Crashdown is in his face, bitching about something, but he can't concentrate on what because Cally and Seelix are reenacting Crashdown's last date with Kat just behind him, complete with prancing, fluttering eyelashes and ingenious use of a solder gun.

When Cally, in her role as Kat, bends Seelix/Crashdown over the mule cart, it's all he can do to keep an appropriately attentive expression on his face while Crashdown ratchets himself up into a full blown whinge. This is Crashdown, Stage One.

Finally, Socinus, who actually has an ounce of sense and the potential to be a real good deck chief someday, takes pity and breaks the little farce apart. He pushes Cally in one direction towards Raptor Two, and Seelix in the other towards Karma's frakked up Viper. Karma's a sweet guy, but he's worse than Sharon about sticking a landing and if Tyrol has to replace those damn buckle plates one more time…

"Chief, I'm starting to feel like you're not hearing me." Crashdown has a habit of looming in an attempt to get his own way, but he's a bad photocopy compared to someone like Helo who could barely frakking fit in a Raptor, let alone a Viper. Tyrol lets that contempt show in his eyes as the pushy ECO tries to crowd him another inch and Tyrol refuses to budge.

"I hear you just fine, Lieutenant," he says coolly and crosses his arms. "But unless there's been some breakthrough discovery on how to carve new gimbals out of bars of soap, I can't help you. I can only repair the one you got."

Crashdown pivots and kicks a waste oil vat, hard enough to slop the viscous fluid onto the plating. This is Stage Two and Tyrol hooks his thumbs through his toolbelt and shuffles his stance to keep from rolling his eyes at the tantrum. Crashdown may be excitable and dumb as a bag of hammers, but he's not a complete tool. He's still a pilot and an officer and due a certain amount of respect for that.

"It's a frakking piece of junk!" Crashdown exclaims, "and it's bad enough that I gotta worry about some toaster shooting me out of the damn sky without worrying about my own frakking ship! Just frakking fix it!"

He stalks off, ignoring Tyrol's muttered, "Yes, sir," which is Stage Three and really, Tyrol's favorite. Certainly much more than he likes Stage Four, which is apparently Crash and Kat having fast and sloppy pilot sex in just about any nominally private place off the flight deck. And he uses 'private' pretty loosely.

Tyrol could happily have gone his whole life without knowing what Kat's come face looks like or that Crashdown apparently has a tattoo of a bumblebee and a daisy on his ass. The Lords, however, didn't see fit to spare him that knowledge. The Lords, apparently, have a pretty sick sense of humor.

But as he tells his crew, that's pilots for you. Gotta save your ass a hundred and one times just to make up for the hundred times you want to kill them.

There are consolations.

"…c'mon Tarn, where'd the Chief tell you to hide it this time?" A few feet away, Kara Thrace bounces impatiently from foot to foot.

"What've I told you about stashing stuff in my bay?" Pitching his voice a little louder than strictly necessary, Tyrol comes up behind Tarn and slings an arm around the boy's shoulders. Tarn shoots him a grateful look. Kid's normally got a mouth on him, but Starbuck has a way of reducing him to a stammering hormonal mess. Hell, Tarn's not the only one.

And by the glint in Thrace's eye, she knows it.

"You know the rules, Thrace; you got gear, you keep it in your locker."

Thrace rolls her eyes. "Chief, it's a tiny little tube."

"That doesn't belong here and is still taking up space—my space. Space I don't have to spare even for the great Kara Thrace's vanity."

Hazel eyes widen and a startled grin crosses Thrace's face. "I am not vain."

Tyrol cocks an eyebrow. "No? Then explain to me why I'm supposed to keep storing your bottles of scented glop…"

"Lotion," Kara's voice lowers and…is that…? Yes, he thinks it is. Lords save them all, Kara Thrace is blushing. "It's just lotion. And would you keep your voice down?" She tugs him closer with a fast glance around the deck to reassure herself that yes, no one else knows that cigar smoking, trash talking Starbuck keeps bottles of sweet-scented lotion on the flight deck. "Look," she says after a moment in her stilted, sing-song embarrassed voice, "I just need it, okay?" Her dry hands rub together nervously as if she can conjure the lotion by friction alone. "So why don't you just tell me what it's going to cost me this time?"

"Lieutenant Thrace!" He feigns shock. "Are you…are you trying to bribe me?"

Thrace shows her teeth and he doesn't mistake it for a grin. "Yes," she grits.

"Oh, well that's different." Tyrol gives Tarn a push towards supply closet five. "Tarn, would you go and see if you can locate the good Lieutenant's product? Can't have her flying out there with cracked hands, after all. Might interfere with her reaction time."

Thrace's mouth twists. "So what's it going to be this time?"

"I hear you won seven rubbers off Carruthers in Triad the other day. I'd be happy to take…oh, say three of them off your hands…in return for services rendered." He smiles genially and expansively.

"You are really a frakking bastard, you know that?" Thrace growls. Her hands are fisted now, but even she's not headstrong enough to take a swing at him. The pilots may hate his guts with a black vengeance sometimes, but a pissed deck chief is more than any pilot's skin is worth. He keeps an eye on her hands anyway, though. Never can quite tell with Starbuck. Always a first time.

"Yes, sir," he answers. "But…" Tarn comes jogging back and Tyrol deftly plucks the lilac tube out of his hands before he can pass it into Thrace's waiting grip. Just because he's not a pilot doesn't mean he's not fast on the uptake. Thrace curses under her breath. "…I'm the frakking bastard who's got your…" he consults the worn label, nearly faded to white, "Star-Lily Musk. Sir."

Thrace snatches it out of his hand, beet red all the way to her hairline. "You're an evil man," she mutters and fishes in the breast pocket of her jumper. She shoves the condoms at him, then cracks the tube and squeezes some of the lotion onto her fingers. She pushes the tube at Tarn and stalks off without another word, oily hands washing over each other. Tyrol has to admit, the stuff does smell pretty nice.

"Big night planned, Chief?" With Starbuck gone, Tarn's back to his cheeky self. "Three's a little over ambitious, don't you think? Old man like you? You might hurt yourself."

"Mind your business, Specialist," Tyrol warns, "before I assign you to clean out the crap traps on the Vipers."

Tarn holds up his hands and backs away. Seelix comes up from behind him with a cup of rewarmed and ersatz coffee. He groans in pleasure and accepts it from her. She eyes him carefully until he takes the first couple sips, then says, "Hey, Chief? Kat and Crashdown are going at it again in that fragged Raptor over in Bay Six."

"Frak me." He downs the rest of the coffee in a lukewarm gulp, knowing he won't get back to it otherwise. "They've got frakking racks, don't they?"

Seelix shrugs, mostly unsuccessful in hiding her grin. "I think Kat likes it," she says finally. "I think she's got a bit of a thing for you, Chief."

Tyrol doesn't know what expression crosses his face because it's frozen from the inside, but it must be a doozy, because Seelix, Cally and a couple of the other knuckledraggers lounging around crack up, falling down laughing.

"Yeah, ha ha," he growls, planting his feet and hooking his hand through his belt. "Very frakking funny. You know, if you all have enough time to sit around and crack stupid jokes, maybe I'm just not keeping you busy enough. Cally, Finneran, it's about time someone scrubbed all that carbon residue off the Vipers' outtakes…"

"Aw, Chief," Cally groans. "I was hardly laughing. And anyway, Kat and Crash are frakking around in that Raptor."

He rolls his eyes. "When are they not? Tarn, go…pour some cold water on them or something. And Cally, I meant it about those outtakes. They're not gonna clean themselves. Seelix…just get out of my face for a while. And Socinus, I want to see you in my cube. Now."

"Chief?" Socinus looks stricken, glancing up from the B220's he's got spread over an oilcloth.

"Now, Specialist."

Socinus wipes his hands of on his jumper legs and scrambles after him.

He's got a pot of his private stash of black market coffee warming on a heating coil he rigged himself. Tyrol collapses into his rump-sprung chair with a sigh, and never mind the dust, refills his cup and takes a long, deep sip. Pilots can have their stims; he gets far more mileage on caffeine.

"Chief?" Socinus says again, tentative.

"I've been keeping my eye on you," Tyrol says, leaning back and putting his boots up on the desk. It's awash in 'plast, as usual; he'll have to draft someone to catch him up on his reports to Tigh again. Between him and Gaeta, you'd think Galactica ran on paper, not grease, sweat and blood.

"Did I do something wrong?" Socinus's eyebrows draw in and at his side, he uses his thumb to crack his knuckles.

Tyrol swings his legs off the desk and walks over to the kid slow and careful, just watching him start to sweat. "I don't know, Specialist," he says. "Did you?"

Socinus looks back towards the bay like he's hoping for rescue. "Well, I know I was supposed to get those air filters swapped out on Boomer's Raptor, Chief, but I… She really knocked the hell out of the struts when she came down last time. I thought it was more important…"

Tyrol thinks about drawing it out. It really is too easy with Socinus, unlike Tarn, who's got a skin like a lizard, or Seelix, who just laughs it all off. But that's exactly why he can't. "Kid, kid…" Socinus is gesturing, mimicking the repairs. Tyrol grabs his flailing hand presses the two palmed condoms into the kid's palm. "Shut up a minute!"

Socinus stops cold and looks down at the foil packets cupped in his hand. "Chief?" he asks again, in a different tone of voice.

Tyrol finally lets himself grin. "You been working real hard," he tells Socinus. "Real hard. I know you've been stepping out with Maddie Pryor; thought maybe you kids could use some R&R."

Socinus swallows. "Chief…" he starts.

"Dradis contact! Cylon Raiders." Lieutenant Gaeta's voice blares out suddenly on the overhead comm. "This is not a drill. Scramble all Vipers. Repeat, this is not a drill."

"Frak!" Tyrol curses, heartfelt. He and Socinus run for the door. Pilots and deck crew are pouring into the bay double-time in various states of wakefulness and undress. From the corner of his eye, he sees Kat come stumbling out of the Raptor in Bay Six, tanks askew and wrestling her flight suit up from around her waist. Crashdown waits a cautious couple seconds before following her out.

The next several minutes are lost time, sure as any furlough bender on Sagittaron. They get the pilots in, seals shut, flaps down. They get the birds in the air, a dance careful and precise. And then…they wait.

This is the worst time; the time when they pick up projects and repairs as yet undone, and then lay them aside again, untouched. Because it really is only the waiting. For that first Viper to touch down, crooked and careening, sparks spitting. For Dee's calm and competent voice to announce all the repairs they will never have to make, and the pilot's whose grousing they'll never have to hear.

Frakking pilots, he thinks, directing Figurski and that kid Fellis to lay out extinguishers and fire blankets at each pit bay. Gotta save your ass a hundred and one times just to make up for the hundred times you want to kill them.