Fall Out Boy is love.
It is 2:45 in the morning. Why am I not asleep?
...Yeah, I'm not too sure either.
Am I more than you bargained for yet?
I've been dying to tell you anything you want to hear,
Cause that's just who I am this week.
Lie in the grass, next to the mausoleum...
He wishes he could hold her at night.
He has the same dream every night.
It is always so vivid that sometimes he wonders if it is actually a dream.
It goes like this: He can see her from the tree line. She is standing in a sunny wood, smoothing a map out on the hood of her old truck back home on Caprica. "We're gonna hit the refueling station," she says. He runs to her, calling her name, throwing his arms around her -- she doesn't see him. She's still talking, gesturing, pointing out spots on the map. He knows they are coming. He screams at her to get down, leave, take cover, anything! But when the bullets start flying she is at total unawares. He watches in horror the slow-motion impact of the hot metal to her body to the ground. And that is when he always wakes up.
"No... Kara!"
Sweat pours down his face, solidifying in small pools as soon as it hits the frozen floor of the cooling unit. He runs a hand through his hair. "Frack."
He has the same dream every night.
One night, he opens his eyes and finds Laura Roslin staring at him. He is unsure of what to say.
(Not that he needs to worry. The former president is not one to be a part of an awkward sort of silence.)
"Lee, do you love her?"
He blinks, still breathing hard, still praying that Kara doesn't die. "Excuse me?"
Laura's face smiles, but her eyes do not. If Lee has the same weakness for his lead pilot that he does for his father if he loves her, the mission to Kobol may not be as successful as had been anticipated. "Do you love Kara?"
He blinks again. Does he love Kara? His father always used to say that if you thought you loved someone, you did, even if you had doubts. That love was all thoughts, that there was no manual.
He thinks he loves her.
He lets his eyes slip out of focus for just long enough to collect the nerve to stare down the imposing woman in front of him. "Madam President, all due respect, but I'd appreciate it if we stay professional. Lieutenant Thrace is my best pilot and a friend, nothing more." He attempts a grin, but it comes out as a weak grimace.
Roslin smiles again, not at all satisfied. "Yes, Captain, I understand fully. Thank you."
He stands up to leave, brushing minute wrinkles from his jacket, brow furrowed. He sighs, and all at once his eyes soften and his shoulders slouch. "Yes."
He turns on his heel and walks away, thinking of how his best pilot's body would feel against his.
I'm just a notch in your bedpost,
But you're just a line in a song.
Drop a heart, break a name,
We're always sleeping in, and sleeping for the wrong team.
He refuses to hold her at night.
On the nights that Anders goes out on patrol, she sits in her truck and plays her father's piano music and thinks about life.
It is always so disjointed that sometimes she wonders if this is all actually just a dream.
She likes to think that it is, and she imagines herself waking up and going running with Lee in the morning and having a good laugh over this horrible figment of her imagination, then taking a shower and flying a Viper in the day, then winning a few card games and trading stories with fellow pilots at night. Maybe later she'll have dinner with the Old Man and they'll talk about life and Vipers and Lee and how much she can't stand Tigh. Maybe Lee will join them and they can have a full family dinner -- the three of them are all that's left of the great Adama line. The Old Man likes to lament this, but she never really cares. They are more of a family now, in the midst of this war, than they ever were in the past, when there were more members.
Sometimes she likes to think that she is actually dead, and that being on Caprica is some sort of cruel purgatory before going to heaven. (Her heaven will be the cockpit of a Viper; that much she knows for certain.)
One night, her truck door is wrenched open, filling the cab with sweet, rain-scented air that pounds angrily on the world. She knows him by his sweaty, distinctive, cinnamon-and-cloves smell that mingles with the rain. "It rainin' out there?"
"Very funny." He shakes his hair around, reminding her of a dog a neighbor had when she was a kid. It used to try to shake the rain away, too. He slams the door behind him.
She purses her lips, thinking that whatever he wants to say, she's not going to like it. "So... what's on your mind?" She pretends that it could be anything, but she knows that it is probably not anything. It is probably something. It is probably a pregnant toaster of a something.
"She's been gone too long, Starbuck."
"Gee, you know, at first I thought you were going to tell me something really interesting, like, oh, maybe, it's raining? But then I just knew that you don't like rain." Her head falls back against the seat with a soft thunk as she turns it to look at the wet man in the passenger's seat. "How can you not like rain?"
"I guess I'm just not crazy like some people. I like to be dry. I like the sun." He glares at her, sighs, softens. "Sharon's been gone way too long."
A muscle around her eye twitches, but she attempts to talk calmly, evenly, quietly, slowly. "Karl, when are you gonna get it through that thick head of yours that you can't love a toaster? They aren't there for us to love and make babies with. They're there to kill us. Why don't you listen to me?" Getting madder, she grits her teeth, absentmindedly fingering Zak's ring on her thumb. "You can't... love... a toaster." She closes her eyes and listens to his cinnamon-and-cloves breathing pattern drown out the rain and the piano. She opens her eyes, looks at him half-pleadingly, lets her head fall to rest on his shoulder.
He watches the ring twirling on her hand as he draws her closer to him even though he knows he shouldn't. She feels and smells good like vanilla and incense, and he thinks back to the days when he used to think he loved her. He loses himself in the memory, stroking her hair as her breath quickens to match his. "Kara..." He tilts her chin up to look at her, and suddenly he can't decide if she still tastes like vanilla and incense or not.
She can't decide if he'll taste like cinnamon and cloves, or if he'll taste like a toaster.
(What do toasters taste like?)
He brushes his thumb over her cheekbone, weaves his fingers through her grimy hair, pulls her gently to him. Her eyes slip shut as she finds familiar territory; lips, teeth, tongue, hands, face, body. (He still tastes like cinnamon and cloves.) His other hand tugs at her waist, coaxing her closer. She catches it, knitting their fingers together, tugging him the other way so that she ends up on her back across the seats and he is on top. (She still tastes like vanilla and incense.) The piano music reaches an ending, cuts itself off; and the only sound is the rain on the roof of the truck and her vanilla and incense breath in his face.
The silence snaps him half-back to reality. What is he doing?
"Kara," he says again, this time with more resolve, "I can't----"
She cuts him off with a look. "Just forget it. We need each other." Her eyebrows rise a few inches, wordlessly asking to go back to Galactica before the war (and before Lee and before Sharon). She moves her hips to meet his, rubbing against him in quiet desperation. "Karl." She kisses him again, this time gazing straight into his eyes. "Please," she whispers, chin quivering subtly.
It almost works.
This is their routine, and he falls into it like clockwork. He strokes her hair and tells her that everything's gonna be okay, that nothing's gonna get her, that he's gonna protect her, that ---
He can't say it. He used to think he loved her. Now he thinks he loves Sharon. He can't say it.
"We can't do this, Kara."
"But I..." She fumbles nervously with her ring. He knows she's missing Zak and she knows he's missing Sharon and they both know perfectly well that when that happens, all they need to do is find each other. "Yes we can!" The words come out meaner than she intends, snapping into his face, which she touches softly as though looking for a wound where they landed. "Yes we can," she repeats, snaking her hand to the back of his head. "We can do anything." She draws him in and he can't help himself. They kiss slow and soft.
Before he can stop himself, he breathes out things he shouldn't. "You're so beautiful."
"Karl," comes her reply at an equal volume, "I need you."
And she's got his shirt off, just like that. (Hers soon joins it in a puddle by an old stogie box on the floor of the cab of the truck.)
But he makes his fatal slip as he kisses his way down her ticklish side. The nearly inaudible "I love you" catches him totally by surprise.
He doesn't think he loves her. That was a long time ago.
So why did he say it?
She doesn't catch the anger that smolders in his eyes till she catches the sharp slap on the side of her face. "Frakking bitch," he spits out, and that stings more than the palm of his hand.
The worst part is the way she freezes as he grabs his shirt and opens the door with a rough jerking motion. Thoughtfully, coldly, as he puts his shirt on, "I hope your friend Anders dies out there tonight."
"Karl..."
"Don't call me that," he snarls. "It's always the same with you. Oh Karl this and oh Karl that and then I wake up in the morning wondering why I'm naked next to you." He scowls at her for a few beats. "I'm gonna be a father, okay? I can't do this anymore."
He slams the door.
We're going down, down in an earlier round,
And Sugar, we're going down swinging.
I'll be your number one with a bullet--
A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it.
He holds her at night.
The first time it happens is the second time he has touched her.
He does the nightly headcount -- where is she?
"Look in the truck," Helo offers. "She's probably gettin' smashed in there."
She is not in her truck.
He finds her on top of the flat roof of the old school on her back, naming constellations and counting stars. "You can't count all the stars, Starbuck."
"My name is Kara," she says, "and that one's mine. My dad picked it out for me. See?" She points to a bright greenish dot near the edge of Picon. "He said that I was as pretty as the Piconian moon." She laughs. "He could be kind of lame sometimes, but he was an artist, so I guess that's to be expected."
He sits down next to her head, peering into her eyes from an upside-down point of view. "You're prettier than that old piece of rock."
"Ya think?"
"Mmm, mmhmm." He grins and is about to say something else smooth (he prides himself on being smooth) when a sharp whistling sound pierces the night. "Frak, cylons--- get out of the moonlight!" (She does not have to be told to do this; she knows the sound of artillery as well as he does.) He shrinks against the shadowed side of one of the many round chimneys poking into the sky, grasping her wrist and pulling her with him. She can hear the metal bodies marching in the distance.
"How far away?"
He listens for a few moments, then whispers into her ear. "Five clicks, maybe ten." Her eyes widen and he slips an arm around her waist as they huddle in the shadow. "Don't worry, though... They're never gonna find this place."
"How do you know?" she hisses back.
The metal feet grow louder; he shushes her as they cling to each other. After a few minutes they can hear the evil creatures going away to the west. "'Cause I'm not gonna let 'em," is his defiant answer.
They go inside and he asks her if she would like something to drink.
Yes.
She tells him not to call her Starbuck. She wants to be Kara, not Starbuck The Viper Pilot. She wants him to be Anders, not Anders The Famous Pyramid Player. Is that okay?
Yes.
He tastes of rust and alcohol and hope. She had never known that hope had a taste, but she supposes that it does, since he tastes like it. "You taste like hope."
He laughs. "Really? I thought I would've tasted of gin. But hope is nice."
Because it is the first night, he doesn't mind squeezing both of them into his tiny bunk.
"Yeah, I think hope's just a little better for you than gin... But either work about as well."
It is a long night.