Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lee "Apollo" Adama/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace
Characters: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Lee "Apollo" Adama
Additional Tags: Fake Marriage, Marriage of Convenience, Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved, Avoiding Feelings, Bedside Vigils, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s01e05 You Can't Go Home Again, Missing Scene, intricate starpollo rituals, Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama, Lee Adama loves Kara Thrace, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping
Summary:
“I had nowhere else to be.” He defended himself, leaning forward as if she couldn’t hear the conviction in his tone. “I wanted to be here for you, Kara.”
“Nowhere to be? No CAP? No duty on deck?” She glanced around the empty room. “And you shouldn’t be here, either. Visiting hours and all that.”
“They don’t matter,” he said. “Not to me.”
“Cottle didn’t kick you out?”
“He tried. It didn’t work.”
“Oh,” she nodded halfway, “I get it. You pulled rank, CAG?”
Something changed in Lee’s expression, a change she couldn’t follow. “Spousal privileges, actually.”
“Oh.”
-----------------------
Marriage of Convivence AU. Kara Thrace married Zak Adama without telling anyone, including his brother, Lee. After Zak died, the devoted Kara remembers an old scripture where the man must marry his brother's widow to please Gods. Even if it's a sham, it still counts, right? But everything changes two years later, when total catastrophe forces them to live as husband and wife... whatever that means.
Oh cool ok since I want to be tortured, let's do #11
Clearing out some prompt debt. The prompt was:
11. things you said when you were drunk
Here I was, thinking I’d do something goofy and cute with it, but you want to be tortured, you say? Somehow, a certain scene from early S4 comes to mind.
---
She’s been dealing as good as she’s been getting. She deserves it - she knows she does - but it still stings to have it thrown back in her face. (It wouldn't feel like this if it weren’t true.)
She wants to snarl something back at him, shred all the overly hopeful, painfully naive predictions about her prospects he’d insisted on spouting when she’d first told him it was back. He’d tried so hard to put a positive spin on things, but it’s clear - painfully so - that he’s never seen doloxan work up close. It’s easy - so easy - to dismiss the treatment as a foregone conclusion when you haven’t smelled the vomit, cleaned the sores that won’t heal, prepared meal after palatable meal only to throw them away uneaten. And for what? A death that’s slower and messier.
And of course she’ll die alone. Everyone does, in the end. They might be around you. Next to you. But nobody can be with you as you take that final step.
But meaningless?
Afraid her death would be meaningless? Where the frak did he get off? Every pilot, every crewman aboard the ship believed that if they died in the line of duty, it meant something. He said as much at every funeral and he made sure they believed it, because it was that thing, that kernel of promised valor that let the rest of them face it, day in and day out. But hers would be meaningless. Frakker.
So much for his rosy frakking outlook and his delusional insistence that it would all work out. She should’ve known taking him up on the offer of hospitality was a mistake. They still have the dregs of a civilization to run and even with the tears out of her system, she can’t quite imagine facing him again. Not now.
Oh, she’d played her part, too - showed her claws, and let out a side of herself she’d almost forgotten about - catlike and vicious, looking for the weak spots to strike. She wouldn’t deny that now but with so much weight on her shoulders, a drunken Bill Adama is one more burden she cannot take.
There is an impulse, however brief, to leave that fistful of hair behind. Let him find it. Let him see. Let him clean up the mess for once and know - really know - what they're in for. Petty. Childish. Passive agressive. She wads up the strands and stuffs them in a pocket. Sets the impulse aside. Washes her face and sets about finding somewhere else to be.
i’ve been meaning to tell you (i think your house is haunted)
Lee wishes it weren’t so, but he’s never seen eyes like hers. Hazel. Common. Half the population of Aerilon had hazel eyes, to the point of it being a running joke included in every solstice special on the wireless. And yet. When Kara meets his gaze across the hangar deck, his chest pulls tight. When she catches his eye in the CIC when Tigh is really digging into some diatribe, it feels like Lee’s swallowed lightning.
Lee is a logical person. He knows this. Zak told him every day as kids to lighten up, like Lee was a lead balloon dragging them down — and you know what? He was right. Once Lee got out of his own head and remembered to relax, he and Zak could float across the lake behind their grandparents’ house in nothing but a non-motorized dinghy. Sure, they could have drowned or been pulled under by swamp creatures, but their ignorance buoyed them into some of Lee’s favorite memories.
But now Zak’s gone. And Kara, his widowed ghost, appears to be holding up his memory by willpower alone.
“It means you’re reckless,” Lee screams at her on the hangar deck, waves of heat still wafting off her barely-landed viper, just so unbecoming for a CAG, “and pretending Zak’s just, I don’t know, on vacation—”
Lee catches himself, but it’s too late. The hazel has gone stormy. Beside them, Chief mutters, oh shit, and turns away. Cally casts around wildly for an excuse to look busy and grabs a clipboard out of Crashdown’s hands.
“Won’t bring him back?” Kara steps forward. “Is that what you were going to say?”
Lee’s mouth has gone dry. They both flounder, in limbo.
He’s broken the golden rule of their tacit peace accord which is to a) never mention Zak and b) failing that, never mention Zak on the flight deck, where it will hurt worse, and finally c) never mention Zak in the context of flying because this is the nexus of all emotional turmoil.
“Do you think,” Kara continues, voice dropped to a furious rasp, “that Zak had any effect at all on my flying? That I wasn’t pulling 6g barrel rolls away from enemy fire when he was still doing keg stands in basic?”
Lee’s back hits the wall. Kara’s eyes are spitting fire and her mouth spitting abuse, but the buzz in his ears drowns out both.
This is how he imagines it, when he’s alone in his rack.
Bill doesn’t believe in astrology but Laura knows that’s just because of his Capricorn moon AU
Five headcanons:
1. The first time he catches her reading horoscopes out loud to the staff, he laughs. It’s subsequently less funny each time it happens.
2. Every time they have a client pitch, she pulls out her phone and announces that their answer will be found in the Horoscope of the Day app. When she says that the moon is rising in Virgo, they win. He can’t believe that he ever agreed to go into business with a nutcase who thought that astrology was going to win them real estate deals.
3. They won a multi-city tenant rep assignment with Tauron Holdings, worth several million dollars in fees, and he wants to quit every time she crows about how the stars were aligned in their favor, but…several million dollars in fees.
4. Their business has tripled, and every win they get, his staffers just tell him it’s because of his lucky Capricorn moon, too stubborn to take no for an answer. He’s taken to hiding in his office just to escape them.
5. “Are you trying to torture me?” he asks, when they win the assignment to broker Amazon’s second headquarters based on what Laura says was a reading of Jeff Bezos’ star charts. “Trying?” She raises an eyebrow, staring him down over her glasses. “I think I’ve succeeded.”
“Do you even believe in this bullshit?”
Laura shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe our stars were aligned from the start, or maybe I’ve been screwing with you since we first met because you’re so damn cute when I do.”
I know, it’s been a while since we posted fic here. You’ll get two for the price of one today, tho - one maybe a tad lighter than the other.
Hope you like them!
Jules xx
It was another magnificent sunset, one of many he had seen since they had landed on Earth. The sky was covered with specks of orange, pink, and purple, and the clouds looked like oversized, coloured cotton balls. The sun was still clearly visible behind the mountains in the West, but was setting quickly, bathing everything in a magical light.
Sitting on the porch of the cabin he had been building for the past few months, Bill took a deep breath of the warm summer evening air that spread through his lungs and left him feeling at peace. The cabin itself was finally finished; he had worked on smoothing out the surface of the wood on the porch until an hour ago, had taken a swim in the lake afterwards, and after a light dinner of fish and root vegetables, he had decided to enjoy the evening outside, marvelling at this second chance they all had been given on this planet.
A second chance to build their lives, to form new communities, to live without having to constantly run away from an enemy that had seemed to be everywhere and too powerful to ever get rid of for good. Everyone seemed to have found their place in their respective communities and live their lives to the fullest - a life they wouldn't have had were it not for those who had never given up hope that they'd make it eventually, among them the woman he'd brought up here in a raptor all these months ago, the woman he had talked about this cabin with so many times and whose dream it had been for so long to witness her people settle on the promised land.
The old man thought back to the day he had landed the raptor with Laura on top of this hill after having given her a tour to watch the beautiful wildlife on this planet. It had been a bittersweet ending of something he'd not always thought they would make it through, of their journey together through space and time, through hardship and times of happiness, through the deepest worries and the most intense feelings of being loved. He wasn't sure whether he wished these times back.
They all had been together back then, that much was true, and he dearly missed his loved ones being around him every day. But it certainly had not all been good and as time went by, it became tempting to glorify these times more than they deserved. And still, something was missing and it regularly tore him apart, especially on evenings like this when he preferred the last rays of the sun to an empty house.
A hand on his shoulder interrupted his musings and a quiet voice asked him with unmistakable traces of amusement, “Bill. Are you brooding yet again?”
Without turning around, he replied, “No. I'm just admiring the sunset.”
Sighing softly, the woman sat down next to him and waited for him to look at her. Eventually, blue eyes were meeting green ones.
“I know you are, Bill. And it is truly beautiful today. But I've seen that look on your face so many times now, and I know exactly what's going on inside your head.”
Bill took a deep breath and looked back into the sunset. “You know, I just thought after all we have gone through together and after what we've achieved for everyone, I'd feel at least a bit happy. At least for the others. But I'm just so frakking tired.”
Laura gently placed a hand on his knee and squeezed it. “Of course you are, honey. You deserve to be tired after all this time.”
“Yeah, I know…” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. “But it is finally finished. Laura, the cabin is done.”
She raised her head and looked around them for a moment, running her hands over the smooth surface of the wooden floor beneath them. Blinking back tears, Laura gently nudged his chin and made him look into her eyes again. “Bill, it is beautiful. You should be so proud of yourself.”
Bill was searching her face for traces of the amused look she had given him earlier, but all he found was a pair of green eyes scrutinizing him with an expression of so much love and warmth he almost couldn't bear it.
Then Laura tilted her head to one side and regarded him thoughtfully.
“But you know what?”
“What?”
Instead of a reply, she swiftly got up, took both his hand into hers and helped him get up from the hard wooden planks as well.
“I know there's this place where I think you won't be tired anymore. And won't have to stare into sunsets alone in the cold later this year. Would you like to join me for a walk?”
Bill took his time to reply, gently cupped her face and stroked her soft skin with the pads of his thumbs. “I'll follow you anywhere, Laura, you know that.”
The radiant smile he received from her, making her look so much younger and happier than when he had last seen her, made Bill feel warmer and calmer inside than he had been in months, and when Laura took his hand again and they walked towards the sunset together, hand in hand, seeking out each other, he knew that feeling would not go away this time.
