And then his father came to the Academy on shore leave.

Lee hadn't expected him, hadn't had time to steel himself, and was more than a little upset to hear that he was expected to play host to Commander Adama, pilot extraordinaire, for the next day or so.

After an off game of pyramid—they'd still won of course, but they hadn't dominated—Kara had cornered him in the locker room and demanded to know what was wrong. Lee wasn't used to that sort of thing. He worked hard not to let his emotions get in the way of his work, partly because he hated dealing with pity and questions. He didn't want other people scrutinizing his life, thank you very much. But this wasn't work, it was play, and this wasn't 'other people' it was Kara, who was getting too close to him for comfort, and he should have known that normal rules didn't apply.

"You're off," she told him. "What's gotten you so shaken up that you can't even catch a pyramid ball?"

"Flattery will get you everywhere," he told her, and he thought that she was actually taken aback by the flat tone of his voice and the look on his eyes. It was hard to tell though; for some reason, Kara never flinched. She'd done a slow blink, though, which Lee has decided is the basic equivalent. It means that she's confused, or upset, and needs to regroup.

He hadn't given her the chance. She was basically demanding to know what was wrong, and he'd never responded well to demands. And just because he was drawn to her didn't mean that she had to know every little detail of his private life. In fact, it was a pretty good reason to keep her at arms' length. Besides, he was almost a grown man. He could handle this. He would be fine.

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And he was, for the most part. The way all the other cadets fawned over his father was both disgusting and disturbing, but his dad himself seemed to be in a remarkably good mood. He obviously approved of Lee going to the academy, and he had fond memories of the place, and of his various exploits while attending it. For all his interest in studying people, Lee had never really thought of his dad as a man with a history. To discover that he had once been a boy was… a bit of a relief actually. Also, the Bill Adama of yesteryear, the brash cadet with a penchant for hell-raising, kind of reminded Lee of Kara. It made his father strangely more tolerable.

That was the only reason he agreed to go to the flight sims at all. He wanted to see his dad and Kara side by side, and he knew that if they went to the sims on a weekend, she'd be there. 'Reliable' was never a word that anyone else would ever assign to Kara Thrace—Lee knew, because he'd used it to describe her once to Karl, and gotten a concerned lecture about love and blindness in response that he was still trying to pretend had never happened—but there were some things that she could be counted on for, and weekend sim time was one of them.

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Her face lit up when she saw him walk in, a slow burning smile that said she'd been waiting for this for ages. Even better, she hadn't even seemed to notice his father.

"Lee, Lee, Lee… I knew we'd get you in here one day. It was inevitable. You are no match for my strategic genius. It's useless to even try."

"You've never even mentioned me coming to the sims before."

She dismissed that easily, "All part of the strategic genius, I assure you." She slung an arm around his shoulders and started steering him, rather forcefully, in the direction of the flight suits, because apparently strategic genius, Kara-style, involved manhandling people until they gave up. Lee was not surprised.

He was surprised when she stopped short, and it took him a second or two to remember that his father was with him. He was staring at the two of them, looking mildly confused and smug all at once, and the first words that came into Lee's head were 'I'm not sleeping with her.' Thankfully, he managed not to say them out loud.

Instead, he said, "Kara, this is my father, William Adama. Dad this is my… this is Kara Thrace."

All in all not the best introduction he'd ever done, since Kara was looking at him as if he were a crazy person, and if his dad had had any doubt before, he was probably convinced now that he was carrying on some sort of not-so-secret affair.

He managed not to dwell on it though, because what was coming up was going to be far more unpleasant. Just because he hated flying didn't mean that he wanted his father to watch Kara wipe the floor with him.

-----------------------

Thankfully, she seemed to realize that, and although going easy on him never would have entered her mind, she did inform the small crowd of gathering cadets that this flight would be off-screen. And she stuck with her decision even after the crowd booed at her.

Normally, the flight patterns of the simulated planes were shown on a projection screen next to the sims so that spectators could study the battles. During classtime, the screens were used as a teaching tool. On weekends, they were a betting ground. This flight would have shaken up the odds a bit. Kara was by far the best cadet around, but Lee was a dark horse, and the son of one of the Academy's legends.

It was a good thing that the sims were closed off from the outside world. It probably would have pained the other cadets to see said son of legend trying to figure out how to fasten on his helmet correctly. And when he'd finally managed that, he'd had to ask Kara about taking off.

"Hey Kara, what button do you push to get in the air?"

"What?!?"

"There's too many damn buttons in here. Which one gets me off the ground?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"Kara…"

"You're not kidding. Lee, have you ever been in a sim before?"

"Not since I was ten."

"What the hell, Lee. And here I thought this might be a bit of a challenge."

He'd disappointed her; it showed in her voice, and he could feel his already tenuous mood souring. His parents were officially divorced when he was ten, and he had sworn off the sims since then. He'd missed it, at the beginning, but flying reminded him of his father, and the bitter taste in the back of his mouth when he thought about him was worse than not flying at all.

"Frak this. I'm ending the sim, Kara. Which button do I push to do that?"

"Oh no you're not. Push the blue button on the right. That starts up the thrusters. Feel that? Okay, now, the green button on your left signals that you're ready to go out the chute. After you press it, you'll be catapulted out of the battleship. Keep your hands steady on the stick, and be prepared for a few g's. The acceleration can be a bitch if you're not used to it, and we wouldn't want you blacking out before I even get a change to slaughter you."

His vision did sparkle a bit at the acceleration, but she refrained from slaughtering him after he got out into space and oriented himself a bit. It was difficult, not having a direction he could safely think of as down, and Kara literally flying circles around him didn't help matters.

But once he got over the lack of direction, flying was… not bad at all. It was liberating in a way. He gave the bird more juice, heading towards an asteroid field, and heard Kara give a war whoop as she set about blasting the larger rocks into smithereens.

She was like a little boy. Like Zak, really. He didn't even have to see her to know that she was grinning, a slightly manic gleam in her eyes, as she battled against imaginary opponents. Lee had never been all that good at being a little boy—he had let Zak do enough of that for both of them—but he was beginning to realize that that didn't mean that he couldn't make up for lost time now.

He joined in as soon as he figured out how to fire his guns, and then tried to sneak attack Kara when she wasn't looking. It didn't work, of course, but it was kind of fun to try. She shot both his thrusters out from under him, and he'd had only a tenuous grasp on steering even when his bird was functioning perfectly.

She was sitting back, the bastard, waiting for him to crash into an asteroid. It was going to happen pretty soon, and Lee decided that he'd had enough of playing games. Even in a sim, the thought of crashing was incredibly, paralyzingly frightening. Luckily, the one button he did recognize was the big shiny eject button. He punched it in desperation, and the simulation ended in a blaze of light.

When they got out, he was shaking, heart beating double-time, and Kara was flushed and grinning. She refused to tell the waiting cadets what had happened, which Lee was grateful for on many levels, not the least of which was because it kept their attention focused on her, and away from the fact that his hands were still trembling.

In the end, the consensus seemed to be that she had beat him, but that he must be pretty good, since he lasted so long. The only one not weighing in on the conversation was his father, who was standing off to the side looking inscrutable. Never a good sign.

His eyes lit up when Kara challenged him to a duel though, and Lee started to think that maybe coming to the sims wasn't such a bad idea after all.