Title- Love and Understanding
Author- Maevenly
Part- 1/2
Date- 09/19/06
Rating - Part One: PG13
Pairings/Characters - Lee/Kara, Helo.
Word Count- 3327
Category- Short Story
Genre- Romance, Angst, Drama and Humour.
Archiving- The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, all other's
please ask
Warnings- language, for now
Spoilers- After The Farm, but before Pegasus

Disclaimers- I don't own these characters and I don't make any money from writing these stories

Summary- Starbuck is in fine form, Kara is hurting and Lee decides to find out why, with a little help from Apollo and Helo.

LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING: Part One

"Listen – I do not care HOW long it takes, Specialist. You are going to detail that Viper, inside and out, until it looks as shiny as it did when it came off the assembly line. DO I MAKE MY SELF CLEAR?" Tyrol roared at the deckhand who had the distinct misfortune to be directly responsible for Galen being summoned to the XO's office and coming back to the hanger bay with a new orifice.

"But Chief – let me explain." The deckhand stammered.

"You have two choices, Specialist." Tyrol stepped closer to man serving under him. Looking down at the Specialist, Tyrol was pure intimidation when he delivered the other option

"The second choice involves me, strapping your naked ass to that cockpit over there," the Chief swung his arms to point out a Viper sitting behind and to the left of where he was dressing down his employee. "Now imagine the look on her face when she comes in for her maintenance shift and sees your sorry, shivering ass inside her Viper. What'll it be?"

Tyrol grunted derisively was he watched the deckhand waste no time in making up his mind. Nobody, not even the Chief, frakked with Starbuck's bird and kept both their testicles. Blowing some of his bad mood out of his nose, he tossed one more look at the specialist and decided that scrubbing scorch marks off of another Viper that some nugget had seared the frak out of when he got too close to another nugget's burner, was punishment enough for the lecture Tigh just gave him.

Stomping off to his Tool Room, Tyrol yanked open the hatch and slammed it shut. Various projects in different states of completion were all over the workbenches and tables. Scanning the room, something seemed out of place. Walking across the room, everything seemed in place – but something was off. Further back, behind an engine that was being reconstructed, was his still. The purveyor of the Chief's Special Brew out of which flowed a key bargaining chip when he needed something. No – the still was fine. Nothing was wrong there. Stacked on the floor, were bottles of his brew, still sealed and untouched.

"Oh, no. Please let me be wrong." A flash of insight flared. Moving aside a box of cleaning rags that never went to the laundry; he jimmied metal plating out of the wall and peered into the hiding spot. "Frak me."

Out of every batch he made, he made sure to set aside one jar in order to age it, make it a higher quality product. Higher quality meant higher proofage. Higher proofage, better quality translated to him being able to barter beyond a ship-to-ship capacity. It meant that he had something to trade with on the black market.

Out of the fifteen bottles he knew were in there, two were missing. By process of elimination, he had a fifty-fifty chance of knowing who might be able to shed some light on his missing bottles. That is, once this person recovered from the hangovers of all hangovers.

Coming out of the Tool Room, Tyrol barked.

"Get me the C.A.G. – and do not use the ship-wide frequency."

BSG Xxx BSG Xxx BSG Xxx BSG

Lee Adama was agitated. Here he was, on his day off, coming off three days of double shifts and a marathon Triad game, and does he get to go to his rack? No. He has to go and pull a babysitting gig, courtesy of an irate Chief. Well, he was not going to do it alone. It was a big ass ship and his quarry could be anywhere and there was the distinct possibility that his subject could double back to an area he had already searched. He was in no mood to chase his own tail. Cally, Helo and Racetrack each had a section of the ship assigned to them with strict instructions to report to him immediately should they come across the target and to play dumb should anyone else ask what they are doing – especially the commander.

Marching through the corridors, those who were foolish enough offer him a salute were given a terse nod in acknowledgement before he narrowed his eyes at the person who was interrupting the mission.

A buzzing in his ear had him tapping his earpiece in response. "This is Apollo. Go ahead."

"Target acquired." Helo's voice echoed in his head, as well as a lot of other chatter.

"Copy that." Lee stopped in the middle of the corridor and looked around him, "Location?"

"Central Mess," Helo responded.

"Stay there and establish a perimeter. I'm on my way." Turning on his heels, Lee changed the direction he was heading. "Don't do anything until I get there. Tell Cally and Racetrack to abort and fall back to primary positions."

"Copy that, Helo out."

The closer he got to the Mess Hall, the longer he had to graduate to be being outright pissed. He could hear his target clear out into the corridor, long before the door to The Mess came into sight. Crossing the threshold, he came up alongside Helo, who was propped against the inside of the door. Gaining the other man's side, for intends and purposes it looked like Lee was asking Helo what was on the menu.

"Where is she?" Lee asked, as his eyes quartered the room and scanned it section by section.

Pulling his lollipop from his mouth, he used it to point out the location of their target.

"There."

Lee all but groaned when he saw her.

Kara was standing up on top of one of the tables and was in the middle of a story that had every one howling with laughter along with her.

"Here I am, a lowly cadet, already on probation, puking my guts out. I know you know what I am talking about – the kind of puking where you expect your shoes to come out of your mouth? Anway. So here I am," Starbuck was all laughter and interrupting herself with her own laughter. "Lying on the floor, my head hanging on the side of the toilet, my shoes somewhere inside the toilet bowl, when the Senior Cadet comes into the lavatory and asks what is going on. I look up at him, reeking of alcohol, no shoes…"

Despite being pissed, Lee did not scowl at Kara's retelling of one of her more infamous escapades while at the Academy. And the fact that she was fixated on the fact that she puked up her shoes. She was plastered. A full-fledged, Dionysius channelled, Bacchanal fuelled bender. There were two things that made him smile. One was the fact that it would not be him nursing the hangover of the year when the alcohol left her system and two was the relief that she chose one of her stories – and not one of his – to tell to the entire crew.

Taking up a place on the opposite side of the doorframe as Helo, Lee settled his shoulders against the wall. After all, despite the fact that he could probably launch a Viper with what was currently flowing through her veins, it was a damn good story and she was telling it well. As long as one ignored the parts she repeated.

"So I look up, I look like crap-"

"Like you usually don't, Starbuck?" Someone catcalled from the audience.

"Frak you, you mother frakker. Meet me later and I will show you what a really ugly mother-frakker looks like." Cocking her head to one side, she brought a bottle to her lips and took a deep pull. "No – wait." She looked around and made eye contact with everyone else before settling on her heckler once again, "That would be me – holding up a mirror in front of your face!"

A spattering of 'damn!", "tough luck, kid', and 'that's a kill!" sprang up from the group sitting and standing around Starbuck as the appreciation for her verbal slam of the heckler reverberated across the room. Lee looked at Helo and they both shared a look of appreciation for her skills at one-liners, especially with her being as incredibly intoxicated as she was.

"So where was I?" Starbuck's face split in a goofy-drunk smile. A self-deprecating snort sounded as she asked the group about her story.

"About to take another drink," someone called out.

"Damn straight I was. Good call." She brought the bottle to her forehead and used it to salute the other person.

Chugging the brew for several seconds, she pulled the bottle away.

"And, without missing a beat, I clutched my right side," Kara brought the hand that held the bottle to her right side, re-enacting what she did that night, "And said – Oh! The Pain!"

Everyone erupted into more laughter.

"There was NO WAY I was going to be caught, ladies and gentlemen, for drinking on campus. I was underage, a first-year cadet, I was on PRO-BA-TION and I was – did I mention underage?" She repeated herself. Shaking her head, as if the thirty or so people around her suddenly became ninety people standing around her, it only took her a moment to recover.

"So, I FEIGNED appendicitis all the way to the Infirmary." She swung the bottle in the direction that the Infirmary she saw in her memory was located as applause and whistles sounded from those suitably impressed.

Helo, hearing this story for the first time, kept his eyes in Starbuck but spoke to Lee. "Must be nice to live out of the box like that, heh Apollo?"

Lee stifled the chortle that trickled his chest.

"There is only one problem when it comes to thinking like Starbuck. When you live out of the box for so long that you become a round peg trying to get into a square hole. You can do it – providing the square is large enough – but it never becomes a tight fit."

Nodding at Lee's insight, Helo narrowed his eyes at Starbuck once again as he watched her take another swig of the aged brew.

"Ten to one, she falls off that table before she takes her next shot."

Lee did not answer. His initial agitation was all but gone. Starbuck would be fine. Starbuck knew how to handle her liquor. Even of Starbuck landed on the floor, Starbuck would land on her feet. It was Kara he was concerned about. For Kara to retreat fully behind Starbuck's antics meant that she was hiding from something pretty painful and was counting on oblivion to be her ejection seat.

"And this – this was the best part." She took another swig. "Here I am, on a gurney, in the Infirmary, with an IV in my arm and a nurse walks by and makes a comment over the fact that I seem a little dehydrated. Gee? You think so? I just spent all night drinking and then puking. There is no WAY I could be dehydrated."

Starbuck voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Anyway – keep my mouth shut and pretend to doze off. A little while later, another nurse, an older Nurse Hatchet-type comes by. She makes a show of looking at my chart, looking at my drip and looking at me. She gives me this serious look and tells me – me! – that she cannot release the results of my blood work on account of patient confidentiality and that why don't I just tell her what is really wrong – you know – so that they can treat me better."

Lee actually thought that Helo might be right when he saw Starbuck wobble a little on the table as she built up to the climax of her story.

"So, I look up at her. And you know when you are drunk and you are at that place where paranoia starts whispering all sorts of strange things in your head? Well. I look at her, I think about the fact that I now I have been in the Infirmary for four hours and have sucked down two bags of fluids. I tell myself that I have now have two options. I can either tell the truth or not. Without missing a beat – do you know what I did?" She questioned her audience.

"What?" Many voiced asked at the same time.

Apparently unsatisfied with the collective answer, Lee and Helo watched as she did a complete circle, on the table, with the bottle extended at full reach, and ask again, this time near the top of her voice.

"Do you know what I did?"

"NO!" Everyone was caught up in the master storyteller's tale.

Drawing the bottle close to her right side, she pretended to collapse as a full body laugh racked her body.

"OH! THE PAIN!"

A resounding, enthusiastic, crowd-well-pleased applause filled the mess hall. Even the cooks, with spoons in their hands, came out for the punch line.

Taking his cue from Lee, Helo pushed himself free of the door jamb and together they worked their way across the room. Coming to a stop when he reached the table Starbuck was currently hold court from, Helo stretched out his hand to help her down.

When she refused to take Helo's hand, Lee watched as Karl began to disperse the crowd with some well-placed, quietly spoken words.

Starbuck's eyes were more glazed over than what he saw from across the room. But it was Lee who saw an echo of emotional pain flit around the edges of her face. Her mouth might be laughing, but it was the fact that she chose to tell a story where she screwed up that belied her mirth. Kara was starting to emerge from Starbuck's shadow. Apollo's loyalty to Starbuck mandated – in a context that was as natural and as necessary as breathing – that he watched her back. Lee's friendship and love for Kara made it intrinsic to his psyche to take care of her when she was not able to take care of herself. After all, she and he were connected in a way that transcended anything else.

"Oh no, people – look! It is the Big Bad C.A.G. and he has come to take away all our fun!" Starbuck said to her onlookers.

A groan broke out over the crowd as they were grudgingly made aware of impending shift changes and duties that had to be resumed.

"Okay Starbuck, the show's over. Let's get you down from there." Lee switched to being all Apollo for this one.

Crouching down on her heels, bending her knees, Starbuck used one hand to beckon Apollo closer and the other to brace herself against the tabletop while still holding onto her bottle.

"Wanna know a secret?"

Based on the vapours coming from her mouth, Apollo could fuel an entire squadron of Vipers with what was in her bloodstream.

"If you tell me you are going to get sick all over my uniform, I am going to tell you that we have been there, done that and that if it happens again, I am not going to be as nice as I was last time." Apollo played along with her question and answer game.

Helo raised an eyebrow at Apollo as he filed the need to find out the details of that story under 'Things to Bet With' at the next Triad game when he was out of cubits.

"The floor is moving!" Starbuck said in an overly loud, laugh laced whisper

Silencing the Raptor pilot with curt shake of his head, Apollo looked at Starbuck once more.

"Really now?" Apollo was amused but time was running out if he and Helo were going to get her out of here before Tigh or the Old Man caught them. "Are you going to come down or am I going to have to bring you down?"

Her response was a Starbuck smirk: part sneer, part teasing smile, part challenge. Lee could actually see her try to pull words together to make a coherent thought.

"There has not been a day that has been dawned in which, in your wildest dreams, you could even remotely consider taking me down."

"Hey Kara," Helo brushed Lee slightly to the side and came up on his left.

"Helo! My friend – you are my friend, right?" Starbuck listed a bit to her right before she regained her balance.

"You know it. The way you saved my ass back in Caprica, kicked some Cylon ass and brought me home? Hell yes, we are friends. This is why I am going to let you in on a little secret of my own."

"Oh! I LOVE secrets. I just told Apollo one and I know he won't tell anyone." Starbuck said as she put her fingers to her lips and turned them like she was locking them shut.

"Okay. Ready?" Helo asked.

Lee felt Helo shift him slightly back and centre of Starbuck.

"Lay it on me, my friend!"

Lee had to only adjust his stance a little to the left in order to catch a Starbuck that had been knocked out cold by Helo popping her in the jaw. She was not hurt; the Gods knew that they had done worse to each other. She was just knocked out and by the looks of things; any bruising would be minimal.

Sliding her up until her waist bent over his shoulder and her arms dangled down his back, Lee looked at Karl like the other man had read his mind.

"I was about to do that, you know."

"Yeah – but if you did it would be just one more thing between you two that she may not forgive you for when she wakes up. This way, she can forgive me after she has gotten me back and you can claim plausible denial ability." Clapping Lee's spare shoulder, Helo moved away and back towards the door.

Poking his head out, Lee was on his six when he said, "Okay – coast is clear."

Stepping out into the corridor, Lee double checked Helo's assessment. Snugly fitting one arm behind Starbuck's knees to keep her in place, Lee extended his free hand to Karl. "Thank you – we owe you one."

Popping his lollipop to the other side of mouth, Karl brandished the mostly empty bottle of brew. "I'll make sure to get this back to the chief. And, I will look forward to a full debriefing after you are released from Sickbay."

Hearing Helo's chuckles fade as the taller man walked away, Lee had to smile.

When it came to the woman he would lay his down his life for, one thing was certain when it came to Kara Thrace. It took only one interaction with her to decide whether you hated her or loved her.

Heading down in the opposite direction and avoiding some of the more populated corridors, Lee thought it was interesting that the people who hated Kara were the ones who feared her the most.

Hauling around sixty-seven inches of feminine muscles was something he could do for a while. Doing so while not getting caught by someone who would report that the C.A.G. was carrying an unconscious lead pilot was finite. It would probably end up with both of them in the brig.

With that thought in mind, Lee caught the next lift to C Deck and the last place anyone would look for either of them.