First Elegy, Fifth Verse
In Hiding

30 Quartus 6490
Battlestar Galactica


Boomer was running out of places to look.

He was a methodical man. He'd started with all the places that were most likely—the OC and the Viper launch bay, for starters—and had slowly worked his way down the entire list. He'd been to every possible haunt, every possible hiding place he could think of. It was really quite uncanny how Starbuck had managed to evade him for so long.

No-one Boomer asked had seen him: either not for centars or not at all. Back on the Alpha flight deck, Boomer had one more hunt around: landing bay, hangars, launch bay. He even checked the landing bay turboflushes, but if Starbuck had the worst case of constipation this century, he was having it somewhere else.

"Lost something?" asked a ground-crew chief, when Boomer wandered into the landing bay for the third time in a centar.

"Someone. You haven't seen Starbuck, have you, Jordan?"

"Not since he landed back from patrol." Jordan glanced at his wrist chronometer. "That has to be about three centars ago. Isn't he in the OC?"

"No, and he's not answering his comlink."

"Cam went through decontamination with Starbuck's patrol, I think, to take his break. He might know where he went." Jordan took off at speed to catch up with another of the ground crew, Boomer trailing tiredly in his wake.

"Second store-room?" said Boomer, stupidly, when Cam reported what he knew. "What did he want in there?"

"He said he needed a new strap for his laser holster."

Jordan thanked him and sent him off to help get a Viper out of the repair shop into its rightful place in the overhead storage rack in the hanger.

"He won't still be there," said Jordan.

"I know. Thanks, anyway." Boomer trudged away, running over in his head all the places he'd searched on this all-too-big ship. He felt depressed and overwhelmed by all the places left to search. He tried the dimly-lit store-room anyway, despite knowing it was a stupid idea.

Starbuck was at the very back of it, lounging on a pile of uniforms, smoking. From the amount of fumerello smoke in the air, he'd been in here the whole while. Three fumerello butts had been carefully ground out against the decking.

"Starbuck? Starbuck, what in Hades are you doing in here?"

"Hey," was all Starbuck said. The lit end of the fumerello glowed in the gloom.

Boomer hesitated settled down beside him, getting his back against the wall, shoulder to shoulder.

"You heard."

"Yeah." Starbuck reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the fumerello case. "Want one?"

"Doctored?"

Starbuck sighed. "Unfortunately not. I didn't have time to find one of your specials when the rumour mill reached me. Is it true?"

"Yes. I saw Sim – he was swearing up a storm. He thinks it's all a conspiracy, getting him off the ship." Boomer took the offered smoke and lit it from Starbuck's as he considered. "It may be, at that. You can see the Commander would want it."

Starbuck nodded. "When?"

"Sim said he didn't know but it had damn well better be after he's gone or he'll keelhaul the bastard himself." Boomer remembered who he was talking to and winced. "Sorry."

But Starbuck laughed, very softly. "I don't think that it'll be Sim that's worrying him. If he is worried."

"The way you are."

Starbuck blew a few contemplative smoke rings. "I don't know that I'm worried, precisely. I don't know what I am, Boom-boom, that's the trouble. It's been nearly two yahrens since I saw him, and not a word from him since. I won't deny that I've missed him and it hurt like all hell. Shit, in the beginning I thought I'd die from it, it hurt that much. But still, two yahrens. Two yahrens of never, ever expecting to see him again. You have to get on with things, when it's like that. There's been plenty since him."

"All girls" Boomer took a deep, appreciative lungful of smoke. He didn't often indulge, it was true, but Starbuck always had classy fumerellos, and it tasted good.

"Yeah, well, I've never fancied men much since, to tell you the truth. I think he kinda spoiled me for anyone else."

"Well," said Boomer, carefully, "Maybe when he gets here?"

Starbuck laughed. "And how would you feel if you knew that our captain was sleeping with one of his pilots? You'd be really pleased, right? You wouldn't think about favouritism, huh, or be looking at every thing that happens for evidence he lets me off easy?" At Boomer's silence, he nodded. "And he has entirely the same opinion, Boomer. It won't make any difference, him being here - not that way. The difference will be in wanting something you can't have and wanting it from parsecs away; and wanting something you can't have and wanting it from close up. I'm just trying to work out what I think about that."

"You can't be sure he won't want to."

"Oh, I think he'll want to, but I know he won't do it." Starbuck paused and the fumerello tip glowed brightly for a centon or two. "At least, I think he might want to. I don't know about that, either. He's been with someone else, you know."

"And how in Hades was I supposed to know?"

"Figure of speech. The point is that I know."

"From Athena," surmised Boomer.

Starbuck sighed and leaned back against the wall. "It was Rosie. I met her when the Commander took me to Demeter to see him, when they got him back from Telnos. She was his lieutenant."

"So, he hasn't wanted another man, either?"

Starbuck turned to stare at him, then grinned slightly. "Looks like. I never thought of that."

"So, he might still want to and he might find a way."

"No. He's depressingly conventional, did you know that?"

Boomer choked. "Conventional? If half that stuff on the news was accurate, when he was missing, he left home when he was eighteen to live with his tutor, for the Lords' sake! And he's Shield. They're not exactly conventional forces."

"Boomer, when you were seventeen or eighteen, and you'd discovered that your cock was for more than pissing through, did you go straight, and I mean straight, into a monogamous relationship that lasted for over eight yahrens? Or did you have a few practice runs at the target first?"

"Well..."

"Exactly. But he's Kobolian. Where he comes from, you don't do things like that. You wait until you're Sealed and then it's commitment. That's what's conventional in his little world. So, what does he do? He kicks over the traces, true, but he does it in a kinda conventional way."

"That doesn't make sense," complained Boomer.

"It does. Think about it. You're eighteen, in a religious Kobolian family that's been dedicated for generations to public service of one kind or another, mostly military. You've had that all your life, Boomer. Everything you've ever done has been held up against that. It's in your damned genes. So, if you rebel against it all, if you were a repressed Kobolian boy leaping out of the closet, what would you do?"

"Me? I'd have a wild time to make up for all that church going."

"You would, yes. You'd spread yourself around a lot, getting as much action as you can. You would not end up near enough married, for the Lords' sake, and you wouldn't end up in the services anyway. You'd sweep the streets first, if you were that determined to wipe your family's nose in how different you are. That's because you're Boomer and not Apollo. That's not what he did. He went to Joss and he stayed with Joss, like they were Sealed. It's rebellion, but not like we know it. It's like he's half hearted about it."

"Well, I suppose it make sense in weird kind of way. What you mean is that he can't break the conditioning entirely."

"That's it. He laughed about it sometimes. He said the family had worshipped the Triple Goddess for generations: Duty, Service and Honour. When he said it, you could hear the capital letters." Starbuck ground out the stub of his fumerello. "He can't escape it at all. He jumped ship with Joss, sure, but he jumped straight into the kind of long-term commitment his family would have approved of if Joss had had tits and no cock. He didn't touch Rosie for yahrens because of the fraternisation rules, even though I think he wanted her. He stuck it out with Joss when anyone with less of an eye to what was expected of him, would have chucked it in yahrens before. He won't touch me because when he gets here those bloody frat rules will be right up there between us, like a wall—" He broke off abruptly.

Boomer let the silence thicken for a few centons. Poor Starbuck.

"So," said Starbuck, at last. "That's what I think about it, I guess. I'm just trying to get myself set up for it. I won't offer, and he won't offer, and we'll have to try and make some goddamn sense out of it all." He sighed. "At least I got some warning. It's one helluva lot better than not knowing, and just seeing him get off the shuttle. I've got time to think about it and decide how I can handle it."

"You do your thinking in here? This wasn't on my list of likely places to find you."

Starbuck looked around the gloomy, grimy compartment. "I haven't been in here for yahrens. I said goodbye to him in here, three yahrens ago. Seemed like a good place to say goodbye to him again."