Galen Tyrol tightened his arms around Sharon and held on tightly as his breathing returned to normal. Sharon was mostly doing the same. Her arms were around him, and her grip was firm.
After taking a few more breaths and finally getting his head to stop buzzing, he eased his weight to the side and tugged Sharon with him. She obligingly curled into his body, her arms around him and her knee between both of his.
This was new. With Sharon, the sex had always been… beyond amazing. He had originally thought that it was the excitement of a forbidden affair, or even the risk of getting caught. Then Tyrol had almost lost her. As he had struggled through his duties on the flight deck, using every movement to thrust her as far from his mind as possible, he had come to a realization. That realization had frightened him. If he was honest with himself, it still did.
Because he hadn't been thinking about red-hot sex when he'd believed her lost. He had been thinking of long, dark hair. He had been seeing soft, brown eyes. He had been missing that one person who listened – really listened – when it had been a frakking bad day. When he'd honestly believed that he'd never see her again, the last thing on his mind had been sex.
And that put him… where? He had known that he loved her. He'd known that for several weeks. He had loved her as a friend, and he had loved the sex too. He also loved the hum of a well-tuned engine, the taste of a fine ambrosia on a particularly hot day, and he loved to watch a really intense game of Triad. Love was an easy emotion to define; it was an intense form of "like". Yes, he loved Sharon.
But was he in love? Because that was a different matter entirely, and one that was well out of his depth. Galen Tyrol had never really been in love. He had loved many women over the years, some more intensely than others. He'd had his heart battered a bit by those women, but he'd beaten a few hearts around himself. Still, he'd never had his heart truly broken, because he'd never been in love. He hadn't allowed himself that, because quite frankly it gave a woman a hell of a lot more power than he trusted her with. Could he trust Sharon with it? Did he have a choice?
"What are you thinking?" she asked softly. Her hair was spread over his chest, tickling slightly. She was curled into his side as though she belonged there. Did she? What the hell would she do if she did know what he was thinking?
"That… you have the most gorgeous hair," he finally told her, and there was a good deal of truth in the statement. Maybe it wasn't all the truth, but it wasn't a lie.
"Cute," she muttered, raising her head to turn chocolate brown eyes on him. "Now tell me what you're really thinking."
Caught. Frak, how did she do that? "I was thinking about your hair," he defended himself, but he didn't meet those eyes as he said it.
"Wanna know what I'm thinking?" she asked.
Did he? "Always," he told her, and that too was the truth.
"I'm thinking that this is a hell of a lot easier in a bed," she admitted with a grin.
Tyrol kissed her smile, then relaxed and enjoyed when she took the kiss deeper. They weren't going any further right now than this kiss; he knew it, and he was sure she did as well. They were both due on the deck within the hour, and he for one was spent. The last two hours had been incredible, but he didn't have any illusions of an immediate repeat performance. A man had his limits, even in a bed.
And this was a fine bed. As Starbuck had mentioned to Sharon the night before, the CAG quarters was without an owner and was one of the few doors on the Galactica that could be blocked, if not locked. It took some work, but a bar wedged in the wheel of the hatch and beneath the metal desk that was built into the wall could provide more than a minute or two of privacy in which to dress or at least find a position less… compromising. It was a privilege that he'd not had with her before, but it was one he might like to get used to.
When she finally raised her head, the smile was gone. "You're worried," she said, and it wasn't a question.
"Everyone's worried," he hedged.
"You know what I mean. It's that Specialist, isn't it? The girl… Cami?"
"Cally," he corrected, and as a topic other than the nebulous status of their relationship it wasn't his first choice. Why didn't Sharon ever go for the easy stuff, like whether he was hungry, or if he was still tired?
"She should be okay," Tyrol said thoughtfully, because he felt bad enough about sidestepping what Sharon had asked in the first place. "I've got her teamed with Soc, and he won't let her get out of his sight. Then in the barracks Katie's watching her, so our bases are covered. She won't be alone."
Sharon considered that. "If I ask a question, will you promise not to hate me?" she asked tentatively.
"I could never hate you," he told her honestly. "But I'm not going to promise to agree with you, or even to like what you say." If she was starting the conversation with that kind of a disclaimer, he figured that he should do the same.
"Do you think…?" She took a deep breath, moved her gaze from his eyes to his shoulder, and tried again. "Do you think what you did was a good thing?"
"You mean keeping her from shooting herself?" he asked in confusion. How could that even be a question?
"I know you like her," Sharon explained. "And as a crew we need her. But… I also know how much she's got to be hurting. Don't you think it would have been kinder to let her put an end to that?"
"No."
Sharon's eyes closed and she laid her head back down on his chest, but what he'd seen in them before she'd done so was seared into his mind. "Sharon, talk to me," he ordered softly.
Her head didn't move, her gaze didn't raise to meet his, but he heard her soft voice. "Some friendships are special," she said. "And there are some people who… make the job worth it; worth all the crap, I mean. Someone to… guide you, and make you feel like you can do it even when you know you can't. When you lose that… Galen, if she really misses him that much, don't you think it would have been better…"
"I don't think we're talking about Cally," he told her, his arms tightening protectively. He felt like she was a million miles away.
"Maybe not," she admitted.
"You miss him?" It wasn't really a question, but it was phrased as one, so he hoped for an answer. And he didn't need to clarify who he was talking about. Of course she missed Helo. The two of them had been practically attached at the hip since she'd been assigned. No one liked taking on rooks, but Helo'd had the knack. He was patient, firm, and when it came to making a Raptor soar he was the one they had all looked to. More than once Galen had been jealous of what Sharon and Helo had shared; time, rank, and a friendship he couldn't touch that came from so much common ground.
"It's different for me," she said, still not looking at him. "He had a choice. I may not have liked it, or agreed with it, but I had to respect it. Yeah, I miss him. I don't think I'll ever get into a Raptor without hurting at least a little, but I know that it had to… be that way."
"And Prosna didn't have a choice," Tyrol reasoned.
"No. And she didn't get a chance to say good-bye, either. At least Helo and I had some kind of closure, but she just had… nothing. I know she has things to live for, and she's young, and she'll learn to live with it. But, Galen, she's a long way from that right now. If she doesn't want to fight her way through it, should she really be forced?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I do know that she was too tired and hurt to make a decision that permanent." He sighed and tried to order his thoughts so that they made some kind of sense. Sharon had once told him that she had the same kind of jealousy towards Cally as he'd had towards Helo; it was a simple fact of shared interests and time together. He didn't want to give Sharon an unnecessary reason for concern; he just wanted her to understand how unclear Cally was at the moment. "How many suicide attempts fail, and the person regrets it afterwards? There aren't a lot of repeat attempts by people that screw it up the first time. Most of the time once they've tried it, they realize it didn't fix the problem after all. They need time to fix things. I think she deserved that time, so yes, I think I did the right thing."
"That's fair," she decided. "And I really wasn't thinking that you'd done anything wrong. I just wondered if watching her like a hawk now is going to accomplish anything."
"It limits her opportunities," he explained. "When things settle down, and when we all find something to start living for again, then we won't have to watch everyone so closely. At that point, maybe it will be her right to make that choice. But at the moment, she's not ready to do it competently, so we won't let her."
Sharon nodded. He felt the movement against his chest, even though he couldn't see her face. An unwanted thought occurred to him. "Did you think about it?" he asked, not knowing if he wanted to hear the answer.
"No," she told him quickly. "I had too much to come back to." Sharon lifted her head and met his eyes again. When she looked at him this way, it was as though he could see into her soul. "I'll miss Helo," she said gently. "But he wasn't… everything I had. He wasn't even the biggest part."
There was a message in there. Tyrol was sure of it, even as he couldn't fathom it. She couldn't mean he was her reason for living. They weren't even really a couple. They were just lovers, and maybe friends, and sometimes a little more. But it wasn't something he could define, and it certainly didn't seem like something solid enough to give someone a purpose for living. "I'm glad," he told her. "Everything seemed to get a lot easier once I knew you were alive."
She smiled before kissing him again, gentle this time. Tender. Sweet. He found that it was as emotionally satisfying as the physical joining they'd shared earlier.
"I'm going to be honest," he told her carefully. "And if you decide to leave, then I'll understand. I'd rather you'd stay, but I'll understand."
"Honest about what?" she asked, and he could have sworn that her eyes held fear.
"I don't know what to do with this," he said. "Us, I mean. Before it was… different. All I could think of was getting you out of your uniform. Well, not just that, but you know what I mean."
"I know," she agreed.
"It's not like that now," he told her. Reaching up to brush her bangs back out of her face and tuck her long hair behind one shoulder, he finished the caress by running a finger down the side of her face and just looking at her. "I don't know where this is," he admitted. "It's not someplace I've been before. I care about you though, and more than just…"
"Just sex?" she suggested.
"Yeah. It's more now. I don't know how much; and I'm not talking about forever or anything, but I wanted you to know that… you're important to me; even without the sex, you're important to me." He held his breath and waited for a response. He was pretty sure his little ramble wasn't what every girl wanted to hear, but it was honest and right now that was the best he could do.
"I could tell you I feel the same way," she said softly, her head going back to his chest to block her face from his view. "But it wouldn't be the truth. I don't know, but I guess I always wanted the 'happily ever after' stuff that you see in fairy tales. You know, the handsome prince, the white charger, and all the rest. I grew up without a family, so I want to have one of my own. Maybe not today, but if we get through this, I want one." She finally lifted her head and met his gaze head-on. There were tears in her eyes. "I would have like to have one with you."
Tyrol just stared. How did he feel about that? "Are you saying you're in love with me?" he asked her in gentle confusion.
She shrugged one shoulder, and a tear slid down her cheek. "I guess I am. When everything was flying apart, all I could think of was getting back here to you. And I know it's too soon to feel that way, and we're under a bunch of stress and all that, but it's how I feel. Right now, it's how I feel."
"I don't know what to say," he told her.
"You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. I thought you deserved to know, because we're never sure when we might not get a chance to say anything else. I don't expect you to feel the same way."
Galen Tyrol looked at the beautiful woman in his arms, and had no clue what to do, or say, or even feel. She was offering him every man's dream, and he didn't have any idea what he should do with it. He might have found it easier if he hadn't cared so much. She was offering him everything, and essentially asking for nothing in return. Thankfully, he had more to offer her than that, but nowhere near what she wanted, or needed, or deserved.
"You are… very special to me," he said softly, rubbing the silky skin of her back, enjoying her warmth, and wishing that he didn't have a streak of honesty that ran a mile deep. It would have been so much easier to lie to her and tell her what she needed to hear, but he couldn't do it. Life was too short to base it on lies. But wasn't it also too short to miss an opportunity like having a woman this beautiful to love? And he didn't mean just that she was gorgeous – although she was – but what about her courage, and her spirit, and her fire. Those things were just as important as lovely hair and a body that was amazing. Most of the time, they were even more important. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "I want to offer you more than that, but…"
"I'd rather have your honesty than a passel of lies," she told him with a sad smile, once more looking up at him. "We've never lied to each other; not really. So for now, how about we try to meet in the middle? I won't press you for more, and I don't think you'll give me less," she added with a smile. "And from there we go one day at a time."
"I like the sound of that," he admitted.
"So… I'm not asking for a commitment or anything."
"I didn't think you were."
"But, can I ask for a favor?"
"Anything I can give," he answered, and found that in his heart, he meant it. He would give her anything he could. Hell, he was half-way tempted to give her something that he couldn't – his heart.
"Boxey needs a place to stay," she told him.
"I thought he was in quarters with you," he said with confusion. "It's not like you're short on bunks."
"Granted, but… Galen, it's not the most appropriate place for a kid. Co-ed quarters are hard to adjust to when you're of age, and he's not. So far, the girls have been pretty good about where they change, and the guys are even trying to keep their language within reason. But it's not fair to ask them to make themselves kid-friendly indefinitely. They're under too much stress for it to be reasonable. They need a place they can cut loose, and with Boxey there they don't have one."
"So what do you want from me?" he asked, cutting through the explanation for what she was really asking.
"The Commander is setting up one of the bays as family quarters," she explained. "He said I could move in with Boxey. They're going to divide off the area with some partitions, and do their best to give families a place to make a home."
He shook his head in confusion. "So… please don't take this wrong, but what does that have to do with me?"
"I don't think I should be the one to move in with him," she admitted. "For all the reasons he shouldn't be in co-ed quarters in the first place, and also because I think he needs to be around men if he's going to grow into one. When I… years back, when I was growing up, I saw too many boys that didn't know how to act like men because they hadn't been exposed to them. I don't want that to happen to Boxey."
He had known she had grown up in an orphanage; that discussion had come shortly after they had met, and before they'd become romantically involved. She rarely mentioned it though, so it was easy to forget that her start in life had been less than ideal. It explained a lot of her attachment to the orphaned boy; she'd been there.
He had to admit that she had a point. Cally was an example of what growing up with the influence of a parent of the opposite sex could accomplish. And while in her case he considered it a good thing – small hands made for an amazing technician – he also knew that it was easier for a woman to get by with some masculine traits than for a man to act feminine. He didn't want to sentence Boxey to an upbringing that might make later life hard. The kid had lost enough. If Cally had picked up so many male habits – although she was by no means inappropriate – in just a couple of years without a mother, how much would Boxey miss out on by losing his father this early?
"He's a good kid," Sharon said softly. "And I know it's a lot to ask. But… Galen I've been where he is, and I don't want to see him get lost in the system. There are so many orphans around that no one knows what to do with them. I don't feel like I'm the best person to raise Boxey, but I want to be there, you know? If he's with you, I know I can be."
He had just finished telling her that he didn't even know what he felt for her, and she was essentially asking him to share a child with her? How bizarre was that? But what struck him as the most odd, the most incredible, was that he really didn't have to think about it. "I'd be happy to take him," he said softly, giving her body a gentle squeeze. "Not sure how he'll feel about me, though."
Sharon looked up at him with a grin that went from ear to ear. "He'll love you," she declared. "It's easy to do."
He just shook his head in wonder. What in hell had he done to deserve something like this? And how in hell was he going to manage it without screwing up?