11. Gardenia

Billy has always thought that men weren't supposed to fantasize.

Oh, he knows that the sexual is fine. Men think with nothing but their dicks after all. It's a widely held gender role belief and one he knows to be fairly accurate.

He just always thought that men weren't supposed to want romance. Weren't supposed to picture wooing and being wooed in graphic detail, or imagine how he was going to propose to the woman of his dreams. It just wasn't done. At least, not in his family.

Not that he hadn't known that his father had loved his mother with his whole heart. His father had adored his mother. He just hadn't been the hearts and flowers type. Instead, Johann Keikeya had done everything in his power to make a stable and solid home for his wife and family. Shown just how deeply he cared by doing for them.

In a home like that, Billy had always felt very self-conscious about how he was supposed to approach women. And with the few girlfriends he'd had while in college, he'd always felt strange about having a ready-made plan for a romantic date.

He liked having the low music and soft lighting. The gardenias and subtle heat of Caprica City in late summer did as much for him as the soft slide of skin against his clavicle. The warm and heady press of lips against his own and the knowledge that THIS was the woman. THIS was the time. He'd dreamed all of that, even as he kept it close and safe inside of him.

He'd always been a romantic, even if he'd kept that quiet.

Maybe that's why seeing Dee on what is very, very obviously a fantasy date with Lee Adama hurts as much as it does. She'd said no and given back his ring. He thinks he could have lived with that.

With the heat and pain flooding through him, he knows that he'll never get the chance to find out.

Oddly, as everything fades around Dee's sobbing, he's sure he can smell gardenias.