Title: Best Laid Plans
Author: Imry
Notes: For Rawles, for her birthday. Many thanks to liz for the beta.
--
"Help me plan this op." she says. Asks. A request, not an order. He half considers saying something snide about the great Starbuck needing help, but she's not in the mood. She seems weary, slumped in her seat, hands flicking aimlessly through rosters. He's never seen her look this tired, not even when they went five days without sleep or stumbling off a double shift. It's the weariness of command, and he knows it far more intimately than he would like.
He takes the rosters she proffers, paging through lists of names he doesn't recognise and doesn't care to. Their intel is solid and far more detailed than anything they had for the tylium refinery, but it still feels like they're walking into a landmine blindfolded. If this was Galactica, they could do this together in half an hour. But if this was the Galactica, he'd be the one sitting on the other side of the desk, instead of in the uncomfortable guest's chair that seems specifically designed to dig into his back. As it is, she's been picking at this for lords know how long, if the cold coffee by her elbow and the set of her shoulders is any indication.
Ten long, silent minutes go by, broken by the rustle of paper as he reviews the photographs and the impatient tap of her fingers on the table.
"This is a disaster." He says finally.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lee." She says shortly.
"That's not what I meant." He sighs, leans back in his chair. "Our odds are one in a million at best, the fate of the human race is riding on this, we know none of these pilots and I'm beginning to suspect Cain is a raging psychopath." He finishes in a rush.
She cracks a smile at that. "A little slow on the uptake there, Adama?"
Lee has to suppress a shiver at the look in her eyes and the teasing edge of her voice. "Not all of us possess your keen intellect." He says, and is very proud of himself when his voice doesn't even waver.
She says something cocky and self-assured, but he's not paying attention. He focuses instead on the way her lips move, the curve of her arm, the strands of hair falling in her face. The urge to drag her across the table and into his lap flashes through him and he bites it back fiercely. It wouldn't be the first time they tried to distract each other in such a way, but he reminds himself she could have him thrown in the brig if she wanted. Though the idea does have a certain appeal. Besides, they'd never get anything done and Cain would probably have them shot.
"Lee!" Kara's voice jars him out of his reverie.
"What?" Focus. Op. Right. That's what he should be concentrating on. Battle tactics, not the line of her neck.
"Help me out here. This Resurrection Ship is frakking impenetrable."
"I was just thinking." He says, and it's only a lie by omission. "How long have you been at this, anyway?"
"Long enough to have a headache, a healthy sense of fatalism and no plan." She says, and slumps imperceptibly further into her seat, as if something is pushing her down. The weight of command isn't a metaphor- Lee remembers how hard it was to move, or breathe, or think after his abrupt promotion. He considers telling her about it, but he doubts it will help much.
"Let's try this a different way." He says abruptly, gets up and crosses to the strategy table in the middle of the room. "Do you have any of those model things…?" he gestures vaguely, but she shakes her head.
"I was going to ask Cain but she looked like she was in a bad mood, and I didn't particularly feel like becoming acquainted with the airlock." She pauses, casts around the room before her gaze settles on her desk. "We do have coffee, though."
--
They end up using her coffee cup, pens, crumpled paper, their captain insignias, a spare button and a paperweight. It looks like some bizarre game, and it's almost fun, moving bits of miscellanea around on the table, taking turns blowing holes in each other's plans. Lee can almost forget that the fate of the human race rests on whether the pens can destroy the paperweight.
"And then the Blackbird jumps in," Kara moves the button over to the paperweight, leaning over the table as she does so. He wishes she wouldn't do that, it makes it very difficult to focus on what she's saying. "and nukes the hell out of them." She glances up at him, waiting for his input, leans farther over the table. She knows exactly what she's doing. Bitch.
Lee shakes his head, and moves the button back. "That will never work. Cylons would detect the nukes and you'd never be able to jump out in time. The raiders would be on you like a tonne of bricks."
She growls in frustration, scrubs a hand over her face. "This is what, the third time we've been over this?"
"The fourth." They're talking themselves in circles at this point, and a hundred ideas crowd in his brain, pressing behind his eyeballs.
"I think it's time for a break." She says decisively.
"To do what? The admiral will hamstring us- well, just you, actually- if you leave this room without a workable plan."
"Yeah, I know." she's suddenly quite resolutely in his personal space when she was across the table just a minute ago. Her eyes travel over his arms, and they glint wickedly when she meets his gaze. Oh.
"What exactly did you have in mind?" he asks, voice dropping. Dumb question, but he's willing to play along for now. She moves in closer to him, and he feels the table bump against the small of his back.
"Actually," her face is a hairsbreadth from his, and he barely resists the urge to cut off her sentence with a kiss. "I was thinking we could break in my new desk."
--
Kara stirs on his lap, and Lee blinks dazedly. Her desk is cold underneath him, but her body's warm. His fingers trace over her back lazily while he tries to remember things like where he is and how to speak. She stirs again and he knows she's going to clamber off him and collect her clothes and go back to strategizing because she's Kara and she never lingers.
"FTL drive." She murmurs suddenly from the vicinity of his shoulder.
"What?" Maybe his brain isn't processing correctly yet, but he definitely feels like he's missed something.
"We target their FTL drive." She climbs off the desk with as much grace as possible under the circumstances, starts casting around for her clothes. She ends up explaining it to him wearing only her pants and a sports bra, and Lee thinks he does a rather admirable job of following her train of thought, considering.
"What do you think?" she asks, grinning. She's still leaning over the table in a manner that is most distracting, and she's really not wearing all that much clothing.
He stares at her for the longest time. "Great plan."
THE END.