'ROUND THE TABLE
Title: 'Round the Table
Author: donnatellaMarks (Diane)
Rating: Eh, T? Maybe less.
Pairings: Lee/Kara past, undertones, implied…
Characters: Ensemble, Lee, Kara
Timeline: Season 1, somewhere after 1x08 but before the Lee/Kara Colonial Day fiasco
Disclaimer: If I owned them, would I really be writing fanfic?
Summary: "I had an Idea." The mischievous smile is back and you can practically hear the capital letter. Lee Adama groans because he's been on the receiving end of more than one of her Ideas.
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"What do you say we spice this game up?" Starbuck asks the table, grinning roguishly. Boomer, Crashdown, Kat, Hotdog, and Apollo form a circle around the triad table. Gaeta and Dee represent the CIC at this game. It's good to have a few hours off, a few hours to breathe in the smoke of the card table, far away from the Cylon threat that now pervades their days.
"Strip triad?" Crashdown suggests, a mild leer coloring his expression. Hotdog agrees wholeheartedly.
All the women shoot him down, including Starbuck. Apollo raises an eyebrow. "How unlike you, Lieutenant. Turning down a chance at exhibitionism?"
Starbuck shoots him a look and he is silent. "Captain, this is the military. I'm pretty sure every man and woman at this table has seen me naked."
"I haven't," Hotdog raises his hand, a shit-eating grin on his face that Kara wants to punch off.
Crashdown joins in the Starbuck-baiting, raising his hand as well. "Nor I," he points out.
Kat's cackling now, raising her hand. "Me either," she snorts. Joining in on the fun, Boomer's, Gaeta's, and Dee's hands fly up to a chorus of "not me."
If anyone notices how the CAG's hands stay on the table, they choose to ignore it. The moonshine that the deck crew has been making is flowing freely, but no one's drunk enough to open that can of worms.
Kara waves a hand, dismissing them with a look. "Just because you all never took the opportunity, doesn't mean it wasn't there. No, I had an Idea." The mischievous smile is back and you can practically hear the capital letter.
Lee Adama groans because he's been on the receiving end of more than one of her Ideas.
"Strip triad is boring. How about a more inventive approach, eh? I think we all know each other pretty well. Maybe a little too well," she shoots a look no one can define towards Apollo. No one wants to define. Still not drunk enough—Starbuck's left hook would still hurt.
"Let's say… winner of each hand gets to share an embarrassing story about the loser of her choice. Or ask a question to said loser, which they must answer in truth."
The players are intrigued, but not a little worried. "Her choice, Lieutenant?" Apollo snorts and Starbuck grins so broadly he's pretty sure he can see every single one of her teeth.
Maybe the moonshine is starting to kick in, but somehow Kara has gotten them all to agree to what could only lead to disaster. Lee knows her well enough to spot the warning signs-- the glint in her eye, the impossibly wide smile. Her brain is working overtime to find new ways to frak with people.
He'll never tell her, but he thinks she's damn amusing sometimes.
She deals out a hand, and their game begins. She wins easily. He's known her since he was 18, and he's yet to figure out how she gets so frakkin' lucky.
Starbuck leans back in her seat, runs a hand through her short (but getting longer! She can never remember why exactly she felt the need to cut it so short before the end of the world) hair, and the grin appears.
Lee knows he is in trouble.
"Hmm… I can't think of any embarrassing questions just yet, but…embarrassing stories? Now, I got plenty of those." Her lips curl a little too sweetly for Lee's liking.
"You know our CAG? Our prudish, uptight CAG?" she leans in to tell the group, ignoring Lee's 'Hey!' of protest. "The dear Captain Adama lost his virginity at 14. To his younger brother's babysitter," she lets out a grin, and Lee is unbelievably relieved. She has some seriously damaging material on him. This, well, this…
The girls are chuckling, looking at Apollo in a way that, quite frankly, disturbs him. Gaeta chokes on his drink, and Crashdown alternates between patting his back and then patting Lee's back in congratulations. Hotdog just applauds.
Apollo rolls his eyes, and Kara smiles, and Lee is glad this is going to be only mildly embarrassing and in the spirit of fun.
Another hand is dealt before he has to give details. He's grateful, amused, and loose. He's ready to play again, because this has potential. He takes his cards off the table and Kara's smiling at him like she accomplished her mission.
He folds, and Kara wins the hand again. There is a twinkle in her eyes when she asks Gaeta how long it's been since he got some.
An uncharacteristic, sly look appears on his face, and Kara is shocked silent when he answers confidently: "This morning."
Hotdog is applauding again, and Dee is staring at him, trying to figure out exactly who on this ship he is frakking. The rest are a little too shocked to question.
Dee gets lucky and wins the next hand, and tells the group that Boomer walked into the CIC yesterday, disheveled and her flight suit inside-out, after being called from the deck.
Lee finally wins a hand and tells the table it looks as if Petty Officer Dualla has a huge hickey on her throat. The group cranes their necks to look and she blushes noticeably, bright against her dark skin. She smacks Apollo, hard, across the shoulder, but everyone can tell she really doesn't mind all that much.
Starbuck wins again to tell everybody that their CAG is a weepy drunk. Lee keeps his face a blank mask as the table laughs, but Kara can see the faint flushing at his neck.
When Crashdown wins a hand, he casually mentions that Hotdog has proclaimed it his official life mission to bed Crew Specialist Cally.
Hotdog, still flushed, wins the next hand to ask if anyone's ever had sex while flying.
Starbuck, Boomer, and after a second, Apollo, all raise their hands guiltily. The others break out in applause again (they've all been drinking for a while now), and spend the next few seconds wondering about the physical logistics of it.
Kara wins the next hand and tells the table that Ellen Tigh keeps hitting on their CAG, and inappropriately groping him in the corridor.
The more-than-tipsy crowd laughs, and Lee raises an eyebrow. "There's such a thing as appropriate groping in the corridors?" This only serves to set the players off again, and Kara smiles and sends him a wink. It's gone as soon as it came, and Lee is very glad no one is drunk enough yet to see the mooncalf expression that he's trying very hard to keep off his face.
Lee's feeling lucky, bets big, and wins the next hand on his bluff. He tells everybody that Kara owns more than one pair of high heels. In different colors.
She puts on a sour face that the rest of the table laughs at, but changes her mind mid-scowl, and smiles brightly, shrugging. "Well, they kept getting kicked up your ass, so, you know, I had to get more." Dee is doubled over on the table, more than a little drunk and laughing like Starbuck's words are the funniest things on earth.
Uh oh, Lee thinks. People are starting to get drunk enough now.
He's right, when Hotdog wins and asks Starbuck, his speech slurred, if she's ever frakked Apollo.
Kara's expression flits from the pure desire to hit something to a blank mask so quickly that Lee isn't really certain the rage was ever there at all.
There is an awkward second of silence, to which the whole table is trying not to look like they're listening intently.
"Not recently," she replies mildly, not looking anyone in the eye. It's not a lie. They haven't frakked. Recently. It's been years and now there is a distance, a space where they once fit seamlessly, and the ghost of his dead brother between them.
She quickly deals the cards again and the casual air of the game is back. More drinks are poured as the betting begins, and Lee lets out the breath he didn't know he had been holding. The quick glance from Kara means she heard the sharp exhale of air.
Everybody's laughing again when Boomer tells them that Crashdown has a debilitating fear of spiders. Dee frowns at the laughing group, defending him. "It's a valid fear!" Even Crashdown snorts at her words.
Kara wins, again, to tell the players that Lee has a tattoo on his ass. The peals of laughter ring out into Galactica's artificial night.
"I do not!" Lee says indignantly, but his protests don't matter, true or not, because they are drowned out by the sounds of drunken cheer.
the end.