he was doing. He thought he was Perseus, for Gods' sake.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“I won't take them again, Kara. Not ever.”
“It's a small dose,” she tried one last time. “I'm sure the doctor meant not to take it recreationally.”
“No. It took me twelve hours longer than most people to come down off the high. When I came back to myself, the doctor told me that there was no predicting how I'd react under stims again, but that I'd always have the adrenaline rush. Think about it: I'd be in a frakking Viper. What if I started feeling invincible? Who knows what stupid, crazy stunt I might pull in a combat situation? What if I got someone killed?”
Kara ran a hand through her hair. “Frak, Brendan. You could have told us. Why didn't you say anything?”
He grimaced. “I knew I couldn't. I'm still new around here. You were a good flight instructor, Kara, but I'm not that good a pilot. My value is as another body in a Viper seat, nothing more. I know that.”
“That's not true,” Kara protested.
“No, it is,” he said vehemently. “I'm still proving myself. If I tell the CAG I can't take stims, I'm as good as useless to him, and he'll ground me.
“You don't understand,” he insisted as he saw her about to protest. “You're such an amazing pilot, I don't even think you can tell how mediocre I am at this.”
She sighed. “Don't be ridiculous ...”
“I'm not being ridiculous. I'm not saying I'm incompetent. I'll know I'll get better with time. But it's going to take time, and I don't want to have to give it up, not when it's the first thing I've ever managed to finish in my life, Kara. I love flying. I never realized I would, but I do.” He grabbed her shoulders. “Please, Kara. Please. Don't tell Apollo.”
She sighed, but she could feel her resolve slipping. “I know what it's like to love flying more than anything, but...”
“Look,” he bargained. “I promise if I ever feel like I can't handle a shift without the stims, I won't get in a Viper, okay?”
“How are you going to do that?” She looked down at her watch. “Frak. I'm already ten minutes late. I gotta go.”
“I promise,” he insisted. “I'll make up some excuse, pretend I'm sick, even if I have to make myself throw up in my cockpit. I won't put anyone in danger.”
She tied the lace of her boot without the sock, a bad feeling washing over her that she refused to acknowledge. “You better not.”
**
“You know I want to earn this fair and square, right?”
Kara's heart twisted a little as she gazed up at Zak sitting on the edge of the bed. “I know you do.”
He swallowed visibly and looked out the window of Kara's quarters. “Are you sure I'm good enough? Sometimes I'm sitting in that cockpit, and I feel like such a fraud, like Lee's the pilot my dad always wanted.”
“Zak, you're still a little awkward with the stick, but trust me, you can do this.”
“You're not just coddling me because we're together, though, right?”
She scoffed, even though honestly, she wasn't sure what she would do if he failed his test run.
“Are you trying to insult me?” she teased him.
His smile filled her entire vision, surrounding her like a warm breeze. “I'm sorry,” he murmured. “You're right. I'm selling you short.”
“Damn straight you are,” she shot back, then softened. “I know you're going to pass Basic Flight and make your dad proud. You just have to believe in yourself more.”
“I just get so worried about it sometimes...” He kissed her forehead. “But I'm sure it'll all work out the way it's meant to, right?”
She awoke with a start and a choked-off cry. She twisted the ring on her thumb round and round. Zak's ring.
She made her hands stop their compulsive task, and grabbed at Brendan next to her in the bed.
“Kara?” he sat up in bed at her touch. Her name was the first thing on his lips. “You all right?”
She wasn't. “It's nothing,” she lied. “Just a dream.”
“About what?” he asked, still groggy with sleep.
“I can't remember.”
He was waking up more now, and seemed to have let it go. He put his arm around her. “You know, when I was a kid and I used to have bad dreams, my mom would sing to me to help me fall back asleep.”
She snorted. “You're not singing to me, Costanza. Not in front of all these people.”
“Why not?” he queried. “They're all asleep anyway, right?”
He didn't let her think about it. Before she knew it, he was quietly singing to her a song about the moons of Libron guiding her to the land of Morpheus. It was half in standard Caprican, and half in Libran. Just whenever she was about to protest in embarrassment at being sung to, the second verse started, and the sound of Brendan's Libron accent gliding with effortless beauty over foreign words distracted her.
“It must have been hard for to give up music school,” she whispered after he finished.
"Not at first,'' he said softly. "At first, I couldn't wait to get out of there. I was secretly glad they kicked me out. It wasn't until later that I really understood what I'd given up."
He caressed her hair in the dark. "You know, you remind me of Dorie, sometimes," he said, after a while.
"Oh, the girl who got you into drugs?" she teased, pretending to scoff at him.
"That was just one part of her," he said. "You're strong like her. Mentally strong. I was convinced that she could do anything she set her mind to.
"After we broke up, I couldn't get myself to do anything until the beginning of the following year. I stayed in my bedroom a lot. I knew my mom was worried about me, but it was all I could do to just get up in the morning, never mind do anything with my life.
"But Dorie, she was right back out there. By autumn, she'd found a gig playing flute with a small orchestra who didn't care that she hadn't finished school; they just cared that she could play."
Kara stared into the darkness. She wasn't used to people spilling their guts to her like this.
"Well, you got it together eventually, right?" she concluded, and turned over on her side to kiss him on the lips.
He was quiet for a long while after that.
“You know,” he said finally, with a thoughtful air. “It's weird, but I feel like this is more my life now than any life I used to have before the Attacks. It's only been a few months and already I feel like the life I had on Libron might as well have not existed, you know?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I know what you mean. I'm not even sure what I would do when we ever find Earth.”
He fell back under the blanket. "Kara, what if we don't ever find Earth? Have you ever thought about that? Maybe we should be making room for living our lives in the here and now."
If it hadn't been so dark, he might have noticed the way the muscles in her face clenched for just a moment.
"Of course we're going to find Earth," she scoffed. "The Old Man and Roslin know the way there. It's just going to take a while."
"Well, what if it takes too long? What if we don't get there before we run out of everything?" He paused. "What if this is all there is?”
“Yeah?” she snapped, suddenly feeling cornered. “What if this is all there is?”
A beat passed before Brendan answered. “I'm just thinking, maybe we should do what we're going to do with our lives now."
Kara exhaled deeply, the conversation having gone places she hadn't expected. "Look, there's eating, sleeping, and shooting Cylons out of the sky,” she said matter-of-factly. “That's what we do now. That's all we've got time for until we find ourselves a new home."
The silence between stretched on a little too long for Kara's comfort. She rolled on top of him and added with a salacious kiss: "And frakking. Almost forgot frakking."
She began stroking his bare chest, but he surprised her with by shoving himself onto his side and giving her a terse, "It's 0330. I got CAP in an hour."
She could feel how his body had curled up tightly into himself, shutting her out. She lay there next to him, in the dark, the faint sound of snoring around them threading back into her consciousness.
“Come on, you might as well sing me more of that song," she tried. “If anyone heard you, I'm going to catch hell tomorrow. So you might as well make it worth it.”
No response. She wondered if he'd actually fallen asleep. On impulse, she punched his arm.
"Ow!" he shouted. "What the frak, Kara!"
As she'd suspected.
"Can I sleep now?" he asked pointedly.
She made a huffing noise and turned over with her back to him. She played with the ring on her thumb, taking it on and off in restless anger she didn't entirely understand.
To Part 2
Author:
millariCharacters: Kara Thrace, Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza, Lee Adama, Alex "Crashdown" Quartararo, Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, other minor mentions of Zak Adama, various pilots and CIC folks.
Pairing: Kara/Hot Dog
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Beta:
daybreak777 and troviaSpoilers: This is an AU, so there aren't real spoilers, but it takes place in the middle of S1 sometime after "You Can't Go Home Again" but before "Colonial Day".
Summary: “I know it's the end of the world, Costanza,” Starbuck bit out with sardonic amusement. “But
seriously? You need a date this bad?”
A/N: This story was written for
trovia. It is a completed two-part fic.Brendan couldn't quite believe she was even considering it.
“I know it's the end of the world, Costanza,” Starbuck bit out with sardonic amusement. “But seriously? You need a date this bad?”
Dee started giggling, and quickly took another swig of the ambrosia bottle on the table to cover.
Boomer, Crashdown and Gaeta were all hiding smirks too, but he didn't care. It was likely going to be the last card game of the night anyway, seeing as Brendan and Starbuck had managed to clean everyone else out. What did he have to lose?
They all watched Starbuck staring at the large pile of cubits on the table, fanning her cards a couple of times in a tight, nervous gesture, as she pondered whether to take his offer.
“Just one date and I'll let you call the hand,” he reiterated.
“Come on, Starbuck,” Crashdown egged her on. “You've put in all your cubits. You really want to lose them all without a fight?”
“A date? Really?” Starbuck's face was etched with suspicion.
“Win or lose,” Brendan replied with a smile, hoping she didn't think he'd planned this ahead of time like some kind of stalker.
She cast another rueful gaze at the pot. “Those are a hell of a lot of cubits,” she acknowledged..
“Well, looks like I'm finding somewhere else to sleep tonight,” Boomer cracked.
“Frak off, Sharon,” Starbuck said lightly. “If you don't like who I bring to bed, you could always volunteer for extra CAPs. Maybe then I wouldn't doing double shifts all the time.”
“You say that, but I think you like being stimulated.”
“Hah, not in that way,” she retorted.
“You're nuts, you know,” she shook her head, refocusing on Brendan. “Of course, I should've known it when you jumped in as my wing man on your first damn flight.”
“Does that mean yes?” he asked with a grin.
“Whatever.” She tossed her cards on the table. “It's your funeral, Hot Dog.”
Everyone at the table leaned forward to see: Full colors, as they'd all suspected. She had just barely beat his prince high red.
The group collectively groaned, and Boomer gave Brendan a sympathetic clap on the back, while Starbuck crowed with delight at her victory.
“Have fun, you two,” Crashdown snickered as the others began pulling away for the night, but Starbuck was too busy gathering her winnings around her like a pirate with her stash. Brendan sat across the table, happily watching her.
“What are you so thrilled about?” she demanded, gesturing at him with a cubit in her hand. “I'll warn you now: you're gettingone chance at a frak, that's it. If you're at all boring in bed, don't think I won't kick you right out.”
“You don't have to go out on a date with me.” he said earnestly.
At her surprised expression, he revised his statement. “I mean, I'm not saying I wouldn't be interested, but you don't actually have to. I don't want you to do something you don't want to do.”
She put down the cubit slowly. “So then what was that all about? I was out of cash. You could have won.”
He rose from his chair. “Yeah, but what fun would that have been?”.
Her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Wait. So you just threw away all your cubits, for … for what?”
He shrugged.“Cubits aren't worth anything anymore anyway.” He restrained a second grin at her gaping expression.
“I'll see you around, Starbuck.”
**
Brendan was about to enter the pilot's locker room when he felt a hand grab his collar and yank him out of the doorway and shove him hard against the metal wall.
“So what the hell was that crap you pulled last night?”
She was close enough that he could smell the aroma of sweat dripping from her body, like she'd been punching the bag, hard.
“Just get out of the gym, Starbuck?” he said hoarsely, struggling to regain his breath.
“Don't change the subject,” she ordered, her forearm pinning his chest. “Were you trying to be funny, Costanza?”
His eyebrows raised. “Funny?”
“We had a deal. You let me call without the cash, and I go out on a date with you. Then you reneged. I want to know why.”
“I didn't renege,” he protested. He was still having trouble breathing properly. “Hey,” he gasped, pointing at his throat, “uh, windpipe?”
She removed her arm, as roughly as she had put it there. He took a deep, grateful, inward breath.
“So you will go out on a date with me?” he choked out.
“You basically let me win. Why?”
Brendan's forehead crinkled, confused at her hostility. “I don't know. I didn't care about the cubits and you clearly did...”
“And?” Her brown-eyed glare pinned him to the wall as surely as her arm had a moment ago.
He straightened himself up, remembering how at times he'd found her eyes pretty, when they weren't scowling at him. “Well, uh, haven't you ever just gotten the idea to do something nice for someone?” he insisted.
She pursed her lips, apparently not trusting this answer. Brendan took a moment to think of one she'd like better. “And I wanted to make sure I saw your hand?” he tried.
She pulled away abruptly, considering him, her glare softening.
“Meet me on hangar deck B at 1600,” she said. “I know you're off-duty. I checked.”
He just stared at her, mystified. “You mean for a date?”
“A deal's a deal, Hot Dog,” she declared over her shoulder as she strode into the showers.
Brendan just stood by the door for a minute processing, then grinned to himself and continued on to the locker room. He had a date with Kara Thrace. The day was looking up.
**
Starbuck piloted their Raptor to the Chrion herself, despite Brendan's initial concerns about her knee.
"It's just a shuttle run inside the Fleet. It's not like we're pulling even two Gs to fly this thing,'' she insisted. "It's fine."
Navigating the meandering hallways of the Chrion, Brendan blurted out with excitement when he suddenly saw the neon sign up ahead - Chrion Cinema.
“A movie theater? When did we get movies?”
She seemed happy with his reaction. “I heard about it when I did a supply run here a few weeks ago. This used to be a luxury liner – you know for cruises – so they had a small theater on board. They keep it kind of quiet because they've only got one projector left and only a couple of movies.”
“What movie are we going to see?” Brendan said, thrilled.
“Dunno. Who cares?” Starbuck shrugged. “It's a movie, right?”
“Sure, I guess.”
Still, Brendan secretly hoped it was a comedy. Or maybe an action flick.
“No way!” he exclaimed as they got closer and saw a table with small bags of snacks for sale. “They have sour cherry sticks and …” His eyes widened. “There's popcorn?”
“Well, they charge an arm and a leg for it but yeah,” she groused, handing over ten cubits to a man behind a small portable cash register. She took a small bag of popcorn off the table and handed it to him. “Luckily, this is your money from last night,” she smirked. “So enjoy the last popcorn in the universe.”
Brendan knew he was grinning like an idiot as they walked in and found two seats in the middle of the darkened theater, but damn. He'd figured this kind of thing was gone forever. “I feel like I'm fifteen again,” he whispered in her ear as the film flickered to life.
“Good,” she whispered back. “Then you're just in the right mood for this.”
She grabbed the back of his head and dove in for a long, sloppy, wet kiss that left Brendan as breathless as when she'd pinned him to the wall by the showers.
He never did find out the name of the movie.
**
That night Kara dreamed for the first time in a long while of her father. In the dream, she was sitting at her father's piano, her small legs dangling in time to the music as her father played next to her one of his compositions. She had just eaten from a bag of sugar-covered sour cherries that her father had bought her and she could still taste the combination of sweet and sour on her lips as she listened.
She awoke teary-eyed and confused, the melody of father's piano seeming to follow her out of her dream and into the real world.
When she came to, Hot Dog quietly humming a tune to himself in the bed next to her.
“For Gods' sake, Hot Dog, what the hell time is it?” she grumbled, wiping away the tears at the edges of her eyes.
“0430,” he replied.
“Frak, really?” she complained. “What are you doing up? Did you take your stims or something?” whispered, suddenly aware of the sleeping pilots around them.
“No, I just grew up on a farm back on Libron,” he explained. “I can never sleep any later than this, pretty much no matter what time I go to bed.”
“Oh.” She rubbed sleep out of her eyes, remembering last night and Brendan's surprisingly audacious tongue between her legs and his fingers tracing up the length of her body. He hadn't been the best kisser ever, kind of overeager and a bit sloppy, but he had made up for it when they'd finally gotten back to her rack and stripped naked quickly without speaking. He'd been reverent and attentive to her needs, and had slowed the whole interaction down in a way she wasn't used to in her one night stands.
“Where did you learn that song you were humming just now?” she asked, remembering the tune in her dream.
He grinned. “Oh, I was lying here bored, so I was looking at the stuff up on your wall,” he explained.
“My Darling Kara,” he read the title aloud, pointing a lazy forefinger upward at the sheet music taped to the wall above her bed. “It's a pretty tune. Did a boyfriend write it for you?”
She bolted up in the bed, alert and slightly defensive. Oh. Of course.
“My dad wrote that. When I was a kid. He was a composer, performer. Played the piano.”
“Cool. Would I have ever heard of him?”
She reached for the pack of cigarettes she'd won in the card game and lit one, stuffing down the emotions that tune had called up into the soothing process of the first smoke of the morning. “I seriously doubt it. He never made the big time. Not that that ever stopped him from trying. He made a couple of recordings that went pretty much nowhere. I had one recording of his music back in my apartment on Caprica, and well...” She shrugged in resignation. “It's gone now.”
He nodded. She smoked one last drag and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray that sat on a small shelf, right by where her father's music was taped up, wondering why she was even sharing this with him. The only other person on this ship who knew this stuff was Helo, and to some extent, Lee.
“So wait,” she stopped short, her finger still applying pressure to the cigarette in the ashtray. “You're telling me that you were able to learn the tune to that piece just by looking at it?”
He reached for the pack of cigarettes and took one without asking. It was technically rude considering how more and more scarce luxuries like this were becoming, but the way he did it was so comfortable and unpresumptious, Kara wasn't offended. In this one way, he strangely reminded her of Helo.
“Well, don't spread this around,” he said, “but I actually was this close to becoming a musician myself.”
Kara scoffed. “You?”
He blew a retaliatory puff of smoke in her face for that. “Yeah, me. I went to a music conservatory and everything. I trained in voice, piano and guitar.”
“You're kidding,” she said flatly. “I thought you were a flight school washout.” He flinched imperceptibly at the remark. “I mean,” she tried to put it more gently, “If you were going to be a musician, how did you end up in flight school?”
“I had to leave conservatory before I finished,” he said simply.
“Why?”
He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then shrugged. “I had to support my mom and sister. I thought being a pilot would be a fun way to do it. Music didn't exactly work out for me anyway.”
He changed the subject, suddenly turning around in the bed and ending up on top of her. She was nude under the sheets.
“So hey,” he said. “We've got an hour and half before Reveille. Want a reprise?” he waggled his eyebrows at her meaningfully.
She groaned. “Reprise? Gods, Costanza, are you making a music pun?” When his eyebrows raised suggestively, she laughed. “You're such a dork.”
“Well, you're the dork who got that pun,” he teased her back, grinning. “You laughed,” he accused.
“Not really,” she retorted. “Unless you count groaning in pain as laughter.”
“I'll take it,” he retorted, and pulled down the sheets, getting down in between her legs, his breath tickling her inner thighs.
“So what do you say?” he insisted. “A reprise?”
She had to admit, he'd given her a couple of really great orgasms last night, one of them just with his fingers. She imagined them tinkling away at the keys of a piano or rapidly plucking the strings of a guitar. The prospect of a repeat performance was tempting, even at this hour.
She opened her legs wide and grinned back at him. “For a dork, you've definitely got skills.”
He snorted, but then apparently decided to let his fingers speak for him. Kara sighed as they played a well-appreciated symphony along her upper thighs.
**
To her surprise, Kara couldn't resist a second date, and then a third. What surprised her most was not so much that it was with Brendan Costanza, although truthfully, she wouldn't have guessed him to be worth more than a single frak.
No, the real issue was that she didn't go out on dates. The last person she had dated was Zak, and really, they had sort of jumped from a supposed one-night stand into a de facto relationship, and then at some point they had gotten engaged.
After losing Zak, she'd adopted a policy of one-night stands. It was easier that way. She had plenty of friends among the pilots, and now with both Lee and his father on this ship, it was even like having family, so Kara didn't need a romantic relationship with anyone. And she certainly didn't need anyone to know that this thing with Brendan had continued after their first date. But of course, Galactica was a deceptively small ship. News spread fast.
It wasn't long before Kara walked into the officers' head and into a trap. She had barely gotten through the doorway when Racetrack announced her presence:
”Missus Hot Dog is heeerree," she declared.
Kara was greeted by an impromptu, ironically teasing chorus: “Kara and Brendan, sitting in a tree.
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“Oh go frak yourselves,” she covered up her real annoyance with a more acceptable feigned version as she grabbed a towel, trying not to look affected by their suggestive hoots. “You're a bunch of ten-year-olds, you know that?”
“Now, come on guys,” Gaeta struggled to hold back laughter. “I'm sure Costanza's got hidden depths.” But Dee was smirking behind him.
“Seriously, Starbuck,” he continued. “I gotta know: What is it about Costanza that does it for you? Is it the rash or the dime-store haircut that you find such a turn-on?”
The group exploded in laughter. Kara glared at him. For all his prissy, follow-the-rules attitude, Gaeta had a talent for going straight for the jugular that she found annoying. He was pissing her off enough right now to want to deck him one, but she knew if she did, the ribbing would only get worse.
“Can it, Gaeta,” she warned him instead. “And anyway, what the frak are you and Dualla doing here in the pilots' showers?”
“They needed some decent singing voices,” Gaeta smirked.
Gaeta was closest, so she snapped at him with her towel to keep them all thinking that this was just banter, but truly, Kara was in a foul mood: She was exhausted from days of little sleep and the required dose of stims every third CAP. Triple shifts, even on stims, were a bitch and would continue to be until she finished training another round of Nuggets to fill Viper seats.
“Are you going to start wearing Costanza's flight pin now?” Racetrack cooed ironically at her as Kara attempted to escape into a shower stall.
“Or is he wearing yours?” Crashdown quipped.
“Yeah, come to think of it,” Gaeta quipped, “we should be calling Hot Dog Mr. Thrace.”
More laughter filled the room.
“You all are such a bunch of children,” she sang, trying to sound untroubled from behind the shower door as she spun the hot water faucet on to a pelting, steaming spray. It drowned out their voices, which at least felt like getting in the last word.
**
The jokes at their expense didn't go away for a while, but Kara and Brendan quickly settled anyway into an easy routine of meeting in the Mess whenever they had time and chatting about flying or music, or just the gossip of the day.
Then one day, Kara came back from a training run with the latest band of nuggets to find a single stargazer lily lying jauntily in the middle of her rack with a piece of cloth around it.
“What the hell?” she choked. She hadn't seen a real flower since before the apocalypse. This could have only come from the Fleet's botanical cruiser. And it must have cost a damn fortune.
“Hot Dog dropped that off earlier today,” smirked Boomer, lying on her rack, her eyes still on the book she was reading. “He was very cute about it too. He spent like two minutes positioning it just the way he wanted. There's a note with it.”
When she picked up the lily to retrieve the folded note underneath, she noticed the cloth was damp to keep the flower alive as long as possible.
Through dark of night 'til morning's break, the heavens kings of stars doth make. she read to herself.
"Kataris", she whispered to herself. Had she mentioned to Brendan that he was one of her favorite poets?
The paper fluttered from her hands, her expression stricken.
“I think Hot Dog's starting to fall for you,” Boomer remarked, eyes still on the page.
“Uh-huh,” Kara nodded absently, feeling incoherent, her mind stuck in the past. Zak used to like to do stuff like this for her, surprise her with a gift on her rack. something small, something unobtrusive, but something he knew she'd like – a fine cigar or chocolate bar, a bottle of liquor, always left with unsigned notes, because they couldn't risk anyone finding out they were a couple.
“That must have been a lot of damn cubits out of your pocket,” remarked later that day when they met at Mess for one of their lunches, projecting an air of casual scorn she'd perfected long ago living with her mother.
Brendan shrugged. “Yeah, well,” he acknowledged, “it was fun to have something to spend them on besides losing at Triad. He leaned in over his bowl of noodles. “So did you like it?”
She felt the impulse to make a cutting remark about how it was just going to die soon enough anyway and he'd wasted his money, but to her surprise, she just couldn't do it. His expression looked so earnest.
Kara looked away. “Yeah,” she said quietly.
She suddenly found herself wondering if they were doing these lunches too often.
“Then it was definitely worth every cubit.”
She felt like at any given moment, she could crush Brendan Costanza, she ought to crush him, get rid of whatever this thing between them was between them, once and for all.
So she wondered why that didn't happen. In fact, right afterwards, she and Brendan started sleeping in one or the other's rack almost every night. They never at any point agreed to it, they never even discussed it. Every day, Kara told herself she was going to end the relationship because the last thing she needed was a rookie pilot dragging her down. But then each day was over and they were still together and Kara was lying in his arms, listening to his breathing in the dark.
After a while, she just refused to think about it anymore. Life would find a way to separate her and Brendan eventually anyway, she decided. It always did one way or the other.
**
Crashdown had clearly been planning this ambush for a while, because Brendan noticed that he had an awful lot of questions ready.
“So is she as good in bed as everyone says she is?” he began without warning in the middle of a game of Cylon Raider that at one point someone had convinced Gaeta to hack and upload onto a computer in the pilots' ready room so they could play the shoot-em-up game on the large viewing screen.
Brendan almost lost his Viper to a rogue enemy ship lurking behind a civilian ship caught in the crossfire that Brendan was most definitely not supposed to hit. “Do you really think I'm the type to kiss and tell, Crash?” he murmured, eyes on the game, even if his head wasn't anymore.
“Oh, come on. It's Starbuck. From what I hear, I could go ask half the pilots in the fleet this question, but...”
“Then you probably should,” Brendan cut him off, shooting an oncoming Raider and missing. “Frak!” he exclaimed. His whole body moved with his joystick as his Viper rolled and barely dodged retaliatory fire.
Crashdown zoomed his Viper across the screen just in time to save Brendan's Viper where it had gotten trapped by a second attacking Raider. He shot the Raider out of the sky and it dramatically rolled several times and burst into flames. “Nice!” Brendan complimented. “Thanks.”
Crashdown grinned. “No problem. So, now that I so kindly saved your ass, maybe you could at least give me something about Starbuck: “Let me guess: She likes being on top?”
Brendan rolled his eyes. “Forget it, Alex. I'm not the kind of guy who does that.”
“Does what?”
“You know, talk about details like that, like you do about Ensign Davis.”
“Oh, she doesn't mind,” he dismissed the buried accusation. “I'm sure Starbuck wouldn't care either.”
Brendan shook his head, shooting at a basestar and missing. “My mom raised me not to talk about my time with ladies,” he insisted.
“Ladies?” Crashdown snickered. “Brendan, Starbuck's no lady.”
Brendan kept his eyes on the screen. “I think she's beautiful, actually.” he murmured.
The comment surprised Crashdown enough to hit the pause button on the game.
“Hey!” Brendan protested. “What the frak?”
Crashdown stared him down. “Is this serious, man?” he asked. “Are you serious about her?”
Brendan punched the button back to “on,” and made a sharp bank with his Viper to turn for a surprise attack on a hornet's nest of Raiders behind him. The ones at the center exploded in a satisfying burst of white flame.
“Maybe. Dunno. Dunno yet.” His eyes stayed firmly back on the screen.
“'Cause from what I hear, Starbuck's a good frak, but fall for her and she'll eat you alive. Haven't you seen how she's been messing with Doctor Baltar's head, lately?”
“Yeah, but that's just flirting.” He'd killed most of the Raiders in the center of the cluster, but the outer ring of them that had avoided death were now forming an attack circle with Brendan at the center. “She's just having fun making him think he has a chance with her. She's not serious about him.”
“Hot Dog, Starbuck's not serious about anyone.” He paused, examining him. “You are falling for her!”
“Oh frak,” Brendan interrupted. The Raiders were preparing to fire. Crashdown's Viper was too far away to come to his aid.
“Frak, Brendan. I'm sorry, man. You're doomed,” he said.
Brendan's Viper exploded in a hailstorm of bright colors and noise, while Crashdown's Viper sailed on unharmed to the next level.
“Aw, that sucks,” Crashdown said sympathetically.
Brendan gave him a tight, unconvincing shrug. “I'm used to it.” He threw the joystick onto the desk on which the computer was sitting.
“You really think we don't have a chance?” he asked, watching Crashdown blow up more Raiders.
“Who? You and Starbuck? I don't know man. It's not exactly a winner's bet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she's not the type to stick to one guy and don't take this the wrong way, but she's kind of out of your league.”
“You think so? I mean, I asked her out on a date on the spur of the moment at first, but we haven't had any fights yet or anything. We always have stuff to talk about. The sex is great.”
“Well, she's kind of getting a lot of shit for dating you.” The computer played a victory tune to announce Crashdown ascending a level.
“She is?”
“Sure,” Crashdown said good-naturedly, to let Brendan know he shouldn't take it personally. “I mean, who can resist a chance to take the legendary Starbuck down a harmless peg or two? After all, you're the first guy she's slept with twice in a row that anyone knows about.”
Brendan thought about this.
“It's been so easy between us,” he remarked. “I really hope it goes somewhere, Alex.”
“Well, that's how Starbuck likes things,” he warned, “nice and easy.
“Keep it light,” he advised. “Don't let things get serious between you two and you should be okay.”
“Huh,” was all Brendan could think to say.
**
“Do you ever think about what Earth will look like?” he asked her one day while they were lying in her rack, naked in each other's arms, half-falling asleep.
“Not really,” she said. “I expect it'll look like any other place that can support human life – oceans, forests, plains. Cities too, probably. Why?”
“They've gotta have farms too, right? I mean, people have gotta get food somewhere, stands to reason.”
She thought about that. “I guess, sure. Why?”
There was silence for a moment. “Oh nothing. I was just thinking about what it might be like to have a farm. You know, on Earth, when we finally get there.”
She lifted her head up to look him in the eye, amused. “You want to be a farmer?”
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “It'd be something I already know how to do, you know, in case they don't need Viper pilots on Earth. I mean, they probably got their own pilots already, and besides, their jets are probably different tech than ours, right? I can barely handle a Viper as it is.”
She kissed him full on the mouth. “Don't sell yourself short. Whatever the tech, I'm sure you could learn. Can't be that hard. When you get down to it, flying is flying.”
“Yeah, I guess.” But he stayed lost in his thoughts. “Still,” he reflected after a while, “being a farmer might be a nice thing to do for a while. It might be a nice rest from everything.”
Kara shrugged with a deep yawn. She'd never been all that big on rest and relaxation. It often led to thinking, and that led to memories, and well, that hardly ever led anywhere good.
“Farmer Costanza,” she rolled around the title on her tongue with an overtired giggle. She'd done yet another triple shift, and she could feel the stims wearing off quickly. Pretty soon, she was going to crash hard.
“It's just an idea,” he grumbled, as if annoyed. But she was too tired to think straight, and the idea just kept getting funnier and funnier as she imagined Brendan in farmer's overalls, with a pitchfork in his hand, like in those tacky paintings you saw of Aerilon farmers in cheap motels.
“Old Farmer Hot Dog.” Another giggle overtook her, until his naked body was vibrating with her laughter.
“Shut up, Kara,” he complained and flipped himself onto his side, facing away from her, suddenly quiet. It took another minute for her laughter to die down, and by then, he had a suspiciously sudden interest in sleep.
He was giving her the silent treatment, she realized. Whatever. He'd forget about it by morning, and she was rapidly descending into exhaustion anyway.
**
The paper targets were of the Cylon they'd all known as Aaron Doral, scans of his file photo from when he'd been serving as Galactica's public relations chief. Each picture had a bullseye target superimposed on top. Both Kara and Lee shot at their own copy with focused concentration, silently competing as always to see who could get more shots dead center.
When they'd shot off twelve rounds, the machine automatically sent the papers traveling towards them. They inspected them with anticipation.
“Hah!” Kara exclaimed gleefully. “Nine out of twelve! Beat that, Apollo!” She heard a defensive half-laugh in the back of his throat and couldn't help gloating inwardly at it.
“It's not a competition, Kara,” he protested.
“You're just saying that because you lost.” She knew Lee far too well by now and how to push his buttons. “And how many did you get?”
He rolled his eyes. “Seven.”
“Oh, and look at that! I win again!” She pretended to count on her fingers. “Let's see. That makes one, two three, four, five, six times in a row I've beat your ass at this.”
Lee reloaded his gun with a dismissive snort, as if he thought her quite pathetic. “You're actually keeping score?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “You'd be too if you were winning.”
Lee just shook his head and clicked the machine knob back to start and waited for Kara to reload. This time, Kara shot eleven targets, while Lee got only five. Kara showed him the courtesy of holding her tongue about it.
But this time around, Lee didn't set the machine again. He put the gun down, motioning for her to do the same.
“So uh, listen Kara,” he hesitated. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Oh?” she quirked an eyebrow. Whatever it was, Lee was certainly taking his time about it, busying his hands with turning down the machine's knobs, unloading the ammo from his gun, taking off his goggles and putting the gun neatly back in its security case.
“Yeah.” Lee's face took on that strained look like he was about to bring up something distasteful.
“Just spit it out, Lee.”
“Well, it's about Hot Dog,” he began.
“Yeah? What about him?”
“Well,” Lee hesitated. “I heard that you two have become an item.”
Her eyes narrowed just a bit. “So?”
His lips pursed with an air of nervousness. “Well, I was just wondering if you two are ...” He struggled for an appropriate word, “getting … serious.”
She kept her tone light, but the words came out with a slow deliberation that betrayed her true feelings. “Lee?” she said quietly. “Are you asking me as my friend, or as my CAG?”
He made a small grunting noise. “Both.” He paused. “Well, mostly as your CAG, but I'm speaking to you as a friend.”
“I don't see how it's your business.” Her words turned clipped. “We're not breaking any rules.”
“No, no,” Lee said hastily. “I'm not saying that. It's just that … well, even though Hot Dog is the same rank as you, he is still pretty green in the pilot's seat and something could happen to him in combat, and I'm just worried that if you two are getting close ...”
Kara's lips pressed themselves into a thin line. “Look, just say what you're gonna say, Lee.”
He frowned. “Kara, the reality is that Hot Dog's the best we could find in the civilian fleet, but he's still going to need time and work to become independent, and he might make a rookie mistake one day that gets him killed.”
“Sure,” she shrugged. “So could Kat. Or Boomer. So could any of us, really.”
“So obviously, I can't tell you to end this,” Lee barreled on, “because it doesn't break any rules. But as your CAG, I'm strongly advising you to reconsider having a relationship with Hot Dog because I don't know how you'd react if he got hurt or killed.”
He was going there. She forced herself to focus on reloading her gun.
“Funny,” she said, after a cold, meaningful silence, “you don't sound like you're trying to be my CAG or my friend.” She shook her head. “In fact, I don't know what you sound like.”
Lee shook his head. “Kara...” he admonished, “we're playing for all the marbles here – the survival of the human race. You're our best pilot, and Hot Dog's … well, he's still learning. I can't afford in combat to have you making mistakes or emotional decisions about him. If we're going to survive the Cylons and find Earth, we can't lose you. We'll never make it. Simple as that. So I can't have my best pilot taking an insane risk that gets her killed because she was trying to save her boyfriend from a Cylon Raider.”
She smiled at Lee humorlessly. “You know, in another minute, you're going to start pissing me off. Don't think I don't know what this is really about,” she threatened.
“Well,” he laughed self-consciously. “Then you can tell me, because I certainly don't know.”
The glare she fixed on him could take down a rhino at a half-klick. “You're a shitty liar, Lee. It's obvious what you're thinking of.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, can you blame me?”
Kara couldn't look at him for a moment. “This isn't anything like Zak,” she bit out. “I'm not training Brendan anymore. He's a full-fledged pilot.”
“Of course he is,” Lee retorted, clearly determined to say his piece. “But he's still green, and I know you well enough to see that you're falling in love with him.”
Kara's eyes widened. “You don't know what the frak you're talking about. Her voice turned harsh and higher-pitched. “We're dating, Lee, that's it.”
Another ironic laugh in the back of his throat. “Kara Thrace, I saw you too many times with my brother to not know when you've fallen for someone.”
She turned away.
“I know I can't order you to stop this relationship,” he acknowledged. “I can only strongly suggest it. And believe me, I like seeing you happy. I do. I haven't seen you this genuinely happy since .. well, since Zak.” His face took on a strained look.
“Look, as your CAG, I'm asking you: could you at least promise me that you'll keep your head?”
She blinked, still unable to look at him. Her hands reached over to turn on the dials he had shut off. The targeting machine rumbled back to life.
“I wasn't done shooting yet.” She spoke to the device rather than speak to him. “And my head's just fine, Lee.”
She pressed the button to set up a fresh target. Lee stared at her in helpless silence before leaving, When she heard the hatch shut, she took aim for twelve shots in sharp, angry succession.
Eleven out of twelve were dead center, but still, Kara ripped her goggles off her head and let them clang to the metal floor with an angry sound. She knew better than to get bogged down into a situation she'd eventually mess up anyway. When the time came, she told herself, when she really needed to, she'd break up with Brendan, move on, keep her head straight.
She always did.
**
“Frak! How the hell could I lose a sock in a rack so small?”
Kara woke up late the next morning with only ten minutes to make it to the ready room. One bare foot dangled over Brendan's rack while her hands scrambled around his shelves looking for the missing sock.
Brendan grinned at her from under the sheets. “You got Nuggets right now, don't you?”
“Yeah,” she said, still searching frantically. “I'll be glad when this round is over. Doing triples plus teaching basic flight is seriously messing with my patience.” She looked under her pillow again, even though she had already looked there twice. “Frak!”
Brendan laughed. “Teach 'em with one sock, who cares? You gave them the 'You can call me God' speech already, right?” She kept searching without looking up. “Yeah, so?”
“So, God can teach with one sock if she wants, can't she?”
“You're a laugh riot, Costanza.” She exhaled deeply with frustration as she hopped off his bunk and stood on the one below to survey the entire mattress.
“Shove over,” she ordered and dug under in a last-ditch search, ignoring Beehive's sleepy protests from the next bunk below at Kara's feet suddenly invading her rest. Brendan moved obligingly to allow Kara better access.
She came back up from under the mattress with not a missing sock, but two bottles of unopened stims with Brendan's name typed on them. Her eyes wide, she held them up in front of him, her quest forgotten.
“What are these doing here?” she accused.
A streak of guilt crossed his face. “Oh, I guess I just lost them under there.” He took them back with poorly-hid reluctance. “Thanks.”
Her eyebrows arched. The seal on the bottles hadn't been cracked.
“Don't tell me you're doing triples without stims,” she whispered so the others wouldn't hear.
He folded his arms across his chest, his eyes narrowing for a fight. “You're always saying that you hate stims, because they blunt your reflexes...”
“...and your reaction time,” she finished in an angry whisper. “Yeah and it's true, but guess what? I take them anyway. You know why? Because we're still down by nine pilots, and we're all flying triple shifts every third CAP. If it's a choice between my reflexes and making sure I don't fall asleep in a Viper, I'll take staying alive any day.”
“I've been managing just fine, obviously, Kara.” She didn't miss the buried hostility there.
“You've been lucky, you idiot!” she hissed. “I don't care who you are. Unless you're a Cylon, you can't withstand a triple shift without stims!”
He narrowed his eyes. “I won't take them, Kara,” he said quietly. “I just won't.” He reached out to stroke her cheek in an affectionate gesture, but she pulled away.
“You don't take 'em, you don't get to fly. Simple as that.” She paused in realization. “I gotta tell Lee about this.”
He bolted upright. “Kara, he'll pull me off flight status...”
“As well he should. On a triple shift, even with the blunted reaction times, you're still better off stimulated, you know.”
“I'm sorry, but I can't take them,” he said. “I would if I could, but I can't. It'd be worse if I did, trust me.”
They both stared at each other, unwavering. Kara looked at her watch.
“Frak,” she spat. “Listen, you've got exactly two minutes to convince me why I shouldn't go to the CAG today and tell him.”
Brendan closed his eyes. “It's a long story you don't have time for.”
“Then give me the edited version.” She hopped off the bottom rack and stood on the floor, hand on her hip, waiting.
He rubbed his temples and lowered his voice to a whisper. “You remember how I told you I went to a music conservatory?” he began.
“Yeah?” she prompted, shoving her bare foot into her boot, lowering her voice in concert with him. His eyes darted around at all the bunks surrounding them.
“Frak,” he griped, and pulled on the boxer shorts and tanks he'd drunkenly shoved against the wall of his rack last night. He rolled off the mattress onto the floor and signaled with a crooked finger to the linen closet near the showers. “Come with me.”
“What the frak?” she complained.
“Kara, I'm serious,” he said. “Come with me if you want to hear about this.”
He pulled them both into the closet and shut the door, pulled the bare bulb's drawstring.
“All right. Here it is: In my final year at conservatory, I had a girlfriend – her name was Dorie. I loved her like crazy. I thought we might get married one day, both work for the same orchestra. But she fell into a bad crowd of students. A drug crowd.
“They took almost anything they could get our hands on, if they could shoot it or smoke it or wash down a pill,” he explained. “I hung out with them too, although I didn't take anything, because I was with Dorie. But eventually, after a while, the whole scene got pretty out of control.”
Kara looked up at the bulb impatiently. “Frak, Brendan. I understand being against taking drugs. I am too. But these are extraordinary circumstances. And these are not drugs you take behind the school. These are like, like … medicine.”
“I haven't told you everything,” he warned.
She raised her eyebrows at her and tapped her watch meaningfully. “Okay, but hurry.”
“Well, Dorie kept egging me on to try stuff with her. I resisted at first, but I really thought I loved her, so I finally broke down and tried it. I took some stims.”
Kara sighed and tried to speed up the story. “Are you going to tell me you got addicted to stims and now you can't take them? Why didn't you just say that in the first place?”
“Not that simple,” he said. “See, I took them only twice. The first time, I loved it. I felt like I was the most powerful guy in the entire universe. I thought I'd been an idiot for holding out so long. Dorie was thrilled. The second time I took them, same feeling. But this time, I was at a party her friends were having in the woods. A guy who was there taking dream blossom was having a bad trip. He was hallucinating like crazy, thinking he was Perseus and that Dorie was a gorgon about to attack him.”
Brendan's eyes streaked with pain at the memory.
“I turned around for just a minute and when I looked back, he had Dorie by the neck, choking her, yelling to his friends to look away so she wouldn't turn them into stone. Next thing I knew I had run over to Dorie and yanked the guy off her. But I was already on a good, full-blown stims high, and it was like I forgot she was even there. I didn't check on her or even talk to her. I just let her go and started punching at this guy like a crazy person.”
“Well, sounds like he deserved it,” Kara shrugged.
“They tried to pull me off, but with the stims, I was getting such an adrenaline rush, they couldn't do anything,” Brendan continued, as if he hadn't really heard her. “I was so angry for what he'd done to Dorie, and the stims made me feel like a god. I kept punching and punching him, even when I could see his face getting all bloody. It was like I wanted to kill him.” He looked away, his forehead creased with shame. “I put that guy into a coma for the rest of his life. He was seventeen.”
Kara breathed in deeply, then breathed out again before she responded. “Oh.”
“The emergency room doctor they took me to said I had a genetically unusual reaction to stims and that I shouldn't ever take them again. But I got kicked out of school three months before I finished anyway, and I don't blame them. I deserved it for what I did. Anyway, a year and a half after that, I enrolled in flight school, thinking it'd be a good way to earn money for a regular college, so I could pay my family back the money they'd spent on me at the conservatory. I'd heard you could make a lot of cubits driving civilian transport ships between the Twelve Worlds. But I couldn't even handle flight school. Being in school just reminded me all the time of being in conservatory and how I'd ended that guy's life, and so I washed out.”
“Brendan, it's okay.” Kara reached out to try and touch him, but he pulled away, his body stiff with guilt and self-loathing.
“It's not okay. It never will be okay, Kara. He didn't know what he was doing. He thought he was Perseus, for Gods' sake.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“I won't take them again, Kara. Not ever.”
“It's a small dose,” she tried one last time. “I'm sure the doctor meant not to take it recreationally.”
“No. It took me twelve hours longer than most people to come down off the high. When I came back to myself, the doctor told me that there was no predicting how I'd react under stims again, but that I'd always have the adrenaline rush. Think about it: I'd be in a frakking Viper. What if I started feeling invincible? Who knows what stupid, crazy stunt I might pull in a combat situation? What if I got someone killed?”
Kara ran a hand through her hair. “Frak, Brendan. You could have told us. Why didn't you say anything?”
He grimaced. “I knew I couldn't. I'm still new around here. You were a good flight instructor, Kara, but I'm not that good a pilot. My value is as another body in a Viper seat, nothing more. I know that.”
“That's not true,” Kara protested.
“No, it is,” he said vehemently. “I'm still proving myself. If I tell the CAG I can't take stims, I'm as good as useless to him, and he'll ground me.
“You don't understand,” he insisted as he saw her about to protest. “You're such an amazing pilot, I don't even think you can tell how mediocre I am at this.”
She sighed. “Don't be ridiculous ...”
“I'm not being ridiculous. I'm not saying I'm incompetent. I'll know I'll get better with time. But it's going to take time, and I don't want to have to give it up, not when it's the first thing I've ever managed to finish in my life, Kara. I love flying. I never realized I would, but I do.” He grabbed her shoulders. “Please, Kara. Please. Don't tell Apollo.”
She sighed, but she could feel her resolve slipping. “I know what it's like to love flying more than anything, but...”
“Look,” he bargained. “I promise if I ever feel like I can't handle a shift without the stims, I won't get in a Viper, okay?”
“How are you going to do that?” She looked down at her watch. “Frak. I'm already ten minutes late. I gotta go.”
“I promise,” he insisted. “I'll make up some excuse, pretend I'm sick, even if I have to make myself throw up in my cockpit. I won't put anyone in danger.”
She tied the lace of her boot without the sock, a bad feeling washing over her that she refused to acknowledge. “You better not.”
**
“You know I want to earn this fair and square, right?”
Kara's heart twisted a little as she gazed up at Zak sitting on the edge of the bed. “I know you do.”
He swallowed visibly and looked out the window of Kara's quarters. “Are you sure I'm good enough? Sometimes I'm sitting in that cockpit, and I feel like such a fraud, like Lee's the pilot my dad always wanted.”
“Zak, you're still a little awkward with the stick, but trust me, you can do this.”
“You're not just coddling me because we're together, though, right?”
She scoffed, even though honestly, she wasn't sure what she would do if he failed his test run.
“Are you trying to insult me?” she teased him.
His smile filled her entire vision, surrounding her like a warm breeze. “I'm sorry,” he murmured. “You're right. I'm selling you short.”
“Damn straight you are,” she shot back, then softened. “I know you're going to pass Basic Flight and make your dad proud. You just have to believe in yourself more.”
“I just get so worried about it sometimes...” He kissed her forehead. “But I'm sure it'll all work out the way it's meant to, right?”
She awoke with a start and a choked-off cry. She twisted the ring on her thumb round and round. Zak's ring.
She made her hands stop their compulsive task, and grabbed at Brendan next to her in the bed.
“Kara?” he sat up in bed at her touch. Her name was the first thing on his lips. “You all right?”
She wasn't. “It's nothing,” she lied. “Just a dream.”
“About what?” he asked, still groggy with sleep.
“I can't remember.”
He was waking up more now, and seemed to have let it go. He put his arm around her. “You know, when I was a kid and I used to have bad dreams, my mom would sing to me to help me fall back asleep.”
She snorted. “You're not singing to me, Costanza. Not in front of all these people.”
“Why not?” he queried. “They're all asleep anyway, right?”
He didn't let her think about it. Before she knew it, he was quietly singing to her a song about the moons of Libron guiding her to the land of Morpheus. It was half in standard Caprican, and half in Libran. Just whenever she was about to protest in embarrassment at being sung to, the second verse started, and the sound of Brendan's Libron accent gliding with effortless beauty over foreign words distracted her.
“It must have been hard for to give up music school,” she whispered after he finished.
"Not at first,'' he said softly. "At first, I couldn't wait to get out of there. I was secretly glad they kicked me out. It wasn't until later that I really understood what I'd given up."
He caressed her hair in the dark. "You know, you remind me of Dorie, sometimes," he said, after a while.
"Oh, the girl who got you into drugs?" she teased, pretending to scoff at him.
"That was just one part of her," he said. "You're strong like her. Mentally strong. I was convinced that she could do anything she set her mind to.
"After we broke up, I couldn't get myself to do anything until the beginning of the following year. I stayed in my bedroom a lot. I knew my mom was worried about me, but it was all I could do to just get up in the morning, never mind do anything with my life.
"But Dorie, she was right back out there. By autumn, she'd found a gig playing flute with a small orchestra who didn't care that she hadn't finished school; they just cared that she could play."
Kara stared into the darkness. She wasn't used to people spilling their guts to her like this.
"Well, you got it together eventually, right?" she concluded, and turned over on her side to kiss him on the lips.
He was quiet for a long while after that.
“You know,” he said finally, with a thoughtful air. “It's weird, but I feel like this is more my life now than any life I used to have before the Attacks. It's only been a few months and already I feel like the life I had on Libron might as well have not existed, you know?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I know what you mean. I'm not even sure what I would do when we ever find Earth.”
He fell back under the blanket. "Kara, what if we don't ever find Earth? Have you ever thought about that? Maybe we should be making room for living our lives in the here and now."
If it hadn't been so dark, he might have noticed the way the muscles in her face clenched for just a moment.
"Of course we're going to find Earth," she scoffed. "The Old Man and Roslin know the way there. It's just going to take a while."
"Well, what if it takes too long? What if we don't get there before we run out of everything?" He paused. "What if this is all there is?”
“Yeah?” she snapped, suddenly feeling cornered. “What if this is all there is?”
A beat passed before Brendan answered. “I'm just thinking, maybe we should do what we're going to do with our lives now."
Kara exhaled deeply, the conversation having gone places she hadn't expected. "Look, there's eating, sleeping, and shooting Cylons out of the sky,” she said matter-of-factly. “That's what we do now. That's all we've got time for until we find ourselves a new home."
The silence between stretched on a little too long for Kara's comfort. She rolled on top of him and added with a salacious kiss: "And frakking. Almost forgot frakking."
She began stroking his bare chest, but he surprised her with by shoving himself onto his side and giving her a terse, "It's 0330. I got CAP in an hour."
She could feel how his body had curled up tightly into himself, shutting her out. She lay there next to him, in the dark, the faint sound of snoring around them threading back into her consciousness.
“Come on, you might as well sing me more of that song," she tried. “If anyone heard you, I'm going to catch hell tomorrow. So you might as well make it worth it.”
No response. She wondered if he'd actually fallen asleep. On impulse, she punched his arm.
"Ow!" he shouted. "What the frak, Kara!"
As she'd suspected.
"Can I sleep now?" he asked pointedly.
She made a huffing noise and turned over with her back to him. She played with the ring on her thumb, taking it on and off in restless anger she didn't entirely understand.
To Part 2
