Kara was extremely pissed off. She had turned down a rather exciting triad game and a chance to mock the president's newest aid as he tried to impress that pretty CIC comm officer in order to be on time for this little flying lesson. She was here, ready to go, and the fraking CAG was nowhere to be found.

It had taken her fifteen minutes to get word of a fuel line malfunction. That was only after dealing with Zak's hysterical laughter and the quiet grumblings of the young female deckhand who had to clean up the leftover mess. After Kara spent another five minutes pacing anxiously, the Chief was kind enough to suggest she check the senior officers' quarters.

By the time she made it up the stairs to the right level and through the winding corridors to the right hatch, the concern for what actually happened to Lee had melted into all-out fury. He had stressed punctuality so much in the short time she had known him, and yet he couldn't even keep a simple appointment. How did he expect her to believe his promise of making her a colonial pilot in half the time if he was already missing in action?

She was so mad that she didn't pause to knock on the hatch. Instead, she simply pulled it open and walked in. That was her first mistake.

Her second was not averting her eyes immediately.

"Shut the hatch," Lee said, not even bothering to look to see who had entered the bunkroom.

Kara pushed the hatch shut and leaned her body against it. Her eyes drank in the sight of the CAG in only an impossibly small towel. His skin had the slight paleness of a pilot who hadn't been off ship in quite awhile, but that did nothing to take away from the hard muscle underneath. Kara had always been a rather physical person, but she couldn't believe just how primal she was turning out to be. There was a sudden urge to slam Captain Lee Adama up against his locker and run her lips and tongue over every single fraking inch of him.

Her hands came out to grasp the handle to the hatch. She needed to find a way to physically hold herself back if she didn't want to maul the half-naked man in front of her. He probably wouldn't appreciate that after his numerous outbursts about the military regs.

Considering she couldn't really touch him without breaking a million and a half rules and she definitely wasn't getting any stimulation elsewhere, Kara decided the least she could do was look her fill. She started at his strong thighs working her way up the small of his back to where drops of moisture still clung to his neck. She could see the muscles straining as he reached into the locker to grab underwear. Sliding them on, he dropped the towel on the floor and grabbed a pair of pants. Kara watched the most fraking perfect pair of arms as the muscles tightened to pull the piece of clothing onto his body.

Her eyes roamed over his bare chest, finally resting on where his hands were buttoning the pants into place. What she would give to be able to run her fingertips along the curves of that hard muscle line half hidden by the waistband of his pants. She suddenly understood why the girls in the locker room called it the Adonis Belt.

Kara's stomach bottomed out as a thought occurred to her. "Oh frak," she hissed. "That could have been mine."

Lee turned at the sound of her voice and, for just a small second, Kara saw him smile. Then he retreated back to his normal stoic self. "Starbuck?" he said hesitantly. She wouldn't stop staring at him.

"You're late, flyboy."

"There was an accident with a fuel line on the Raptor I was fixing. I wanted to grab a shower so I didn't have to sit in the cockpit smelling like motor oil."

"I was on time," Kara said, pushing off the hatch wall to stand before him. "You were late."

Lee gave her a sheepish smile and shrugged. "Does saying I'm sorry help?"

"No," Kara whispered. Her eyes were still freely roaming his body. "Are we still on for the lesson?"

"Just let me finish getting dressed." Lee turned to pull a pair of tanks out of his locker, scolding himself. Kara Thrace should be just another girl who can't seem to keep her eyes or her hands to herself. There had been plenty of those in the past. Lee knew how he looked to women. He had fought off one too many of his superior officers' wives to forget it. Still, that didn't explain why he seemed to be so hung up on keeping this particular woman away.

Kara was just a girl he met in a bar. She was pretty, and she made him laugh. There had been hundreds of girls like that in the past. He had pushed each and every one of them away when it got to be too much of a burden. Not only could he not seem to push Kara away, he was actually pulling her closer.

Lee turned back to chance a glance at the woman who was currently plaguing him. He was surprised to see Kara had dropped back to the hatch though she was still openly staring. That infuriating smirk he had begun to associated with her and only her was plastered on her face. "What?"

"Apollo," she said with a laugh. "I get it now."

Lee could feel the smile light up his face as she gave him a wink and stepped out into the corridor, shutting the hatch behind her. Up until two minutes ago, he was having one of the worst days of his life, and now he was grinning like a fraking idiot. This was getting out of hand.

He pulled the tanks over his head before grabbing his flight suit and boots. He had been infuriated when that fuel line broke and spilled oil all over him. Going up in the air with Kara Thrace was the only thing he had been looking forward to all day. It had pissed him off to know that it probably wouldn't be happening. Kara didn't seem like the type of girl who would wait for him to take a shower.

Lee smiled as he zipped up his flight suit. It turned out she was that type of girl, at least when it came to this particular instance. It pleased him for a reason he couldn't even begin to comprehend.

He made it to the hangar bay in under five minutes and found her still waiting for him, all suited up and ready to go. "Chief, do you have those two Vipers ready to go?"

"Yeah. I had Cally check them out just like you asked."

Lee nodded and turned to see Kara tense up her whole body. "Is something wrong, Starbuck?"

"Those are Mark VIIs." She turned to look at him wide-eyed. "You want me to fly a Mark VII?"

"You want to do a proper Athena Roll, you need to be in a Mark VII." Lee was surprised to see her looking so scared, and he knew there was no way she could fly with that weight on her mind. It was a good thing he had already figured Kara Thrace out to an extent. There was only one way to get her to focus. "You're not scared, are you?"

Kara's eyes immediately narrowed as she hissed, "No fraking way."

Lee watched her confidently march up the stairs connected to the ship not marked as his own and lower herself into the cockpit.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Apollo." Lee turned to look at the Chief. "Those Mark VIIs are an endangered species these days."

"She won't frak it up," Lee said confidently. He fell into the cockpit seat of his own Viper and snapped his collar into place. The Viper powered up, and Lee was in awe of how easy this big metal machine became a part of him. The second the power kicked on, it became an extension of who he was. "Are you ready to fly for real, Starbuck?" Lee called as the deck crew slammed the cockpit hatch shut. He receive a gleeful laugh as a response. It seemed like she wasn't scared anymore.

"Galactica, Apollo. Requesting permission to launch two Vipers on a training run."

He heard a pause on the other side. "Apollo, Galactica. There isn't anything on my schedule." Dee sounded almost scared. Lee guessed that meant his father was manning the CIC.

"There was an update a few hours ago. I'm going to be running unscheduled training runs for the next few weeks." Lee could see Kara rolling her eyes at him as the crew pushed her Viper over to the launch tubes. He tried to hold back a laugh. "Am I clear, Dee?"

Her voice sounded steady this time. "Apollo, you are cleared to launch."

Their Vipers were in the air, flying side by side, within minutes. Lee casually guided them around in a small circle while Kara got a feel for the air. "So… she sounded scared." Kara's voice came through the ship to ship comms as nothing more than a hesitant whisper.

"Who?" Lee asked, twisting his ship into the next turn.

"That girl on the comms. When she said there was no scheduled take-offs, she seemed scared."

"Dee?" Lee shook his head even though Kara couldn't see him. "She was just thrown off. I don't usually do a lot of things off the book."

"That was not the voice of a thrown off woman. She was concerned." There was a small pause. "Who is she to you?"

"Dee is one of the comm officers. She's the voice I hear every time I launch and land."

"What else?"

"What are you fishing for here, Starbuck?"

"She was concerned. That's all I'm saying."

Lee rolled his eyes. "How about we get this whole flying thing going and stop focusing on the way a voice sounded?"

Kara didn't respond with words. Instead, she flipped her Viper end to end, pointing her nose only inches from Lee's Viper. With a small smile and wink, she began rolling her Viper in line with the sideways drift of Lee's ship. The maneuver only took seconds to execute, but that didn't diminish the accomplishment. It was hard to roll a ship so many times and still stay nose to nose with your partner. The maneuver didn't have a practical purpose, but it was still legendary. You weren't a pilot until you did an Athena Roll.

Lee gave Kara a moment to catch her breath before speaking. "I thought so."

"What's next, flyboy?" Kara purred.

Lee tried to ignore the way the huskiness in her voice stirred his blood. He hoped it had everything to do with the exhilaration of flying and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she had seen him half naked less than an hour earlier. "Didn't I tell you to stop calling me that?"

"And I said no," Kara reminded him. "Now, Captain, what's next?"

Lee chuckled softly. "I just want you to do that again. Only this time trust your instincts about where you are in space. Don't rely on your visual of my ship."

"I don't understand. Your ship is supposed to be my focus point in order to prevent over-rotation."

"You don't need it."

"Next you're going to be asking me to fly with my eyes closed," Kara grumbled. She set her Viper up to his nose again and prepared for the run.

"Starbuck? One last minute instruction. Whatever you do, commit to it. Do not pull out. Do you hear me?"

"Understood," Kara said, shaking her head. Why was he being so gods-damn melodramatic? He knew she could pull this move off. He had just seen her do it.

Kara could feel something was wrong after the very first roll. In the half second she had to right herself to her surroundings before completing another roll, she realized that Lee's Viper was upside down. The next turn it was right side up. "What the frak is he doing?" she growled. Her hands reached out to pull the stick into another spin.

This time when she pulled out of the roll, Lee's Viper was nowhere to be seen. A small ball of fear punched her in the gut, but the only thing Kara could do was focus on keeping her ship in the pattern she was running and hope to the gods that this was what he had planned.

After the tenth and final rotation, Kara pulled her ship upright. She looked out into space for the other Viper. There was nothing but the stars in front of her. "Where the frak are you, Apollo?"

"I'm right beside you, Starbuck."

Kara turned to look out the side of her cockpit and jumped. Apollo was flying so close to her that their wings almost touched.

"Your precision is phenomenal," Lee said, finally pulling his ship away from hers.

"Tell me what the frak just happened," Kara demanded.

"Have you ever heard of the Blind Athena roll?"

"Yeah, it's when two Vipers do standard Athena rolls for half the maneuver and then one flips on end and they come about inches apart to finish the last five rotations in harmony." Kara's eyes lit up. "Frak me. We just did that, didn't we? That stuff is only talked about in textbooks."

"It's the easiest method to test a pilot's precision. If your flying had been off even a hair, we would have known it immediately."

"Because you would have exploded," Kara screamed.

Lee's body stiffened as he stared down at his controls. She was right. He could have easily wrecked by doing what he had just done. Odd how he hadn't thought about that before starting the run. "Maybe Clarry isn't the only one who has faith in you, Thrace," he whispered before kicking in the thrusters. "Now come on. I want to test your speed levels."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were enjoying this more than I am," Kara observed.

"I don't think that's possible. Now get your mind off of what I'm doing and get in the game."

Kara answered by kicking in the thrust of her Viper and taking off. Lee quickly followed behind. He tried to focus on observing the flying style of the woman at his side, but his mind couldn't help dwelling on the small shift inside himself. Watching Kara fly was something he had never felt before.

He knew that he should stop thinking of her by that name. They needed some distance in this relationship if he was going to stay sane. He knew that while she was still his student, a small slip up like using her first name in such a familiar way could get him in trouble if the Commander or the XO heard. Frankly, that wasn't what scared him. He could handle them.

What did scare him, what really put him on edge, was the fact he had never felt this way while flying before. Even if he couldn't admit it, he knew it had everything to do with Kara, and that was the real reason why he needed to get some distance between them as soon as possible.