I'm stuck on chapter 5, but I figured it's time I updated.
Contrary to popular belief, I am not a rabid Lee hater. Certain people have made their opinion known that it appears this way due to my writing style. This is not Lee's story and if y'all were looking for that kind of Rodama fic, then ye came to the wrong smut author.
Now, about that smut…
The thot plickens here, folks.
Chapter 3: Oh, THAT Conversation
"My ode dad id tryig to gill me."
Lee Adama spoke around a bloody nose and the tissues that Kara had pressed to his face. They were soaked red but the bleeding appeared to be slowing somewhat.
"Stop whining." Bill grumbled. "You deserved it."
Bill wasn't entirely sure that Lee had really deserved it, but he wasn't going to tell Lee that. Nor was he going to divulge to everyone else what the punch had been about either. Lee, smart boy that he was, had also decided to keep his mouth shut about the incident and what had brought it on.
Which was why he had been allowed to remain conscious.
"Don't see what all the fuss is about." Colton admitted, nibbling cautiously on some algae inspired 'bread'. "I knock Edric out all the time."
"You wish." Edric sniped at her.
"If only to better tie you to the rack, love." She smiled at him in faux sweetness and Edric curled a lip at her in disdain. Colton's reply was to kiss air at him and then return to her bread nibbling with much careful inspection being undertaken with the rest of the green glop on her plate.
"It is a bit out of character." Laura noted absently, most of her attention was focused on the papers spread out in front of her around their lunch platters. Billy had brought them to her at her insistence. Just because she was in 'recovery' didn't mean that she no longer had a fleet to run. Bill would have been perusing the papers with her, except he was more focused on sulking at this point and she had no intention of letting him darken her good mood. She picked up a bulging folder and frowned at it. "Billy, what's this?"
"Oh, that's for Doctor Colton." Billy accepted the folder back from Laura. "It's her research and some of Giaus Baltar's stuff from his lab."
"Aaaaahhh….the infamous Baltar prick." Colton took the folder eagerly. "Let's see how inferior he is then." She flipped open the folder and began to speed read at an amazing rate. Soon she began to snigger and then ripping sheets out of the docket and tossing them over her shoulder to litter the floor behind her. "Wrong, wrong, wrong, just plain STUPID, laughable, imbecilic, wrong again…huh, hadn't thought of that…WRONG…" Colton trailed into silence and then frowned at the last paper in her hand. She tilted her head as she read and then growled low in her throat. She looked up at the rest of the table.
"Let's kill him." She announced.
"Baltar?" Edric looked at his friend.
"No, the Pope, of course Baltar."
Edric sighed. "Colton, remember we had this little talk. About what was, and what wasn't appropriate behaviour for law abiding citizens."
"Not sure where you're going with this, Eddie." Colton shook her head and a grating sound eked out from between Edric's molars. Colton grinned wickedly.
"You can't kill someone. It's against the law."
"Only if you get caught." Colton held up a finger as if to illustrate the point.
"Well, conspiring in front of the leaders of humanity might tip their hand." Lee pointed out. Done with bleeding apparently.
"Conspiring points to conspiracy and we all know that Governments and the Military are particularly good at THAT." Colton stuck her tongue out at Lee and he frowned at her.
"There's no conspiracies in this government." He glanced at his father, pointedly avoiding Laura. Aversion therapy worked fast. "Right?"
"You mean aside from keeping our current condition a closely guarded secret from the remainder of the human race until we figure out a way to deal with it?" Bill shrugged a shoulder. "Nope, that pretty much fills this week's quota of conspiracies."
Laura coughed something that sounded very much like a laugh into her cup of tea. Having taken Edric's advice to avoid too much caffeine.
"Besides, lack of evidence only proves that the conspiracy is working." Colton flicked crumbs off the table and onto the floor. "Back to the matter at hand. Let's kill Gaius Baltar."
"Let's not, and say we did." Edric glared at her.
"Why are you so against this?" Colton slapped her palm against the table in irritation. "Do you think I'm not smart enough to get away with murder?"
Edric got that look about him. The same look that males across the universe got when the woman in their life turned to them and said 'notice anything different about me?', 'does my ass look big in this?' and 'what did you think of my sister/mother/best friend?'. Edric pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the table as he stalled for time.
"It's not that…"
"What then?" Colton crossed her arms over her chest and leant them onto the table. "We're all waiting with baited breath to hear."
Actually, everyone else was wishing they were places elsewhere. Laura and Bill had seen what Colton and Edric could do to the room when they were play fighting. They shuddered to think what Colton might actually be capable of in a full blown temper.
"I don't want you to get in trouble?" When Colton didn't smash her metal plate in his face, Edric decided to run with it. "I mean, if someone gave you away then you'd get put in the brig and you wouldn't like that. Hating small spaces and all that."
"Hmmph." Colton looked mollified. Slightly. A little put out that she couldn't rationalise fighting with Edric anymore but not likely to break anything for the foreseeable future. "I'm going to go fix something. You going to eat that?" Colton pointed at Edric's plate and he quickly (wisely) shook his head. She snatched up his plate as well as her own and left the table to retreat to her machine at the end of the barracks.
Edric breathed out a long sigh of a near miss and turned back to the others. They were all looking at him for an explanation and he grasped for one that would satisfy them.
"Cabin fever." He shrugged a shoulder. "She hated Battlestars to begin with and now she's trapped in a single room aboard one. Colton plus small space equals Bad Things Going Down."
"We should be getting out in the next couple of days. We really need to deal with the fleet before they stage a riot or a coup or something equally as…likely." Laura sighed.
"Yeah, time for me to be getting back to the CIC." Bill rumbled. "Past time."
"You thought about how you're going to do that, Madame President?" Billy asked, if she had a plan he needed to know so he could start making arrangements.
Bill and Laura shared a glance.
"Press conference." Laura said.
"Big one." Bill agreed.
"How delightfully simple." Colton said from the other end of the room. She still had her back to them and appeared to be pouring the leftovers of lunch into her machine. "Any plans on what's going to happen to us? I mean, Gods forbid that we actually have a say in what goes on in OUR lives." She looked over her shoulder at the assembled throng and then narrowed her eyes and turned back to her machine, tinkering noisily and muttering dark mutters.
"Yeah, we want out of here. You know you can't keep us locked up, not if you don't want us killing each other at the very least." Edric pointed out, a little more politely. "Wouldn't you rather we were useful?"
"I can see to it that you're put onto a flight squad. Let's see what that flyer of yours is capable of when she's on top form."
Edric nodded.
"Cool beans. What about us geniuses?" Colton still wasn't facing them, turning dials and cranking levers on her machine. It looked ridiculous, but she seemed happy with it so nobody had quite worked up the courage to ask what it was actually for.
"Well, we could see about getting you a- -" Laura was cut off by Colton's hand slapping the side of the machine and then her foot lashing out to kick it sharply in apparently just the right spot. It coughed to life and chugged away merrily to itself. Colton planted her hands on her hips and tilted her head. After a moment or two she turned to them with a little 'look what I did, aren't you proud?' grin on her face. She skipped around the machine and stooped to pull something from it, before leaning over the top of it and pushing the large red button that helpfully said 'off'. with a tearing sound, she ripped what the machine had produced out of the back and then walked back over to them. Creating things seemed to put Colton into a better mood so everybody reached the simultaneous and silent decision to gush over it.
Even if they didn't know what the frak it was.
"What do you think?" Colton dropped down next to Edric and was too absorbed in what she had just made to take in the reactions of the others.
"Is that…?" Lee reached out hesitantly to touch and then drew his hand back like he couldn't stand to really find out it was all a mirage.
"It is. What the frak?" Kara did reach out and gently touch the stuff spooled over Colton's hands.
"Hmm, a little rougher than I wanted, and the colour's a bit deplorable but…alright for a first attempt." Colton held it up to the light and scrutinised it with a critical eye.
"How did you do that?" Laura reached out and Colton allowed her to take it from her hands. "That's amazing."
"Well, I do try." Colton smirked and buffed her nails in a falsely modest manner. "But you've really got Edric to thank for it." She jerked her thumb at the huge man innocently sitting beside her. His brows rose up in surprise.
"Was that a compliment?"
"Statement of fact, darling. If you haven't been stupid enough to give me that horrific 'milk' stuff, which -luckily for you- wasn't actually a dairy product, then I wouldn't have had to be smart enough to figure this out and prevent myself future mishaps with the green…gunk." Colton looked at the uniformly green food with distaste and prodded the nearest lump with her fork as if she expected it to prod back.
"But…this is cloth. How can you make material from food?" Laura was stroking the bolt of cloth reverently. Colton had said it wasn't refined enough for her tastes, but it felt like the finest Virgon silk. It was a very, very, pale green colour (which could be easily dyed) and the applications for this were…well, they were really, really, good Laura was sure.
"Well, silk worms make silk from plants, right, and on Virgon they were experimenting with spooling silk from goat's milk (say that ten times fast after you've drunk a litre of Dogtag), anyway, it seemed a simple enough thing to try and replicate and extrapolate the process with that gods awful stuff you lot are calling food these days." Colton lounged against the table and toyed with said Gods awful food as she explained it all as if it were as simple as opening a hatch and flicking on a light. She looked up at the rest of the table and ignored the way they were all staring at her. Obviously, she was used to it. "We really need to do something about the food situation, kids."
"You're telling me, I'd rather eat sawdust." Edric shoved the plate away from him. "Think you can cook up some E-numbers, Colton? Won't be very healthy, but at least it will taste good." He looked at Colton innocently.
"I could if I had full access to a lab and some lovely chemicals. Might even be able to make a very beef like meat substitute." She propped her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table and smiled sweetly at the rest of the table. Namely Adama and Roslin.
"Beef?" Lee said with an incredibly hopeful look on his face.
"Sure, it's all in the chemistry. I can make this charming…adaptable," she said it like most would say 'eviscerated', "medium and turn it into almost anything." She illustrated her point by sculpting some of it into a smiling face and then holding the plate up beside Edric's head. "See? Food AND portrait material. The possibilities are endless!"
Edric flipped the plate out of her grip and promptly sent it sailing towards her face. She ducked as lightening quick as she was capable, the plate splattered gunk first into the wall and…stayed there.
"We might also want to think about some cement…possibly bulkhead sealant if you ever run out of the regular stuff."
"Beef." Lee said again. He seemed to think a moment and then looked at Colton like a puppy desiring its favourite treat. "Cheese? The red kind?"
Colton smiled, brows high on her forehead. "Is there any other kind?"
Lee turned to his father. "Dad, cheese." Bill looked at him, he had heard the conversation too. When Lee saw his father was still in a non-receptive mood to him, he moved onto the next seat of power (at high risk to his obdurately perfect face). "Madame President, red cheese!"
Colton leaned over to Edric and muttered into his ear. "What the frak is red cheese?"
"No clue, but you'd better figure it out if you want the lobbyist on your side."
Colton and Edric nodded at exactly the same time and tuned back into the conversation.
"Can you make beer?" Kara asked, first things first, screw the cheese.
"Hey, you already made bread…well, okay, green cardboard." Colton tapped it hard against the table with a thunking sound to illustrate. "Beer is liquid bread, I can do beer."
Lee and Kara turned and levelled hard glares at the Admiral and President respectively. Billy joined in with a pleading look, a red cheese hamburger…he'd do a LOT of things for a red cheese hamburger.
Bill and Laura rocked backwards slightly under the force of that WANT for some better scran. Sure moral was low, but Laura hadn't realised something as simple as a good meal, even if it was artificial, would boost things so much. Just the prospect had gotten more energy out of the three than they'd been able to summon at will in months. She looked at Bill.
Bill looked at her.
They both turned to Colton.
"You said you needed a lab?"
Colton smiled sweetly at Edric in a supreme 'I told you so' manner and then laced her fingers together, turning back to the President of the Twelve Colonies.
"Let's talk dimensions and supplies."
$inister $cribe
"Well, we've got to tell them now." Edric told Colton as they both smiled and waved at Lee, Kara and Billy as they finally left for the night.
"Now, now, let's not be hasty." Colton hedged, she still planned on getting out of this if she could wrangle it. "Smile and wave, honey. Smile and wave."
"He knocked his own son out." Edric spoke out the corner of his mouth to her, hoping the distraction of said son would keep Bill from overhearing. "For looking at Laura. We've got to tell them. Maybe they can…steel themselves against it."
"Bad choice of words, sweetie." Colton snorted but then arched a brow at him as if something had just occurred to her. "And you are hardly one to cast stones. I believe there was couple of flight deck crewmen who very nearly had their heads shoved up each other's arses for making a comment about the fit of my pin-stripe bootlegs."
"That was an entirely different situation." Edric folded his arms over his chest.
"I completely agree, my favourite trousers were involved after all." She smirked and mimicked his pose, just for the hells of it. "What were you doing anyway? Protecting my virtue?"
"No. None of it left by that point." She scowled at him and he smirked back.
"A situation for which you were responsible, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm never mistook."
Their dark eyes clashed, each of them wearing a small not entirely innocent smirk. For a moment, there was something very like a frisson of heat arcing between them, but then the hatch slammed shut, the locking mechanism spooled out and they turned back to Laura and Bill.
"The Admiral and the President…Gods, sounds like some cheesy romance novel." Colton sighed. "A gay one."
Edric elbowed her sharply.
"What?!" Colton demanded of him. "You and I both know that a woman President could have only happened at the end of the frakking world!"
"You are such a…RRR!" Edric made a choking motion with his hands in the vicinity of her neck and Colton made a similar sound of disgust before wheeling away from him to storm off in a huff.
Edric realised he had been played in the nick of time and lunged to catch her arm.
"Ah, no you don't. You're not getting out of it that easy."
"Damn, nearly had you." Colton dug her heels in but Edric solved the problem by picking her up and flinging her in his arms until her legs were over one arm and her shoulders over another. She glared at him fiercely and folded her arms across her chest. "Caveman." She growled at him.
"In-closet submissive." He cheerfully returned and dropped her on the cot opposite the couch that Bill and Laura had taken up residence on.
"Repressed." She shot back.
""Whore." He narrowed his eyes at her and she surged up onto her knees and planted her hands on his stomach, fisting them in his shirt, either prepared to launch him across the room or pull him down on top of her.
"Bore."
"Kids!" Bill snapped and both Edric and Colton turned to look at him, having completely forgotten he was there.
"What?" They demanded together and Bill just ground his teeth. Laura looked faintly amused and tucked her legs up under her.
"You feel like telling us what you two are fighting about, or do we have to figure it out for ourselves?" Laura smirked at Bill. "We could make a game of it. You mime what it is and we'll try and guess."
Colton and Edric looked at each other and Colton's hands released his shirt. She sank down onto the cot and Edric took a seat next to her.
"Trust me, if you think we're bad now, you don't want us acting that out." Edric rubbed a hand through his short hair. Colton followed the motion and then looked at Laura out of the corner of her eye. Laura arched a brow and Colton coughed before moving on.
"Yes, well, um…Edric, why don't you start?"
"Because you're better at this sort of thing?"
"If there is a creature in this galaxy with less tact and subtlety, we haven't found it yet." Colton told him wryly and he smirked at that. Point.
"Okay, uh," Edric smeared a hand over his mouth and looked anywhere but at Laura and Bill. "See, the thing is, you're still in recovery, right? I mean, having your entire immunes system replaced isn't exactly a walk in the park."
"Yeah, we know. We were there." Bill answered flatly. He was not in the mood for their antics right now.
"Yeah, but when you get better, I mean, properly better, which should be happening in the next couple of days, um…" He looked at Colton and she rolled her eyes with a heavy sigh.
"FINE then." She sat forward and arranged herself, clearing her throat as if about to give a great lecture to her peers. "Never send a man to do a job you know you're going to have to do yourself anyway." She shot a sly glance at Edric.
"It all boils down to this, folks." Colton clapped her hands onto her knees in emphasis. "Your bodies are filled with tiny machines right now and, once they're finished adjusting to your system they're going to want to do a full system check, right?"
Bill and Laura glanced at each other, reassured to see that they were just as mystified as each other.
"Your bodies are going to have EVERYTHING operating at full power. Organs, chemicals, hormones, you name it, it'll all be flipped firmly to the 'on' position. Do ye see where I'm going with this?"
Bill just glared at her. Laura, however, appeared to have a dim light of understanding dawning in her eyes.
"I'm going to have to spell it out for you, aren't I?" Colton didn't wait for an answer. She never did. "You will, for about a week, be reduced to periodic bouts of…primal urges shall we say."
"What?" Bill was looking less and less impressed by the second.
"Honey, there will be times in the coming week when all you can think about are the three F's in life." Colton looked at him and spoke as bluntly as she knew how. "Feeding, Fighting and Fra- -"
"Fornication." Edric supplied in the nick of time.
Laura's brows had shot up and Bill's scowl had deepened to rather frightening proportions.
"What exactly are you saying?"
Colton looked at the ceiling and muttered something that sounded like 'how do they all find me?' and then levelled a glare back at Bill.
"You will suck back food like you read about, you will want to knock someone's lights out at the least provocation -Bill- and you will need to frak like you need to breathe…if not more so."
THAT got Bill's attention. Laura appeared to be caught in some kind of horrified trance in which all her worst fears, or possibly most secret desires, had been realised. Bill narrowed his eyes at her and agreed that he would very much like to knock out anyone who thought they were getting into his Commander In Hotness' pants.
"Most likely with each other." Colton added and Laura squeaked a tiny bit in alarm.
"Not that you didn't want to already-OW!" Colton rubbed her arm where Edric had punched her hard enough to bruise. "What?"
Edric sighed and smeared a hand over his face. Glancing at the way Bill and Laura were now sitting very tense and very still on their couch, pointedly NOT looking at one another. He glared back at Colton and she gave him another 'what?!' look.
"You know if you remove one letter from your name you're an asshole?" He growled at her.
"Hey, you're like that all the time." Colton shrugged at him and rose up off the cot. "I'm going to grab something to eat. Anybody want anything?"
Gods, apparently there was a tact chromosome and it was definitely missing from Colton's genetic make-up.
