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misscamFrakking Consequences
by Camilla Sandman
Summary: Everything has consequences, Kara. Especially drugging the President, the Admiral and the CAG. [Adama/Roslin, Kara/Lee, Sam, Dee]
Rating: Teen. Implied adult activities and drug use.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.
Author's Note: While we were both signing up to dobsg_remix, I told lotus79 I knew which of hers I would do if I got her as an assignment. I didn't, but the idea stayed with me and lotus79 got quite curious about it all and kindly let me use her story. She also very graciously betaed this piece. So, this is a remix of Improper Conduct.
That was silly. This is really not. Issues of dubious consent. Set during season three, before Maelstrom.
II
"How was dinner with the Admiral and the President?" Sam asks sleepily, shifting a little further into the rack to give her room. He doesn't seem to notice her clothes are a mess.
"Frakked," Kara says, putting her head against his chest but keeping her eyes wide open even after he's fallen asleep.
She's really done it this time, she thinks.
II
Salty. That's Laura's first thought and the impression on her tongue. The rest of her mouth seems almost woolen in taste and her head sure feels full of it. She doesn't want to open her eyes, having a strong suspicion she'll find lights that are too bright.
Huh. She'd call it a hangover, but that's not quite it. (She'd had many enough in her lifetime to know.) Something is slightly off and she can't quite figure out what.
They were drinking, that she remembers. Lee was there. Captain Thrace similarly, both being overly polite with each other in a way that seemed more hostile than insults would have been, at least until they seemed to mellow a little. Bill was there, he had invited her and she...
Bill. Bill.
Bill's hands up her skirt, Bill's tongue dancing against hers, Bill's legs carrying them both as she locked her own around his waist, Bill's eyes never leaving her face as she smiled at him. Bill's rack and she still feels a little sore from what happened there.
Happened here, because she opens her eyes to find she's still in his rack. He's got an arm casually around her and she's got a leg not so casually pressed between his and his face is close enough she can see his eyelids flutter now and then.
She's slept with him. It has been a possibility for a while, she has to admit. She's seen speculation in his eyes often enough to know it wouldn't be out of the blue for him either, but... But she can't remember making the choice to last night, can only remember eating and drinking and then images of her and Bill and foreplay, like a movie being watched by her rather than participating.
Maybe it's the alcohol, but she doesn't think so. Either way, she extracts herself carefully from Bill's loose hold (he sighs a little in his sleep, but doesn't stir) and uses five minutes to locate all the pieces of her clothing. It would be easier if she turned more lights on, but she doesn't dare. Doesn't want Bill awake right now.
This isn't fleeing. This is tactical retreat.
(She must be a politician through and through now, she thinks. She even lies to herself.)
II
There are a few things Lee might expect to wake to.
Dee, not very pleased at all. A mighty hangover. Maybe a pilot whose bed he's fallen asleep in instead of going home to Dee. Maybe even the Colonel, telling him oversleeping is not behaviour acceptable in a Major at all.
Not his father, looking like fury and fear at once.
"What the frak happened last night?" the Admiral demands, and Lee knows whatever happened, it didn't just happen to him.
Frak. Kara.
II
Kara has been expecting someone for the last hour. While waiting and pushing her breakfast around the plate, she's been considering the various possibilities of who might come.
The Admiral himself, maybe. If Bill comes, she knows she'll be forgiven. If he doesn't, she's less sure.
Guards, to stick her in the brig and then her careeer will be frakked too. It's a possibility, but she thinks maybe not the most obvious one. They need her as a pilot too much.
Lee, who will be the most awkward of all given a few hours ago he frakked her against a desk and made (bad) puns while at it. He might not yet have realised why he let go of all inhibitions.
Sam, who's heard from Dee, who found out because Lee has a conscience and admitted it all. Sam will be disappointed, but perhaps not surprised. That might be worst of all.
She doesn't expect the President, face composed and clothes just a little rumpled still.
"I'm not having a hangover,am I?" Roslin asks quietly and Kara shakes her head.
II
Algae juice isn't quite orange juice, but Bill still drinks it, watching his son look as awkward as he feels.
"I think the dessert was drugged," Lee admits, swirling his own juice around and around. "I remember... This sudden heat, and..."
"You and Kara left," Bill finishes and Lee winces a little. "Whatever happened is between you and her and your spouses, son. I'm not going to ask."
"I'm not going to ask either," Lee says evenly.
"Fair shot," Bill admits. Not that he would answer. Not sure he even knows the answer, with Laura gone when he woke. "I'll have to talk to her, son. She drugged two superior officers and the President of the Twelve Colonies. That has consequences. You know that."
"I know," Lee says. "I'd like to talk to her first."
"Do so," Bill says, finishing the juice and rising. He stops halfway to the door, looking back at his son that still hasn't touched the juice at all.
"Lee?"
"Yes, Dad?"
"Do you love her?"
Lee looks blank for a moment. "Dee or Kara?"
"If you have to ask me which, maybe you have a few questions to ask yourself."
II
"I don't know what I was thinking," Kara admits. Roslin is still just watching her; has been through the whole explanation, making no comments at all. "That it would be a laugh, maybe."
"No," Roslin says sharply. "You're reckless, not thoughtless. You didn't drug the dessert for a laugh."
"No."
"I doubt Admiral Adama and myself were the reason."
"You weren't," Kara agrees. "I thought you were frakking already. That it wouldn't matter."
Roslin doesn't even rise an eyebrow, nothing to reveal if that assumption is true or not. It's too bad the President doesn't play triad. She's got the face to bluff it entirely, Kara thinks.
"Major Adama, then."
"Yes."
"I don't think he will be any happier with this than me," Roslin says, and Kara is starting to wish anyone else would have come. Even guards. "You must have known that. So why do this?"
"Because I know that," Kara says simply.
II
"Sam," Dee acknowledges, catching up to him in the hallway.
"Dee."
"Lee didn't come home last night; he stayed in his old quarters."
"Kara got back in the middle of the night."
Dee nods, half expecting it. It still makes her a little cold. Suspicion is one thing. Knowledge is another.
"Do you ever feel we're in their way?" she asks, but Sam shakes his head.
"No. I sometimes feel they are."
II
Laura has changed and showered when Bill finally comes to her on Colonial One. He can still see a little moisture in her hair, making the colour a little darker. He can remember the feeling of running his fingers through it too, and he feels a slight itch to do it again.
He doesn't, folding his hands instead and sitting down by her desk.
"Admiral," she says formally, then seems to regret it, shaking her head a little.
"It appears Captain Thrace drugged the dessert last night," Bill says, the opening line to a speech he's prepared carefully in his head, but she cuts in before he can even properly begin.
"I know."
He looks surprised at her, she leans back in her chair a little.
"I asked her," she says simply. "She admitted it readily enough."
"How did you know it was her?"
"Process of elimination. Lee wouldn't. You wouldn't. She is unpredictable. An asset as a soldier, as I understand it."
"Yes," he says, exhaling a little. "Laura... I am sorry."
She shakes her head. "Not your fault."
"We're both still stuck with the consequences of it," he points out.
"Yes," she agrees. "What are we going to do about it?"
"I don't know," he says and the silence seems quite loud.
II
Lee is as angry as Kara imagined, but the sadness she glimpses underneath his rage she didn't consider at all.
"Of all the irresponsible things you've done over the years, Kara..." he pauses, shaking his head a little at the ceiling. "This, this is a whole new level. You put some mind-altering substance in the dessert and then fed it to us, you made my dad and the President..."
He looks a little ill for a moment, as if remembering something from the dinner last night. (The President's leg under the table or the Admiral's hands above it, she wonders briefly.)
"Half the Fleet thinks they're already doing it," she says calmly and he glares at her.
"They might have wanted to sleep with each other. Doesn't mean they were ready to. It's not your choice to make, Kara. And even if they were okay with it, which they're not, that still leaves me and you."
"I wanted to sleep with you," she says, brutally honest. "I don't want to divorce Sam, but I still want to frak you until you get out of my head. This way, you don't have to feel guilty about it."
He doesn't look grateful at all, she considers.
When he pushes her against the wall, she doesn't fight back, just watches his face inches from hers. His jaw is set like stone; his face so sculpted for a moment he looks like Apollo in marble.
Then he is kissing her, hard and she bites down on his bottom lip until she tastes blood. His hands are on her wrists, pinning her hands to the wall and keeping her from touching him like she did last night.
Getting even a little, she thinks. He didn't have control then. He does now.
He pulls back as fast as he went in, looking at her with something like despair.
"You want to frak me and not take responsibility for it? Damn you, Kara."
Then he walks out and leaves her there, breathing heavily.
Damn us both, she thinks.
II
After Bill leaves, Laura sits in her chair and watches nothing in particular, just letting her mind pick at the knot it seems to be in.
She can't quite detest Captain Thrace and can't quite let it go, either. Can't quite be comfortable sleeping with Admiral Adama under those circumstances and can't quite say it would never have happened under any other.
They can pretend it never happened, but that has consequences too. Awkwardness to start with, a few other possibilities to follow.
She doesn't really like any of them.
Maybe there's a different choice to make. An actual choice.
II
Dee is sitting at the table writing when Lee enters and her smile seems a little forced when she looks up.
He sits by her, taking her hand. "Dee..."
"No," she says firmly.
"No?"
"Don't ease your bad conscience by hurting me."
"I don't want to lie to you."
"Don't. Just don't tell me," Dee says simply. "I don't want to know. If you feel bad, go box a punching bag. Knock out some Raiders. Don't make me feel bad too."
He goes for the punching bag in the end.
II
Kara marches into the Admiral's quarters with the determination of a pilot on a fatal mission, hurling herself at danger the only way she knows how.
"I did it, sir. It was all me. Lee didn't know. I did it," she says in one breath, standing to attention but keeping her just above him.
Bill nods slowly, putting his elbows on the desk. She feels for a moment like a child before a teacher and wonders if this is how Lee feels all the time.
"I'm disappointed," he says and his voice is filled with it. She'd rather take his anger any day. "You're dismissed, Captain."
She stares at him, but he doesn't fill the silence with anything at all. "That's it?"
"You're going to live with what you did," Bill says, still not looking right at her. "That's your punishment. I can't think of any worse. Putting you in the brig never seems to have much effect anyway."
II
Lee is already at the punching bag when Kara gets there and she watches him from the door for a while, having a pretty good idea it's her he's having a go at. They squared off once before and it did clear the air a little.
Maybe it can work again.
"What did the bag ever do to you?" she calls, and he looks up.
"Frakked me, married another guy in the morning. Drugged me, frakked me and was still married to another guy in the morning," he says, planting a fist in the bag and watching it move. "Gave me pictures of my father and the President in bed and the soundtrack to go with it."
"Sounds fairly unforgivable."
"That's the problem. I can't stop wanting to forgive her. I can't stop wanting..."
He looks at her and she walks up to the bag, stilling it.
"I couldn't forget Sam while I was with you. I can't forget you while I'm with Sam. I can't stop wanting."
"You can't start, Kara," he says. "Are you trying to get me or push me away? You keep putting something between us. Sam. Marriage. A drug. Why?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me when you figure it out," he says, and hits the bag again.
II
Bill is more than a little surprised to see her, Laura notes. He invites her into his quarters readily enough, but he can't quite keep his face even.
"I know what we're going to do about it," she says as he sits down on the couch. She doesn't join him, instead lifting her hands to the buttons in her shirt. He stares and she can't say she blames him. "Frak it."
"Frak it," he repeats, following her fingers with his eyes as she unbuttons all the way down.
"We slept together, not wholy by choice, but not entirely against our will either."
"Yes," he says, voice hoarse and raw enough to make her feel a flash of heat to her cheeks.
"That shouldn't be a first time," she goes on, brushing the shirt off her shoulders and letting it slide off her hand and onto the floor. "This should be."
He rises slowly onto his feet, looking at her, finally leaning forward and kissing her shoulder softly.
"This time, it is my choice," she says. "Our choice, if you want."
"Our choice," he agrees, kissing her slowly and leisurely, a strange contrast to the night before. But then, she thinks, that was lust. This isn't just.
They're going to have to deal with the consequences of that too some day, but for now, she takes his hand and follows him to his rack.
II
When Lee's all punched out, Kara locks his head between her hands, holding firmly and looking him straight in the eye.
"I'm going to figure it out," she vows, kissing him as softly as she can. "I promise, Lee. I'll figure it all out and I'll tell you."
He doesn't look convinced, but he does look almost hopeful, she thinks.
II
Laura sleeps lightly, waking every now and then to look at him sleepily before drifting off again. Her hair tickles a little when she moves, as her head is resting firmly on his chest. He doesn't mind.
That was as a first time should be, he has to agree. And pretty good for a second time too.
He might even come to forgive Kara in time after all. She is more self-destructive than anything, but others keep getting stuck in her blast zone. He has seen it before, just closed his eyes to it.
Will have to close his eyes to it again. Lee and Dee, Lee and Kara, Kara and Sam, only one of whom is his child and would very much resent any parental interference.
Not that he'd know how to fix it anyway. Everything has consequences. Especially solutions.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" Laura whispers, eyes still closed.
"Just thinking."
"About?"
"Frakking consequences."
She giggles softly, the most comforting noise he knows along with Galactica's steady groans.
"They can wait till the morning," she says. "Goodnight, Bill."
II
Sam doesn't wake this time when Kara gets home and she takes a hurried shower, washing the sweat off her before heading to bed. There is a little room beside him and she wriggles in. Even falling asleep, he's made space for her next to him, as he always does.
"I made the Old Man frak the President. I slept with Lee," she tells Sam. He shifts slightly in his sleep, moving his mouth a little without any words coming from it. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not sorry enough to let him go. I'm sorry I can't let you go. I'm sorry I suck at apologising, I don't do it very often."
She breathes and watches his chest rise and fall, slowly and steady and sure. Safe. It's just so hard to stop playing with danger when she's made a career and life out of it.
Reckless Kara Thrace, she thinks. She never did care much for the frakking consequences.
That doesn't make them go away, it seems. Any of them.
She's really done it this life, she knows.
Maybe what she really needs is a new one to start over. Not just a new day, but a new Kara, mark II improved version, less prone to frak-ups and their consequences.
Maybe that would be a terrible dull one.
"Goodnight, Sam," she says and sleeps.
FIN
by Camilla Sandman
Summary: Everything has consequences, Kara. Especially drugging the President, the Admiral and the CAG. [Adama/Roslin, Kara/Lee, Sam, Dee]
Rating: Teen. Implied adult activities and drug use.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.
Author's Note: While we were both signing up to do
bsg_remix, I told lotus79 I knew which of hers I would do if I got her as an assignment. I didn't, but the idea stayed with me and lotus79 got quite curious about it all and kindly let me use her story. She also very graciously betaed this piece. So, this is a remix of Improper Conduct. That was silly. This is really not. Issues of dubious consent. Set during season three, before Maelstrom.
II
"How was dinner with the Admiral and the President?" Sam asks sleepily, shifting a little further into the rack to give her room. He doesn't seem to notice her clothes are a mess.
"Frakked," Kara says, putting her head against his chest but keeping her eyes wide open even after he's fallen asleep.
She's really done it this time, she thinks.
II
Salty. That's Laura's first thought and the impression on her tongue. The rest of her mouth seems almost woolen in taste and her head sure feels full of it. She doesn't want to open her eyes, having a strong suspicion she'll find lights that are too bright.
Huh. She'd call it a hangover, but that's not quite it. (She'd had many enough in her lifetime to know.) Something is slightly off and she can't quite figure out what.
They were drinking, that she remembers. Lee was there. Captain Thrace similarly, both being overly polite with each other in a way that seemed more hostile than insults would have been, at least until they seemed to mellow a little. Bill was there, he had invited her and she...
Bill. Bill.
Bill's hands up her skirt, Bill's tongue dancing against hers, Bill's legs carrying them both as she locked her own around his waist, Bill's eyes never leaving her face as she smiled at him. Bill's rack and she still feels a little sore from what happened there.
Happened here, because she opens her eyes to find she's still in his rack. He's got an arm casually around her and she's got a leg not so casually pressed between his and his face is close enough she can see his eyelids flutter now and then.
She's slept with him. It has been a possibility for a while, she has to admit. She's seen speculation in his eyes often enough to know it wouldn't be out of the blue for him either, but... But she can't remember making the choice to last night, can only remember eating and drinking and then images of her and Bill and foreplay, like a movie being watched by her rather than participating.
Maybe it's the alcohol, but she doesn't think so. Either way, she extracts herself carefully from Bill's loose hold (he sighs a little in his sleep, but doesn't stir) and uses five minutes to locate all the pieces of her clothing. It would be easier if she turned more lights on, but she doesn't dare. Doesn't want Bill awake right now.
This isn't fleeing. This is tactical retreat.
(She must be a politician through and through now, she thinks. She even lies to herself.)
II
There are a few things Lee might expect to wake to.
Dee, not very pleased at all. A mighty hangover. Maybe a pilot whose bed he's fallen asleep in instead of going home to Dee. Maybe even the Colonel, telling him oversleeping is not behaviour acceptable in a Major at all.
Not his father, looking like fury and fear at once.
"What the frak happened last night?" the Admiral demands, and Lee knows whatever happened, it didn't just happen to him.
Frak. Kara.
II
Kara has been expecting someone for the last hour. While waiting and pushing her breakfast around the plate, she's been considering the various possibilities of who might come.
The Admiral himself, maybe. If Bill comes, she knows she'll be forgiven. If he doesn't, she's less sure.
Guards, to stick her in the brig and then her careeer will be frakked too. It's a possibility, but she thinks maybe not the most obvious one. They need her as a pilot too much.
Lee, who will be the most awkward of all given a few hours ago he frakked her against a desk and made (bad) puns while at it. He might not yet have realised why he let go of all inhibitions.
Sam, who's heard from Dee, who found out because Lee has a conscience and admitted it all. Sam will be disappointed, but perhaps not surprised. That might be worst of all.
She doesn't expect the President, face composed and clothes just a little rumpled still.
"I'm not having a hangover,am I?" Roslin asks quietly and Kara shakes her head.
II
Algae juice isn't quite orange juice, but Bill still drinks it, watching his son look as awkward as he feels.
"I think the dessert was drugged," Lee admits, swirling his own juice around and around. "I remember... This sudden heat, and..."
"You and Kara left," Bill finishes and Lee winces a little. "Whatever happened is between you and her and your spouses, son. I'm not going to ask."
"I'm not going to ask either," Lee says evenly.
"Fair shot," Bill admits. Not that he would answer. Not sure he even knows the answer, with Laura gone when he woke. "I'll have to talk to her, son. She drugged two superior officers and the President of the Twelve Colonies. That has consequences. You know that."
"I know," Lee says. "I'd like to talk to her first."
"Do so," Bill says, finishing the juice and rising. He stops halfway to the door, looking back at his son that still hasn't touched the juice at all.
"Lee?"
"Yes, Dad?"
"Do you love her?"
Lee looks blank for a moment. "Dee or Kara?"
"If you have to ask me which, maybe you have a few questions to ask yourself."
II
"I don't know what I was thinking," Kara admits. Roslin is still just watching her; has been through the whole explanation, making no comments at all. "That it would be a laugh, maybe."
"No," Roslin says sharply. "You're reckless, not thoughtless. You didn't drug the dessert for a laugh."
"No."
"I doubt Admiral Adama and myself were the reason."
"You weren't," Kara agrees. "I thought you were frakking already. That it wouldn't matter."
Roslin doesn't even rise an eyebrow, nothing to reveal if that assumption is true or not. It's too bad the President doesn't play triad. She's got the face to bluff it entirely, Kara thinks.
"Major Adama, then."
"Yes."
"I don't think he will be any happier with this than me," Roslin says, and Kara is starting to wish anyone else would have come. Even guards. "You must have known that. So why do this?"
"Because I know that," Kara says simply.
II
"Sam," Dee acknowledges, catching up to him in the hallway.
"Dee."
"Lee didn't come home last night; he stayed in his old quarters."
"Kara got back in the middle of the night."
Dee nods, half expecting it. It still makes her a little cold. Suspicion is one thing. Knowledge is another.
"Do you ever feel we're in their way?" she asks, but Sam shakes his head.
"No. I sometimes feel they are."
II
Laura has changed and showered when Bill finally comes to her on Colonial One. He can still see a little moisture in her hair, making the colour a little darker. He can remember the feeling of running his fingers through it too, and he feels a slight itch to do it again.
He doesn't, folding his hands instead and sitting down by her desk.
"Admiral," she says formally, then seems to regret it, shaking her head a little.
"It appears Captain Thrace drugged the dessert last night," Bill says, the opening line to a speech he's prepared carefully in his head, but she cuts in before he can even properly begin.
"I know."
He looks surprised at her, she leans back in her chair a little.
"I asked her," she says simply. "She admitted it readily enough."
"How did you know it was her?"
"Process of elimination. Lee wouldn't. You wouldn't. She is unpredictable. An asset as a soldier, as I understand it."
"Yes," he says, exhaling a little. "Laura... I am sorry."
She shakes her head. "Not your fault."
"We're both still stuck with the consequences of it," he points out.
"Yes," she agrees. "What are we going to do about it?"
"I don't know," he says and the silence seems quite loud.
II
Lee is as angry as Kara imagined, but the sadness she glimpses underneath his rage she didn't consider at all.
"Of all the irresponsible things you've done over the years, Kara..." he pauses, shaking his head a little at the ceiling. "This, this is a whole new level. You put some mind-altering substance in the dessert and then fed it to us, you made my dad and the President..."
He looks a little ill for a moment, as if remembering something from the dinner last night. (The President's leg under the table or the Admiral's hands above it, she wonders briefly.)
"Half the Fleet thinks they're already doing it," she says calmly and he glares at her.
"They might have wanted to sleep with each other. Doesn't mean they were ready to. It's not your choice to make, Kara. And even if they were okay with it, which they're not, that still leaves me and you."
"I wanted to sleep with you," she says, brutally honest. "I don't want to divorce Sam, but I still want to frak you until you get out of my head. This way, you don't have to feel guilty about it."
He doesn't look grateful at all, she considers.
When he pushes her against the wall, she doesn't fight back, just watches his face inches from hers. His jaw is set like stone; his face so sculpted for a moment he looks like Apollo in marble.
Then he is kissing her, hard and she bites down on his bottom lip until she tastes blood. His hands are on her wrists, pinning her hands to the wall and keeping her from touching him like she did last night.
Getting even a little, she thinks. He didn't have control then. He does now.
He pulls back as fast as he went in, looking at her with something like despair.
"You want to frak me and not take responsibility for it? Damn you, Kara."
Then he walks out and leaves her there, breathing heavily.
Damn us both, she thinks.
II
After Bill leaves, Laura sits in her chair and watches nothing in particular, just letting her mind pick at the knot it seems to be in.
She can't quite detest Captain Thrace and can't quite let it go, either. Can't quite be comfortable sleeping with Admiral Adama under those circumstances and can't quite say it would never have happened under any other.
They can pretend it never happened, but that has consequences too. Awkwardness to start with, a few other possibilities to follow.
She doesn't really like any of them.
Maybe there's a different choice to make. An actual choice.
II
Dee is sitting at the table writing when Lee enters and her smile seems a little forced when she looks up.
He sits by her, taking her hand. "Dee..."
"No," she says firmly.
"No?"
"Don't ease your bad conscience by hurting me."
"I don't want to lie to you."
"Don't. Just don't tell me," Dee says simply. "I don't want to know. If you feel bad, go box a punching bag. Knock out some Raiders. Don't make me feel bad too."
He goes for the punching bag in the end.
II
Kara marches into the Admiral's quarters with the determination of a pilot on a fatal mission, hurling herself at danger the only way she knows how.
"I did it, sir. It was all me. Lee didn't know. I did it," she says in one breath, standing to attention but keeping her just above him.
Bill nods slowly, putting his elbows on the desk. She feels for a moment like a child before a teacher and wonders if this is how Lee feels all the time.
"I'm disappointed," he says and his voice is filled with it. She'd rather take his anger any day. "You're dismissed, Captain."
She stares at him, but he doesn't fill the silence with anything at all. "That's it?"
"You're going to live with what you did," Bill says, still not looking right at her. "That's your punishment. I can't think of any worse. Putting you in the brig never seems to have much effect anyway."
II
Lee is already at the punching bag when Kara gets there and she watches him from the door for a while, having a pretty good idea it's her he's having a go at. They squared off once before and it did clear the air a little.
Maybe it can work again.
"What did the bag ever do to you?" she calls, and he looks up.
"Frakked me, married another guy in the morning. Drugged me, frakked me and was still married to another guy in the morning," he says, planting a fist in the bag and watching it move. "Gave me pictures of my father and the President in bed and the soundtrack to go with it."
"Sounds fairly unforgivable."
"That's the problem. I can't stop wanting to forgive her. I can't stop wanting..."
He looks at her and she walks up to the bag, stilling it.
"I couldn't forget Sam while I was with you. I can't forget you while I'm with Sam. I can't stop wanting."
"You can't start, Kara," he says. "Are you trying to get me or push me away? You keep putting something between us. Sam. Marriage. A drug. Why?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me when you figure it out," he says, and hits the bag again.
II
Bill is more than a little surprised to see her, Laura notes. He invites her into his quarters readily enough, but he can't quite keep his face even.
"I know what we're going to do about it," she says as he sits down on the couch. She doesn't join him, instead lifting her hands to the buttons in her shirt. He stares and she can't say she blames him. "Frak it."
"Frak it," he repeats, following her fingers with his eyes as she unbuttons all the way down.
"We slept together, not wholy by choice, but not entirely against our will either."
"Yes," he says, voice hoarse and raw enough to make her feel a flash of heat to her cheeks.
"That shouldn't be a first time," she goes on, brushing the shirt off her shoulders and letting it slide off her hand and onto the floor. "This should be."
He rises slowly onto his feet, looking at her, finally leaning forward and kissing her shoulder softly.
"This time, it is my choice," she says. "Our choice, if you want."
"Our choice," he agrees, kissing her slowly and leisurely, a strange contrast to the night before. But then, she thinks, that was lust. This isn't just.
They're going to have to deal with the consequences of that too some day, but for now, she takes his hand and follows him to his rack.
II
When Lee's all punched out, Kara locks his head between her hands, holding firmly and looking him straight in the eye.
"I'm going to figure it out," she vows, kissing him as softly as she can. "I promise, Lee. I'll figure it all out and I'll tell you."
He doesn't look convinced, but he does look almost hopeful, she thinks.
II
Laura sleeps lightly, waking every now and then to look at him sleepily before drifting off again. Her hair tickles a little when she moves, as her head is resting firmly on his chest. He doesn't mind.
That was as a first time should be, he has to agree. And pretty good for a second time too.
He might even come to forgive Kara in time after all. She is more self-destructive than anything, but others keep getting stuck in her blast zone. He has seen it before, just closed his eyes to it.
Will have to close his eyes to it again. Lee and Dee, Lee and Kara, Kara and Sam, only one of whom is his child and would very much resent any parental interference.
Not that he'd know how to fix it anyway. Everything has consequences. Especially solutions.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" Laura whispers, eyes still closed.
"Just thinking."
"About?"
"Frakking consequences."
She giggles softly, the most comforting noise he knows along with Galactica's steady groans.
"They can wait till the morning," she says. "Goodnight, Bill."
II
Sam doesn't wake this time when Kara gets home and she takes a hurried shower, washing the sweat off her before heading to bed. There is a little room beside him and she wriggles in. Even falling asleep, he's made space for her next to him, as he always does.
"I made the Old Man frak the President. I slept with Lee," she tells Sam. He shifts slightly in his sleep, moving his mouth a little without any words coming from it. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not sorry enough to let him go. I'm sorry I can't let you go. I'm sorry I suck at apologising, I don't do it very often."
She breathes and watches his chest rise and fall, slowly and steady and sure. Safe. It's just so hard to stop playing with danger when she's made a career and life out of it.
Reckless Kara Thrace, she thinks. She never did care much for the frakking consequences.
That doesn't make them go away, it seems. Any of them.
She's really done it this life, she knows.
Maybe what she really needs is a new one to start over. Not just a new day, but a new Kara, mark II improved version, less prone to frak-ups and their consequences.
Maybe that would be a terrible dull one.
"Goodnight, Sam," she says and sleeps.
FIN
