Section Thirteen : 'Straightened' Circumstances

 

"Starbuck? Listen. I'll be with you in about a quarter centar. Can you be packed and ready to go?"

Starbuck had been trying to eat an unappetising breakfast in the hostel's dining room, pushing his food around the plate with a fork and quelling unwelcome attempts at conversation from the other residents, when the call came at last. He'd felt a centon's dizziness while he tried to decide the pros and cons of taking the call in the public booth in the main hall against the delay in racing to the privacy of his room.

He pulled the door of the public vidbox closed. From the quality of the transmission and the sound of a hovercar engine in the background, Apollo had to be on a mobile com unit and Starbuck would have to shout to be heard. He didn't want to waste an instant in running to his room to take this call and he sure as hell didn't want to share his conversation with the rest of the losers living at the Military hostel.

"Go where?" he said. He felt breathless, as if he'd run miles, not just a few metres.

"I'm running away from home."

"Again? That's a bad habit you've got there."

"I thought you might like to run away with me and share my other bad habits."

Starbuck smiled at the fuzzy and out-of-focus Apollo on the screen. "I might. Are we going someplace nice?"

"Bed," said Apollo.

 

 

Starbuck let Apollo go with great reluctance, trying to content himself with just holding his hand or touching his face and hair, or some other caress that signified delight and love without demanding anything in return.

"I was worried when I didn't hear from you," he said, trying to keep it light.

It had been a lonely three days. Starbuck hadn't wanted to go very far from the hostel, afraid that Apollo would come or call when he was out, terrified that he'd miss him. He couldn't bear, somehow, to have a message relayed to him by someone at the hostel, someone who didn't know him and didn't know Apollo and didn't have any right to, either. He'd stayed close to his room, waiting, growing more anxious and gloomy by the centar, convincing himself that he'd read all too much into A leaving B.

Apollo smiled at him in a way that had his heart doing some very peculiar things, as if it were trying to dance. Starbuck reflected, in a slightly dazed and uncomprehending way, that it was probably more anatomically correct to put the blame for the peculiar feeling firmly onto his stomach, which felt like it was turning somersaults, but that wasn't a terribly romantic thought and who cared about anatomy anyway? This drab, horrible little room at the hostel that had been his home for the last few days was suddenly brighter and better with Apollo and that smile in it. He'd always loved that smile.

"I'm sorry," said Apollo. "I was a bit groggy for a couple of days and I slept a lot, and then I was concentrating on placating Mama."

"Why?" asked Starbuck, in whom love had done nothing to subdue a lively curiosity about his fellow men.

Apollo's expression was something between a grin and a grimace. "Let's just say that her maternal instincts were blunted when she realised I wasn't an innocent, lily-white victim in all of this. She has an odd sense of morality, my Mama. Once she got used to the idea of me living in sin with Joss without benefit of clergy, she did a lot to turn Dad around on it. But she thinks of it as the equivalent of me being Sealed and she's balking a bit at me being unfaithful. A promise is a promise to Mama, however unofficial."

Starbuck tried to control the sinking feeling that his over-energetic stomach was indulging in now. It wasn't that he actually expected to meet any of Apollo's family while he was home, content with the fleeting glimpse he'd had at the hospital of Apollo's mother and siblings. Siress Ila had looked at ease with Joss, even though she had to have known by then that Apollo had left. Starbuck didn't imagine that she'd feel that comfortable about him, but he'd prefer her not to be actively hostile. Especially, he thought with her access to the Commander. The prospect of Adama getting stirred up about it didn't bear thinking about. He wondered uneasily how fair the Siress played.

Apollo was looking at him expectantly, as if he was expected to say something, and he made himself concentrate on the conversation. He reviewed Apollo's last statement rapidly and came up with a suitable response.

"That doesn't seem fair to me. Doesn't she know about him and his peccadilloes?"

"Oh yes. She's madder with him than she is with me, that's one comfort." Apollo shook his head, as if to shake off all the emotions and disappointment he had to be feeling.

Starbuck couldn't be certain about that, of course, having never experienced it for himself, but he rather imagined that anyone would prefer their mother to leap to their defence, along the lines of 'my son, right or wrong.' It had to be disconcerting to have a mother who was a little more clear-eyed about one's faults than that. And, he felt miserably, a mother whose disconcerting clear-eyed gaze probably extended with disapproval to her son's significant others, as well.

"It's all right really," Apollo went on. "I got a fully functional maternal kiss when I left this morning, but it brought home to both of us that you can't go back. I was a fish out of water back in my parents' house. I can't revert to being her innocent little boy, no matter how much I love her - and I do. I just can't live there."

"Sure?" said Starbuck, wondering if it was a great idea given how far from fit Apollo was.

"Very sure. At least I've restored visiting rights, so that's something." He grinned suddenly. "You won't believe this, but they hadn't changed my old room a bit, in eight yahrens. It was quite touching, really."

"Nice," said Starbuck, and meant it.

"Yes, it is. But I'm a bit too old for posters of Vipers all over my bedroom walls. She's just about realising that too."

Starbuck nodded, and changed the subject, thinking that he'd had enough mother and son relations for the day. They made him feel wistful, and he didn't like that. Bowing to the inevitable and tossing his fate onto the lap of the Gods - and possibly onto the goodwill and tolerance of his Commander and the Commander's wife - he said, "So, where are we going?"

"I've got some agents looking for an apartment for me. Until they find something, I've booked into the Grande Hotel."

Starbuck almost choked. Just the biggest hotel in the city, then, overlooking the north end of the Park. "Look, I know I've saved up for this leave, but I can't afford the Grande, Pol."

"Pol," said Apollo, with another of those bone melting smiles.  "You're the only one who calls me that."

"Do you mind?"

"I can put up with it.  Occasionally.  And stop worrying about the Grande.  I've moved out of Joss's apartment and I can’t live at my parents' house – "

"Because of the Vipers on the wall?"

"That's a part of it. But mostly because it would be difficult to see you. Not impossible, but difficult. I'm homeless, really and I need somewhere to live. I'd like it to be in the centre of town, so I'm moving into the Grande."

"You can afford that?" asked Starbuck, dazed.

"I'm not as rich as Joss, but yes, I can. I'm inviting you to join me there for the rest of your furlough, just the way I'd invite you if I had an apartment of my own. That's all, Starbuck. I'll be there anyway."

"Well," said Starbuck, who had a horror of anything that smacked of charity.

"The thing is," said Apollo apologetically, patting the bed he was sitting on, "I don't think that I want to be made love to on this."

Starbuck, eyeing the narrow and uncomfortable couch that was all the military authorities considered necessary for those of its sons and daughters who needed to take advantage of its off-duty hospitality, couldn't help but sympathise. Five nights of sleeping on the bed had him wincing at the thought of trying to make love on it - which was probably why the authorities provided that particular model in the first place. Authorities, by definition, tended to lack a sense of proportion about extra-curricular activities.

"Picky!" he said, trying to give himself time to think.

"Well, I picked you, didn't I?"

Oh and that wasn't fair! That was downright underhand, saying that and smiling at him. Starbuck's defences crumbled, although he had enough self respect left - hidden somewhere in the core of all those melting bones that were making a warm gooey feeling somewhere deep in his insides - to make a silent promise to himself to pay his own way, somehow.

He picked up his kitbag, ready packed. "All right. Let's take you somewhere where you'll consent to be seduced."

Apollo struggled to his feet under Starbuck's watchful eye. "Seduced? Do you think I need seducing, that you'll have to work on it? Believe me, you won't. Where you're concerned, I'm a pushover."

Starbuck followed him to the door, glowing inside as a few more bones melted into mush at this handsome tribute. Apollo was still moving gracelessly, he was too thin and his clothes looked too big for him but the mere sight of him had Starbuck's heart tripping the light fantastic again, all apprehension forgotten.

"Especially with those crutches," he said, more to fill the silence and to avoid having to say something more significant, than anything else.

Apollo stopped in the doorway and turned. Quite deliberately, he freed his hands from the crutches. "You won't even need to kick them out from under me."

Starbuck dropped his kitbag, ready to leap forward. "Careful, you idiot! You'll fall over!"

"I don't think so," said Apollo, gravely. "I think you'll catch me."

Starbuck found himself ambushed by the very significance that frightened and delighted him. "Only if I get to keep you, once caught."

Apollo smiled at him, and laughed, and let the crutches fall away.

 

 

"The honeymoon suite?" said Starbuck, awed.

Apollo smiled. "You aren't the only romantic around here, you know."

 

 

Starbuck ducked his head so that Apollo didn't have to stretch too far to trail his fingers down the side of Starbuck's face. He'd managed to get Apollo naked without too much discomfort, and if his poor love's injuries meant that it hadn't exactly been a sexy process, there was something more deeply satisfying about being considerate and careful, something that reinforced everything he had always had with Apollo. This was about lovemaking, not sex. The passion didn't have to be wild and untamed to be deeply felt.

Although he wasn't sure, precisely, what Apollo was well enough for, even when the passion was slow and gentle and as deep as a star-field. He knew what he wanted though. During those long, miserable sectons when he'd thought that Apollo was gone and he'd never see him again - not that he'd ever really expected to, but as long as he knew Apollo was alive somewhere in the world, then there was the vaguest of thoughts and dreams that if he was very lucky and the Lords smiled on him, that one day there may be a chance for them - well, when even this small hope seemed futile, the only comfort Starbuck had had was in memories of the few nights they'd had together. He'd dreamed of this. Now he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in that well-remembered body, to convince himself that there was life and breath and warmth where once he'd feared there was only cold and silence.

"You won't hurt me," said Apollo, mind reading.

"I'm scared," admitted Starbuck, feeling like someone had handed him one of those thin, spun-glass globes that people hung from the Yule tree; something so fragile that that he was terrified of breaking it and was handling it very gingerly, barely daring to breathe on it in case it shattered. Oddly, he felt so hollow that he could be blown away by the lightest breath, and so over-solid that his insides were in intricate knots.

"Don't be. I won't break." Apollo squirmed under him to prove it, causing other physical sensations in Starbuck that were far more pleasant than the hollow knots twisting inside of him. And from the complacent expression on his face, Apollo knew exactly what effect he was having.

"I thought of this all the time after... well, after I saw the newslines."

Apollo smiled. "Don't think, Starbuck. Just do."

 

 

The fingers smoothing down his neck and right shoulder faltered as they ghosted over the thin scars, touching them gently and hesitantly.

Apollo, lying on his left side with his right leg drawn carefully up out the way and Starbuck spooned up warm and close behind him, made some encouraging noises that tried to signal that there wasn't any pain and that Starbuck should stop worrying and get on with it. Starbuck chuckled softly, paused a micron, then his lips followed the path his fingers had taken down the side of Apollo's neck, nuzzling him in a way that had his entire body tingling, mouthing gently down the line of the scars as if to soothe them.

Apollo smiled, making a small humming sound in his throat. He liked this, he liked the way Starbuck was doing this, so gently and carefully, as if Apollo was something precious to be treasured and... and cherished. Yes. That was the word: cherished.

It meant he was safe. It meant that he could cede control to Starbuck here, and he'd be safe.

The fingers were back again, running over the scars, and Apollo tilted his head back to meet Starbuck's mouth with his, pushing up on his left elbow to twist his back enough to reach. For a micron or two he bit gently at Starbuck's lips, listening to the way his lover's soft breathing caught and fluttered, before he ran his tongue over the lips to cool them. Starbuck's mouth opened for him, his tongue meeting Apollo's, questing and tasting.

"I dreamed of that," said Starbuck, softly, when at last Apollo had to break free, straining air into lungs that had been starved an instant too long for comfort. "A kiss that would be banned in all but two of the Colonies - remember?"

"Uh-huh," said Apollo, who'd rather do it than talk about it. He gave it a micron, smiling at Starbuck, until his lungs were sufficiently refreshed for another one.

Starbuck didn't object to having his reminiscences cut off by another kiss. He kissed right back, his teeth nibbling at Apollo's lower lip, the hurt small and somehow winging south to centre itself in Apollo's groin. Starbuck's hand moved down Apollo's right side, sliding down to splay the fingers against Apollo's belly. For a micron Apollo almost panicked. He was so used to the faint, persistent nausea from the drugs that he almost disregarded it between medications, but he was wary of too much pressure on his stomach - but Starbuck's hand laid there lightly only for an instant before moving south and closing around Apollo's cock.

It leapt into life under Starbuck's hand, as it hadn't done for sectons, and Starbuck chuckled when Apollo's breath shifted into a soft little gasps, matching the rhythm.

"I guess someone's feeling better," said Starbuck, and twisted to meet Apollo's mouth again, and again.

"I'd forgotten what that feels like," said Apollo, pulling back from a kiss that had been endless and enclosing Starbuck's hand in his, closing stiff fingers around the warm ones bringing him such expert pleasure.

Another breathy chuckle from Starbuck. "You've not been well," he said. He kissed Apollo one more time before turning his attention to Apollo's left shoulder blade, using mouth and lips and tongue and teeth to such good effect that Apollo found himself making that ridiculous humming sound again.

The mouth and lips and tongue and teeth worked their way down to the base of his spine, pausing there to lick and kiss the little hollow, making him complain wordlessly about Starbuck's teasing ways. He shifted until his belly was almost flat on the bed, keeping his balance on his left shoulder, trapping Starbuck's hand and his own beneath him. With his injured leg drawn up and virtually immobilised, it made him vulnerable, opened him right up to Starbuck; signalled, he hoped, everything that he wanted and felt.

"You won't hurt me," he said again.

"I promise," agreed Starbuck, shifting on the bed behind him, getting to his knees. Apollo had time to regret, briefly, the loss of the warm body pressed up against him, before Starbuck started again and he was in no state to regret anything.

Starbuck started where he'd left off, tongue and mouth working busily in the hollow at the base of Apollo's spine, making little darting attacks down the cleft between his buttocks. Apollo sighed happily, and carefully stretched out his left leg, opening himself further, inviting without the need for words.

The mouth accepted the invitation, tongue pressing against his entrance, licking and probing. Not humming now, but moans that were tearing out of him, his body shuddering with the gentle rhythm that Starbuck's hand was playing on his still-hard cock. The combination of sensations was so intense that his eyes watered.

Starbuck kissed him, full and square on the little pucker that wanted more, that wanted so much more, and shifted again. Apollo didn't have time to complain before Starbuck's mouth started back on his spine and a well-lubed finger - when did he take the time to do that?! wondered Apollo vaguely - slid into him, probing deeper than Starbuck's hot tongue could and with commensurately greater effect. Apollo's hips heaved as the finger brushed against his prostate, and not even the complaining twinge from his knee could interrupt him now. He realised, dimly, that he'd stopped feeling sick.

Two fingers twisting in him to burn and stretch, and then a soft voice in his ear. "Sure?"

"Get on with it!" panted Apollo, what little sense of finesse he possessed deserting him utterly.

Starbuck chuckled again. It wasn't a sound that Apollo really associated with Starbuck, whose laughter was usually less unrestrainedly happy, more usually edged with a wary experience... aargh - he caught his breath and abandoned thought. Starbuck had nestled down behind him again and the fingers were gone, replaced by a huge, unbelievably intense pressure as his lover's thick, heavy cock breached him.

His breath whined out between his teeth as Starbuck pushed slowly, very slowly and carefully up into him. There was the usual instant of panic that came from the pressure on his bladder, the feeling that he'd have to piss, then he shifted slightly and relaxed and that was gone, and he was conscious of nothing but the fullness inside him, the whole heavy hard length of Starbuck moving in him.

Once more Starbuck changed position slightly, pressing his warm belly and chest against Apollo's back, and this time when the slow press forward came, heavy with its own significance, its own momentous meaning, Starbuck's cock brushed up against his prostate and once again Apollo lost all ability to think.

There was nothing but feeling. The slightly bloated feeling of fullness, the slow burn as he stretched to take Starbuck's cock melting into incoherence as, on each stroke, that tiny little spot inside him was stroked and rubbed into complete gratification and an intense physical pleasure that felt like his veins carried lightning instead of blood.

He couldn't move much, but he did what he could, pushing backwards to welcome Starbuck into him, relishing the feeling of Starbuck's balls slapping against his buttocks, his groin throbbing under Starbuck's hand; the sound of Starbuck's breathing echoing inside his bones.

And Starbuck's voice in his ear, talking to him between little kisses to his neck, his shoulder, the side of his face that was all Starbuck could reach; Starbuck's voice quiet and broken and throaty, telling him that he was beautiful, that he was loved and cherished, that Starbuck loved him. When Starbuck kissed his cheek, he felt the wetness.

And then the heat in his balls exploding like fireworks, the sparks painting the inside of his closed eyelids, Starbuck moving faster, the words coming in sharp gasps now and mostly just his name. And Starbuck was pressed in close and tight, whimpering, shuddering inside of him, the hand on his cock almost painful now as Starbuck spasmed once, and again, and then, at last, again.

Starbuck was heavy on him, breathless and panting and unable to speak. His arms tightened around Apollo, protective and loving, giving him a place to be safe in. Apollo sighed and closed his eyes, and let himself drift away into a sleep where he didn't need drugs, not any more, not with Starbuck holding him, not with Starbuck still inside him, not with Starbuck keeping him, now that he was caught.

 

 

"Come back to bed," said Apollo, sleepily.

Starbuck turned from the window. He'd got up to use the flush, careful not wake Apollo, and had stood for a long time to watch the city take on its night-time garb of lights and shadows.

"Did I wake you? Sorry."

"I'm not sorry. But if you are, you can come back to bed and apologise nicely."

Starbuck stayed where he was, where it was a little safer, where he was still Starbuck, safe behind his boundaries. When he got to close to Apollo, the bounds melted away somehow, and he was less sure of himself, less unique than he was when they were apart. It was a worrying, intoxicating, marvellous, scary feeling.

"I was thinking," he said.

"Dangerous."

"Not for you," said Starbuck. "Only for me."

Apollo didn't answer. Starbuck watched him struggle to sit up, his figure dim in the faint light coming in through the window.

"I wondered," said Starbuck, "where this is going to take us." He was glad that he could be nothing other than a black shape against the window, that Apollo couldn't possibly see his face. He thought he could control his voice or his expression, not both, and the gloom helped. "I mean - "

"I know what you mean," said Apollo.

"What will happen, do you think, about your leg?"

If Apollo was surprised by the question, his tone didn't show it. "I'll get back. At least a yahren, the doctors said, but I will get back. But I don't think that they'll let me back into Shield straight away. I think I'll be rotated out." He sighed. "Probably to Fleet, if I can swing it. I wouldn't want Infantry. I'd prefer to fly."

"Maybe," said Starbuck, tentatively, "Maybe we could get the same ship?"

"I'd rather we didn't," said Apollo.

It was like being kicked in the gut by a Viper on full throttle. "Oh."

"If we're on the same ship, you'd probably be under my command. I'd go mad with you there and the fraternisation rules between us."

Another, different kick. "You'd let the rules keep us apart?" demanded Starbuck.

"What choice is there?"

"Break the goddamn rules!"

"They're there. They've kept me from someone else in the past. That's why they're there. I can't help that."

"Break them," said Starbuck, but he was despairing, feeling sick.

After a short silence, Apollo said, quietly, "You know why the rules are there. You command a squad, Starbuck. What would be the effect on them if you were having an affair with one of them?"

"The difference is that I don't fancy Jolly!"

I don't love Jolly.

Apollo sighed.

"I know," said Starbuck, reluctantly. "I do know. It's just that - " He stopped. Apollo knew, too; Starbuck knew that.

"Yes."

Starbuck turned back and stared out of the window. Fifteen floors down, the late evening traffic moved through the gathering dark, mere shapes and lights, silent. "And if you don't get back?" he asked, after a centon.

"Then I go back to the Kobolian, and unwrap a few mummies."

Where Joss had always wanted him.

"Right," said Starbuck.

"And the fraternisation rules wouldn't apply."

Starbuck swallowed hard. "Right," he said again, wondering what sort of job he could get if he resigned his commission and came home to live with a Fellow at the Kobolian Institute. What could a pilot do when the only thing he'd ever known was taken away from him - no, that wasn't fair. If he gave it up, of his own free will. Would it be compensation enough, learning to unwrap mummies? And that wasn't fair, either. Would it be compensation enough, loving Apollo?

He didn't know the answer, but he did grimace at the irony of Apollo becoming Joss and Starbuck taking on Apollo's mantle. The tension tore at him already, when this was nothing but theoretical. He wondered briefly what had kept Joss and Apollo together after Apollo had taken his commission in Shield. He'd have thought that the tensions would be too great to be borne. He wondered if Apollo loved him enough to bear them, the way Apollo had borne them for Joss.

He sighed. It was all too theoretical. They were as they'd been before - together for a short time, no future, no ties. "It isn't very long," he said, turning back to face Apollo.

"We've five sectons," said Apollo, mind-reading again.

"It isn't very long," repeated Starbuck.

"It's longer than the five days we had last yahren."

True. Those five days had had to last him a yahren, and he'd once thought they'd have to last him a lifetime. They'd been like beacons, but they hadn't been enough; just shadows of what he really wanted. The five sectons cast a longer shadow, that was all.

"The thing is," said Starbuck, apologetically. "I'm getting out of my depth. I think I'm drowning, Apollo."

Apollo laughed, a shaky, uncertain sort of laugh. In the dim light Starbuck saw him raise the bedcovers.

"Come on in, Starbuck. The water's lovely."

 

 

"He'll be here in five centons," said Apollo. "And he's nervous. Be nice, Mama."

"I just wanted to see you," said Ila. "Just to be certain you're all right. I won't eat him."

He looked so happy that something inside her chest tightened with apprehension for him.

"I'm fine. My leg's a lot better."

"I can see that," she said, and it was true. Only a little over a secton, and she could see he was easier on it, moving more comfortably. He'd never been particularly graceful - too gauche, too little control over long arms and legs, and the Lords knew what little grace he had was gone - but he didn't seem to be in pain and he was even putting his weight on the leg for a centon or two. "What about your hand?"

Apollo held out his right hand and carefully made a ring with the tip of his thumb and the tip of his first finger. He did it with all four fingers, and grinned at her. "Do I pass inspection?"

She nodded, satisfied that whatever he had been doing over the last secton - and she firmly closed down on her imagination before it could get completely out of hand - he hadn't been neglecting the exercises the doctors had told him to do.

"Have you seen Joss?" she asked.

Apollo grimaced. "No. I've heard from his lawyer, though. Does that count?"

Irretrievable then, she thought, and sighed. "What about?"

"Just making arrangements to collect my things," said Apollo, lightly, but she could hear the strain underneath.

She nodded, and sipped at her coffee. "I haven't told the children about Starbuck," she said.

"I'm not ashamed and I won't hide," said Apollo. After a micron, he added, "I'm going to be pretty busy, Mama. We only have a little while."

She knew what that meant: don't any of you expect to see much of me until he goes back, and then I'll need you to pick me up and comfort me, the way you're supposed to. Well, once she had thought Apollo the least self-centred of her children, but perhaps it was just that he was the least overtly egotistic. He might look like her, but there was a lot of Adama in him. There was a lot of Adama in each of them.

"You mean that you don't have time to share him?" She laughed, remembering, and when he looked at her, raising an enquiring eyebrow, she said, "I was thinking that maybe that's why your father and I are as strong together as we are, only having a few sectons together each yahren. You have to make it count. I really used to resent having to share him with you lot when he was home." She gave it up then, accepting it all. After all, what else could she do? "All right. Keep in touch and I'll keep Zac away."

Because they both knew that Athena wasn't likely to be too demanding in the matter of spending time with her elder brother.

"Thanks," said Apollo. "Tell them what you want."

"It's not their business, really," she said. "All they need to know is that you're got a friend staying with you and you're a little tied up."

"Yeah, right. As if that would stop Zac's smart-assed comments!" But he was laughing as he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. "I'm sorry to be so selfish."

"I wish I could believe that," said Ila. She looked up as a shadow fell over the table. It was indeed the strong-minded young man from the hospital, looking apprehensive.

She saw Apollo's hand slip into Starbuck's and the look on his face made that odd tight feeling inside her contract even more with sadness. Starbuck glanced from her to Apollo, and there was the same frantic happiness in his eyes as there was in her son's, masking the despair underneath.

"This is Starbuck, Mama."

He might as well have said it with a flourish of trumpets, she thought, with a depressing realisation of how much she would be needed when Starbuck went back. She hoped Starbuck had someone on the Galactica to do the same for him.

She smiled a welcome and held out her hand.

 

 

Starbuck straddling him, leaning down to kiss him again. Starbuck had taken enthusiastically to long, slow kisses, to taking every micro-ounce of significance from touch of lips or hands. But this one tasted salty.

"Don't come with me tomorrow," he said, his mouth against Apollo's. "I couldn't bear it."

Don't go... Apollo stopped himself from saying it. He moaned as Starbuck raised himself again, and sank again, enclosing Apollo in the tight heat, rubbing against him.

"Love you, Pol," said Starbuck, rising again and falling again.

Apollo arched his back to reach for another despairing, salty kiss. "Love you, too," he said.

 

 

Don't come with me tomorrow.

Don't go. Please don't go.

 

 

Boomer was waiting for him on Alpha deck, offering an exuberant hug when he stepped down from the shuttle, slapping him on the back and squeezing the life out of him.

"Hey, was I missed or something?" Starbuck pulled free.

"Something," said Boomer. "I'm just excited about the present that I know you've brought me back."

"You get that excited about a stick of candy with Caprica City written all through it? Sad."

"It had better be better than that. Come on! Tell me all about it."

It was endearing, Boomer's eagerness. Starbuck hugged him back and let him take the extra kit bag that Starbuck had somehow acquired. He didn't normally come back from furlough with an extra bag stuffed full of civilian clothes, but when he'd come to pack he'd not been able to throw away that jacket because Apollo had bought it for him, or those pants because Apollo had been with him when he'd bought them and they'd brought a very predatory gleam to his love's green eyes that had been more than borne out when they had got back to the Grande. And most especially, he couldn't get rid of that blue shirt, because the instant Apollo had seen him in it, Apollo had had him out of it again and, within a suitably sweaty and noisy interval, had had him gasping and writhing in the one of the best orgasms of his life, buried in Apollo so deep that he thought he'd never be free.

And that happened every time he wore it. Starbuck had taken to wearing the shirt every day, even if only for a few teasing centons, and loudly regretting the necessity of laundering it. Luckily for him, Apollo's carnal reactions weren't muted by either the shirt's dampness or its lamentably un-ironed state, as Starbuck had taken care to prove by careful, scientific experimentation. Whenever he wore the shirt and no matter what its condition, they ended up naked and entangled in the sheets - not always as a result of him taking Apollo, either. As the sectons passed he had been more and more comfortable about taking Apollo deep inside himself, trusting Apollo absolutely, feeling safe; feeling loved.

When pressed for an explanation, Apollo had been unable to account for the blue shirt phenomenon - except for some broken and breathless words about the colour matching Starbuck's eyes - but Starbuck's tests and experiments proved by empirical measurement (he was always a man for keeping score) that the shirt was special. Starbuck was seriously considering how to have it framed and preserved for posterity.

"Well?" demanded Boomer, ushering him into the turbolift, breaking into his memories. "Tell me!"

"Well," said Starbuck.

What was there to say?

He might say, he supposed, that he had been loved and cherished for almost six sectons. He might say that this had been the first person in his life to show him what it was to love and be loved. Or he might say that, again, this was the first person in his life with whom it had been more than just sex and physical gratification. He could say that just as much as those long pleasurable centars in bed, he treasured the gaps between lovemaking when, as much as Apollo's disability had let them they'd wandered the city, eaten in funny little cafes, talked for centars or just sat in companiable silence, content in the other's closeness. He could say that he'd even enjoyed the couple of meetings they'd had with Apollo's mother, although he'd found himself wondering why she seemed a little sad around them.

Or maybe he might even say that parting from Apollo two days ago had near on broken his heart and he'd cried like a child in the turbo-flush of the shuttle taking him to Demeter. And he might seek the understanding and comfort a good friend would offer by saying that knowing there was never going to be any future for them - unless Apollo remained crippled, and he couldn't wish that - meant that he couldn't, just then, see any future for himself that wasn't black and hopeless and lonely.

And he might say, with God's own truth, that there would never be any other man for him. Because the water had indeed been lovely, but as he'd feared, he'd drowned deep and now there was no-one to throw him the lifeline.

"Well," he said again, and swallowed all of this, unsaid. Because in the end, there was no "might". He couldn't say it. "Pretty good."

"Pretty good? That's all you have to say?"

Starbuck thought about it a little more. "Yes."

Boomer groaned theatrically. "Come on, Starbuck! Did you get to see him?"

"Oh yes."

"And?"

"And," said Starbuck, seriously, reducing his life to its essentials, trying to tell Boomer everything and nothing, " - no more men for me."

"Oh," said Boomer, after a long, long silent centon and several sidelong glances, and his voice was gruff with sympathy. "There's still girls."

"Yeah," said Starbuck. "I guess there is."

 

 

"I like the apartment," said Rosie, pausing in her efforts to drag boxes across a floor that would have to be re-polished when she'd finished. "But why didn't you invite me over after you'd moved in?"

"Cheap labour," said Apollo, limping to the bookcase, a bag of books balanced precariously in his arms, the walking cane hooked over one arm. "And a deep desire to see you again, of course."

Rosie watched him settle the books into place. He was walking better and looking better, but she didn't think she had ever seen him so unhappy. The contrast to her last home leave, a few sectons before, was painful. They'd met her and Grant for dinner, he and Starbuck, and then she had never seen him so obviously, almost incandescently, happy. That the blond flyboy had done that - well she supposed she was pleased, glancing into a nearby mirror and scowling at curls that were a dull brown, not blonde. She sighed. Apollo deserved to be happy, but she could wish the source was different.

The lights caught her pendant, and she smiled. Starbuck hadn't got diamonds. Of course, he'd got something a bit better than that.

"That bit I'd guessed," she said, perching on the crate, her eyes on him as he moved carefully around the small main room. "The cheap labour, I mean. You're going to be owing me lunch for a sectar."

"Not unless you earn it. On strike?" he asked.

"It's the inalienable right of all oppressed minorities to withdraw their labour when they're dissatisfied with their working conditions." She jumped to her feet and went to him, slipping her arm around his waist when he turned too fast and had to clutch at the bookcase for support.

Apollo laughed. "And holding me up satisfies you instead?"

Rosie smiled. "It helps. Come and talk to me. We can unpack later."

She pulled him over to a sofa, still in its wrappings from the shop that had delivered it, and swept all the bags and boxes on it down onto the floor. Apollo sighed but let her get away with it. He didn't object to her snuggling up to him either. She hoped he got some comfort out of it.

"So, ever since I got here, you've carefully steered the conversation away from anything that really matters. This is me, remember? You're not allowed not to tell me. I had it written into the Hype's operating rules."

Apollo made the most inelegant noise, a definite snort. "And does that work with that boray, Tarrant?"

"You know," she said, "it's almost a relief to think that you were unconscious when we got you up to the Hype. I think you'd have killed him, just for having the temerity to have been given your ship."

"Some people deserve death," said Apollo, darkly.

"I know. And only the Regulations stop you."

"That and being afraid of prison," agreed Apollo. "Whoever designed the prison uniform definitely wasn't gay."

Rosie laughed. "That's rich, coming from you! It's not like you're the most fashionable man I know. Are you sure you're gay? Anyway, as soon as you're well enough to come back, tip me the word and we'll lose him out of an airlock."

"Don't hold your breath, love. I've seen the General three times now, and she never answers my questions about what they'll do with me. I don't think it'll be Shield. I think that I'll have to take my rotation out, and I've a horrible feeling that I'm going to get dumped on the Strategy Unit for a while."

"I'm surprised they haven't pulled you into that crawlon's web before now. You don't need two legs to think."

"Next secton," said Apollo, rather gloomily. "The medics said that I'm fit enough for that. Two days a secton."

"You should have bribed them better. But two days isn't too bad, is it?"

"I managed to negotiate myself a couple of days at the Academy as well. The strategy tutor there is retiring at the end of this semester, so I'll fill in for a while."

"You're going to try and teach your own brother and sister?"

"Only Zac. Athena graduates in a few sectars."

"But, poor Zac," said Rosie.

Apollo grinned. "He was horrified, too, for some reason. He says he doesn't mind me being at the Academy but he was pretty downcast by the subject. He seems to think it was invented as some sort of punishment."

"It's not everyone's favourite subject, Apollo." Rosie thought back to her own Academy days. "In fact it's not anyone's favourite subject."

"I can't understand that...." Apollo began.

"They don't understand it either. That's the problem." Rosie laughed. "At least it was in my day."

"I, though, am pretty good at it." Apollo paused, and smiled. "And it will be one class Zac passes, if I have to work him into the ground. I owe Dad that much."

Rosie felt suddenly very sorry for Zac. She remembered him from that dreadful Midnight Watch - tall, taller than Apollo, and gangling, as if he'd grown too fast. His young face had been blank with bewilderment and grief, and he'd been very still throughout the ceremony, trying not to cry. She hoped Apollo would realise how much the boy needed to prove himself, to get out from under their father's long shadow. She hoped he would realise; after all, he'd had to make that same journey himself.

"You'll be a good tutor. Just don't get so good at it that they won't let you out later. And talking of tutors," she added, artfully, "you haven't mentioned Joss. How is he?"

"Getting along. I saw him a couple of days ago, just before he left. We got through dinner without a scene, so that's an advance."

"Left? Where's he gone?"

"There's some new star cruiser he heard about - he's gone on the maiden voyage. Lots of company, and every possible hedonistic luxury. He'll love it."

Rosie nodded, moderating her opinions and contenting herself with being very mild: "He'll find plenty of rich playmates who don't think that they need a job other than keeping him happy. How very Joss-ian. You know, 'Pollo, I think he'll get over you."

"I'm sure of it," said Apollo, dryly. "I hope so. At least he's talking to me now. I was getting a little bit tired of always talking to his lawyer."

Rosie reached up and touched his mouth. "So it's not Joss dragging down the corners of this otherwise delectable facial feature. Now we come to the heart of it. You got in too deep, 'Pollo."

"Drowned deep," said Apollo, and sighed. "Pointless, too. There's no future in it."

"And that's important to you." She started picking her way carefully.

"Very. And I'm in Shield, and he's in Fleet. What chance we ever meet again?"

"You did, though. You might again."

"Maybe, but I'm not counting on it."

"If they do rotate you out, you'll probably get Fleet."

"I hope so. But that's at least a yahren off and even if it was the same ship - and I'd fight that - what can we do about it? I'd only go to Fleet if I could get a flight command, and he'd be in one of the squadrons."

"You think too much of the fraternisation rules," she said, resentfully.

"There can't be any tie there, for either of us. He's free and I'm free and I don't like being on my own. I've never been on my own, Rosie. It's a bit scary."

"There are other men in the universe, pet."

"I need to love the person I'm with, you know. That's the way I'm wired."

Now it was Poor Apollo. But she filed away his words for future reference, and hoped she looked encouraging.

"So," he said, "I'm off men."

"What about girls, then? I mean, I know about your men, 'Pollo, but that didn't stop you taking that redhead from Sagittera for a spin a few yahrens ago. Are you off women, too?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

Rosie glanced at him, then stared out of window, remembering a single kiss that was unlike any kiss he'd ever given her before. "I'm a woman, in case you hadn't noticed."

After a short silence, he said, "I'd noticed."

"What did the redhead have that I don't?"

"It was more what she didn't have. She didn't have my lieutenant's pips on her collar."

"I'm not your lieutenant any longer. You're not my commanding officer any more. Was that it? Those bloody fraternisation rules? Well, they don't apply now, do they?" She waited, then added. "It fizzled out, with Grant, in case you're wondering."

He nodded. "I wondered why you hadn't mentioned him."

"And I know you, 'Pollo. I know that you're mostly gay, but I don't think that you're all the way over there, or why the redhead? And it doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me at all."

He was very still and silent, and she clutched at the pendant like a talisman.

"I know that you have to love the one you're with. I can believe that. Do you love me?"

"Very much," said Apollo.

"Could you love me, then? A little bit? Because I don't like being on my own either."

They looked at each other, and Apollo smiled. The little lines at the corner of his eyes that she'd seen and grieved over, smoothed out.

Surer of him now, she laughed. "Come on, 'Pollo. Time to give straight sex a try." She turned and put her arms around his neck. His came around her, to hold her.

The kiss was like the one he'd given her on Telnos. It was nothing at all like the brotherly passionless kisses that they'd shared in the past. And even though she knew that he was seeking the comfort she could give him, and her hair was brown not blond, it was enough to start with.

"Well, I suppose," said Apollo. "It's about time I shocked my Dad again."

 

End

The Shield Sequence continues with Taking Shield: The Field of Reeds