Apollo struggles.
Its not that he is stupid by any stretch of imagination. On the contrary he is very quick on his feet concerning tactics, his response time in a viper is only second to one in the known fleet. He earned every grade he achieved and is a rule book junkie. But Apollo isn't the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to romantic interest. He has fairly good instinct about people he just doesn't have a clue about people's intentions for him. He has no attraction radar. He doesn't seem to realize his magnetism.
He seems to turn a blind eye to women in general when it comes to their motivation towards him.
That being said, it comes as no surprise that he has no clue about why Dee is looking at him like she is and how he has landed in this situation with her laying on top of him nose to nose and when the alarm bells go off its in retrospect.
The whole instance would have been easily avoided if he had realized what was going on. Again he doesn't understand the gravitational pull of his heavenly body. His head is oft too busy with details, plans, lists, strategies, even day dreams to be bothered with how he effects others. Its not selfish, its not ego, its definitely not vacant. He just has no emotional aptitude. Its across the board, he is always genuinely surprised to find he is loved. His father has shocked him recently with his admissions. Lee is not an asshole, he really did not think his father gave a flying frak about him. Hence the shock and chagrin when the elder Adama expressed not being able to leave him. Lee Adama has a huge blind spot and its costing him lots.
He understands sex. He likes it. He knows it's not love.
He is slightly slow on the uptake when it comes to flirting and right at this moment he is paying the price. Dee's soft breath has ceased as he looks into her emerald eyes and freezes. The rise and fall of his chest lifting her and lowering her respectively. He had thought it would be cute to knock her elbow out, to make the point that she needed to lock it. It was for exactly point 5 seconds, until the smile faded and an awkward moment of extreme proximity commenced. When Dualla stood to go to her boyfriend at the door of the gym Apollo had the sense to kick himself mentally for being so dense. And to be glad that his body hadn't responded to what his mind was just beginning to grasp. Respect, camaraderie, and friendship were what he had counted on with Anastasia but he knew that what had just passed between them was none of those things.
Pretty girls, well its not like he didn't notice them. He was a man. He appreciated an attractive woman, he simply didn't dwell on it much unless there was a reason. Or it was in the right context. Meeting a woman in a bar, well that was easy, men who served the colonies were indoctrinated into the whole base barfly thing as soon as they were part of the military it was nearly a right a passage. He could flirt with the best of em.
Pilot groupies had been fun until they expected more than talk. Then they were just plain scary. Not that Apollo was a coward. He just needed to be more than the icon that those type of woman wanted. It was disturbing and somewhat disgusting to realize that as long as he had wings, they were interested. They didn't care that he read banned books or that he had been accepted to war college. Those women were about the flying. In his mind that made no sense, if they wanted it so bad, why weren't they up there?
Apollo was good at not seeing the women he worked with or those he called friends as females. In his head he tended to remove gender to allow him to function without the gender role fail safes that some men did. It was his mother's fault, teaching him that women should be equal, and also that he needed to be respectful of people regardless of sex. Omitting the fail safes had made his friendships more honest without the usual tension that dating brought on. It was also incredibly naïve, and had cost him more probable mates than he realized if he went back and examined how many of his 'friends' took his blind approach to friendship as disinterest in anything more and had moved on to more responsive pathways.
Living in Galactica's fishbowl was taking a toll on his prescribed solution to the gender issues with friendship. It was also killing his resolve to keep those things separate, as it was impossible to not realize that the women he worked with were essentially humanities last options for relationships, his dating pool was not going to expand anytime soon. He wasn't consciously thinking about any of this but the incident with Dee had made one thing clear.
She was thinking about it.
He did not know if he should be scared about that or not.
The list of things that would open up and possibly back fire on him if he even considered the idea of Galactica's women as potential prospects was staggering and frankly frightening. There were things about himself he wasn't willing to explore yet. He had stuffed too much down to stay sane. He knew everyone thought he was repressed, he nearly laughed when he realized that they had no idea how much so, or about what. He made conscious efforts to shut off certain things and even Starbuck hadn't realized how much he programmed himself to ignore. For that he was glad or she would have felt obligated to tear down his carefully constructed schematic.
He knew that the repression which kept him sane while he had served was also responsible for his dramatic mood swings and his equal opportunity grudge distribution. He stayed mad over things because there was a switch somewhere that needed to be thrown for him but he had no one in his life to throw it. The softer sex, was considered equal and he hadn't even bothered to try to get in touch with his feminine side. His balance was off, his wingman was too macho to help, or at least he thought so. He was wrong. He wasn't ready for that possibility yet. He honestly didn't consciously see Starbuck as a woman most of the time.
Colonial day had come as a shock.
Kissing her, also a shock.
He did not know how many times he touched her, it wasn't conscious, it was just something he did. She didn't seem to notice it either. If other people did, and they did, they kept it to themselves assuming more than was really there. If those same people had known Zak, they would have been surprised to see that Zak and Lee had touched as much if not more than Kara and Lee do, though it was almost always through Zak's initiation. Lee was not particularly tactile, it is his individual response to Kara as an extension of Zak. It is completely subconscious.
It is making her crazy.
Though she couldn't label it or put it to words, it had been constant and with every touch and every little fraction of comfort she got from it he tore down her walls. Without trying, without caring and without even knowing it. She was loathed to admit it. Even after the VP debauchery, she couldn't bring herself to admit why she had called out for Lee. She knew he mattered to her and she rationalized it by thinking perhaps it was lack of options. Giaus hadn't been who she wanted to be with so it was natural for her mind to wander. She had been sorry.
She loved Lee. She was pretty sure she couldn't be in love with Lee. It had been some sort of fluke. He was sexy, damn straight, he ran around in a towel in front of her all the time. He touched her all the time. She knew his smell, his walk, the different ways he held his head if he was listening to her or not. But that was normal for friends. She had simply reached out with her drunk mind and grabbed something familiar to cling to while being in a compromising position with someone less than desirable. Right?
His friendship was more to her than all the fraks in her lifetime. She had been contrite because he was disappointed in her. She had been defensive because he judged her.
She had been shocked when he kissed her.
He didn't know what had made him do that.
Apollo definitely struggles.
So does Starbuck.
Its gonna be a spectacularly weird day if either of them ever figure out why they do the things they do. It could result in total meltdown. Lee suspects he will die before he understands her. Kara wholeheartedly expects the same. What they want, conscious or not, is a totally different matter.
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