Warm. Gods, she felt warm. And tingly. Really, really tingly. Her heart was racing. Her lips were soft and wet. She reached up to touch them, but found that something was in the way; someone else's lips. Her eyes came open slowly.
"Do you know how beautiful you are?" Lee somehow managed to say even though his lips never left hers.
She was able to answer when his mouth started moving slowly downward onto her neck and collarbone. "Actually, no, 'beautiful' is not usually the adjective that people most use to describe me."
"That's just becausethey don't know the real you." He breathed as she ran her fingers through his hair.
"It isn't cold in here anymore." She said lifting her eyes up to look around their storage room prison as he continued his exploration of her upper body.
"It's still cold in here." He whispered matter-of-factly through the haze of his diligent dedication.
"In that case, why does the Colonial Fleet even bother with blankets? Just give them other people." She was able to mutter when she finally found enough breath to formulate the words.
"Because you don't get this warm with just any other person." He grinned, finally looking up at her with his blinding blue eyes.
Her eyes came open quickly.
Her heart was still racing; she was still out of breath. She was still warm too. Warm, hell, she was dripping with sweat. She looked down at her body, fully cocooned in the blankets of her bunk.
"Frakking dream." She muttered lowly to herself as she raised her hand to cover her eyes. It wasn't even a gods damn memory. Son of a bitch didn't even have the guts to kiss her when they were laying like that, trapped together in that room. She turned to face the wall, intent on driving the image and sense memory of things that had never happened out of her mind so that she could get some sleep. Yeah right. That's not gonna happen when every single extremity has bolts of electricity coursing through it. The tips of her ears even tingled. How did he manage to do that to her from where he was laying, seven feet away? Just sleep, Kara. In her restlessness she turned back over again, and landed on her side facing out.
She saw him in his own bunk, those damn blue eyes staring back at her. He had a smirk on his face that she couldn't quite define. Was it arrogance? Was it promise?
"Hey, Starbuck." He whispered softly.
She felt naked, laid out in front of him like some sort of prize that he had won. She instinctively raised her blanket up around her shoulders. She was vulnerable, she was embarrassed, and she was damn sure that she had closed the curtain on her bunk before she went to sleep.
He sighed a knowing sigh and she felt the fury seethe inside of her. She pulled back her covers and dropped her feet to the cold floor below. She slowly and tentatively padded over to his bunk and saw his eyes light up just before she grabbed his curtain…….and shut it on his face.
Kara was sitting in the mess quietly eating her food as Kat, Racetrack and Hotdog chattered on about things that she didn't care enough about to listen to. She was keenly watching the way her mashed potatoes moved as she shoved them around on her tray when her eyes jerked up at the sound of his voice.
"You guys mind if I join you?"
"Not at all, Captain." Racetrack said nodding to the chair that was across from Starbuck.
"Thanks." Lee said sitting down. He smiled at Racetrack before turning his eyes to Kara, drinking in every inch of her. "Hey, Starbuck."
She dropped her fork and it made a loud clang as it hit the metal of her tray. Her hand curled in a fist where it lay on the table. She roughly pushed her chair back. The others blanched at the noise it made as the legs skidded across the floor. She grabbed her tray and walked off without a word.
"Oh, man." Kat laughed, looking sympathetically at Apollo. "You don't even have to try to get her mad at you anymore, do you?"
"Yeah, CAG. Normally I'd be impressed." Hotdog sighed. "But now I have to go fly CAP with her for the next six hours, so thanks for that." He said getting up to leave too.
Lee swallowed and chuckled nervously at the two women left at the table, wondering what the hell he did wrong.
Starbuck stood in the shower room with a bunch of others. She was in her bare feet, towel wrapped around her body and she was waiting for a shower stall to open up.
"How long will it take for them to fix it?" Kingston asked.
"Coupla hours." Frosty replied.
"And only these ones work?" Racetrack asked pointing to the first three stalls.
"Well, they all work," Frosty corrected. "But unless you wanna get frostbite….."
Kara saw Lee walk in the head. He had one towel wrapped around his hip, the other draped across his shoulders.
"You all wanna tell me why you're standing around?" He said joining them. "Don't you have places to be?"
"Water heater is busted, sir. None of the showers are hot except these three." Kingston answered gesturing at the occupied stalls.
"HURRY THE FRAK UP IN THERE!" Starbuck shouted as she pounded on the stall door. She gave up and turned to lean back against it.
He was staring at her. She glared right back at him.
"Hey, Starbuck." He said, his eyes traveling down to her bare feet and then back up again to look at her face. She looked like she wanted to hurl him up against the wall. The only thing was……… he wasn't sure what she wanted to do to him once she had him there.
She fumed, looking him up and down as well. "You losers can stay. I'll come back later when it's not so suffocating in here." She hissed and gave him one last pointed look.
Lee torturously watched as she stomped off, sighed and then moved to get into the fourth stall.
"Hey, CAG?" Kingston called to him. "You go in that one and your shower's gonna be cold."
"Not really a problem right now!" Lee called as he turned the latch on the door.
"She's gotten better at trapping her landings, but she's still got a ways to go." Helo said to Lee as the two of them walked down the hall and Helo reported on a new Raptor pilot.
"You think she'll get better given a few weeks?" Lee asked looking down at the flight list that he held in his hands. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her walking down the hall in the other direction. He lifted his head and nodded at her. "Hey, Starbuck." He said as she walked past.
She stopped dead and turned around to shoot a look of pure hatred in his direction. "Just what in hell is that supposed to mean?" She fumed.
Lee stopped abruptly as well and turned around to face her. He chuckled in befuddlement. "'Hey, Starbuck'?"
"Yeah." She narrowed her eyes, glowering at him.
"I'm not sure, but I think it's supposed to mean: 'Hey, Starbuck.'" He answered, his voice getting louder with every word. "It's a form of greeting; Something that civilized people do in lieu of punching each other in the face."
"Sometimes a punch in the face is what's called for." She rasped out disgustedly and continued to her destination.
"Man." Helo looked at him, totally bewildered. "What did you do that's got her so pissed off?"
"Nothing." Lee sighed, still staring down the now-empty hall after her. "I think that's what's got her so pissed off."
"I'll take two." Starbuck said as Racetrack dealt her the cards.
"I bet five." Kingston added his money to the pot. "Somebody needs to talk to him, that's all I'm saying. Damn toaster's got his mind all frakked up."
"Well, how would you feel if your girlfriend shot your boss, got you locked up as a traitor, got herself killed by one of your friends and then an exact replica of her showed up alive and knocked up by somebody else?" Racetrack asked.
"Kingston wouldn't know." Starbuck teased. "He's never had a girlfriend that he didn't have to inflate first." Everyone laughed as she threw her money in the pile. "See your five, raise you ten."
"I just feel bad for the guy. Somebody needs to talk to him, see how he feels." Kingston added.
"Maybe we should send Helo." Hotdog chuckled, but quickly gulped it down when he saw the look in Starbuck's eyes.
Kingston looked up as someone walked in the room behind Starbuck. "Hey, Captain. Wanna play?"
"Sure. Deal me in." Apollo said as he sat next to Kingston. He looked at the woman across from him as she considered her cards. "Hey, Starbuck." He nodded to her cautiously.
Kara's eyes rose up and he was met with the usual angry glare. "You guys sure you want to let him in?" She asked the rest of the table. "It's kind of a high stakes game."
"It is?" Hotdog laughed in disbelief.
"Yeah." She said, never taking her narrowed eyes off of Apollo. "The Captain here is all about playing it safe. Maybe he just doesn't want to take the chance that something might get messy."
Apollo stared back at her. "I think I can handle it."
"So, Apollo," Racetrack tried to change the subject as she dealt the cards. "We were talking about the Chief. We think somebody should sit down and talk with the guy before he has a nervous breakdown. Who better than the CAG?"
"Oh, I don't really think Captain Adama should be the one to do it." Starbuck corrected, moving her cards around in her hand. "Touchy situation like that, you might have to actually show real emotion, instead of just telegraphing out what you think the appropriate response would be."
The others at the table quickly caught on to the tension between them.
"Are we in the middle of something here?" Kingston asked nervously, looking back and forth between Starbuck and Apollo.
"No." Lee answered, smiling minutely as he looked at everyone else at the table but her. "This is just what we do. She pushes my buttons and I push hers."
Kara felt the rage boil inside her veins. "Sweetheart, based on all the gossip I've heard about you, you wouldn't be able to find my buttons with two hands and a flashlight."
Eyes got wide and nervous gulps were heard coming from the throats of everyone else at the table. Apollo just stared her down. She stared back with the same fuming intensity.
"Maybe we should leave." Hotdog suggested to the others.
"Anybody moves from this table and they'll be on head-cleaning duty for the week." Apollo seethed through clenched teeth as he never took his eyes from Kara's. "You got something to say to me, Lieutenant?"
"Not a thing." She answered coldly. "Obviously you feel the same way since the only words you've uttered to me in days have been 'Hey, Starbuck'."
"Fine." He sneered as he leaned forward in his seat. "You want some words? How about these: Why don't you get the hell outta here before one of us winds up in sickbay and the other one winds up in the brig?"
"Great idea." She said caustically as she stood up. "I'll go work on my needlepoint."
They all watched her go and all stared back at Apollo.
"Stupid, arrogant little……" Kara muttered to herself as she walked through the hatch.
"Stupid, insubordinate little….." Lee muttered under his breath as he ran his hands over his head.
The next day he found her by herself in the ready room going over flight lists. She tried to ignore him as he walked through the door.
"Hey, Starbuck." He taunted her, standing there with his arms crossed.
She looked up at him in angry disbelief. "Do you want me to murder you? You got some sort of death wish? Is that what this is?"
He spun around quickly and slammed the door shut, leaving them alone in the room before he turned back to her. "I don't know what the hell THIS is, but you better grow the hell up and get your act together. I can't decide if you're acting more like a bratty five year old or a raging, cold-hearted bitch. I'm starting to think it's a perfect combination of both. And I've never met anybody that could pull that off before. You're really quite amazing, Kara." He screamed at her.
She closed her eyes to mask the fury in them. "Figures the first time you ever call me amazing, you'd find a way to make it an insult."
He sighed, thoroughly and utterly exasperated. "I thought we'd moved past this."
She brought her hand up to cradle her forehead. "It's funny, I thought we'd moved past this too, but obviously not; since we're back to frakking square one! I thought that maybe after everything we'd said to each other that we could both let go of our defenses long enough to act on the words we said. But since we can't, I figured that we'd just go back to fighting, because it's what we do best. And that would usually be fine with me. But you see, now I have this added bonus that every time you stare at me it's with this look of hot-blooded possessiveness like you think I belong to you or something and it's driving me frakking CRAZY!"
She angrily threw the papers down and stormed out of the room, leaving him trembling, and gobsmacked, and totally turned on.
You gotta lose control. Let your instincts take over.
I thought we were just sparring.
That's why you don't win.
-finis