letterstonorah

Title: Anomalies
Author: LettersToNorah
Word Count: 6400
Characters/Pairings: Kara/Felix (mentions of canon pairings)
Rating: NC17
Summary: Goes AU after the cylon occupation of New Caprica. Felix and Kara are in the cells next to each other in a cylon Prison. Felix POV.
Spoilers: Season 3
Warnings: Adult language, violence, a little bit of sexy time.

Note: So while watching BSG, I was always pretty indifferent about all of the ships (except for Laura/Bill. I mean, they were obviously meant for each other). While exploring fic, I've been gravitating toward Kara/Lee, only because I think they have the most canonical support. But then I read Alpha and Omega and now all I want to do is squish Kara and Felix together so they can have lots of hot sexy time. I'm not sure if there's anyone in the fandom who'll even read this ship, but I certainly hope so. If you're into multishipping at all, I hope you'll give this fic a chance.

When Felix realizes that the loud, hiccupping sobs from the neighboring cell belong to Starbuck, he thinks that the whole thing is rather—

Curious? Odd?

An anomaly if ever there was one. Yes, he understands that the constant dick wagging of the pilots is little more than a poorly constructed façade. That there are chips in the paint and cracks in the underlying foundation of their image. Viper jocks are all bravado and tacky swagger. Senseless, insane courage.

Felix is reminded of the Nyallis villages. The myth goes that Robauld Nyallis painted fake villages along the Sagittarian Railroad so that visitors to the backward planet wouldn't see how bad things were there.

The toughness the pilots wear is a show for those not looking closely enough.

It's necessary. Felix knows this. Flying what amounts to a computerized torpedo into the vacuum of space in order to engage in dogfights with fighters that were better, stronger, and didn't have bad days required a certain amount of stupid bravery. Deceiving yourself into thinking you're larger than life and above it all might as well be in the flight manual.

Felix knows they've all probably pissed in their flight suits too many times to count.

But still. Starbuck? He'd witnessed enough of her crazy ass stunts on dradis to know that the girl actually didn't fear death. She was borderline suicidal. Already dead, as far as he was concerned.

(And weren't they all? Every single person is a ticking time bomb. Life is painfully brief, making this phrase of survival all the more ridiculous. What was the frakking point already?)

There's a tiny gap in the stone that separates his and Starbuck's prison cells. He chipped it open months ago when he thought there might be a chance of escape. (What a joke.)

He leans down, breaths sharp as his broken ribs protest against the movement.

"Starbuck?" Felix asks.

Nothing. The sobs he heard only a few seconds ago hush all at once.

"Gaeta?" she asks, and the bitterness in her voice stings more than it should. Felix wonders if she knows that ultimately he's responsible for this, this predicament of sorts. He's made a gross miscalculation.

Felix doesn't consider himself a moral man. He's not amoral and immoral, no. He makes choices. He does what he thinks is right.

Stealing elections is not right, even when the ends justify the means.

And they so rarely do. Besides, Laura Roslin annoyed him to no end. A despot in an elected president's clothing. Is her mad insistence that she's a prophet of the gods any different than the delusions of the cylons that think they're doing the work of some One True God? What the frak?

But Laura Roslin is better than Gaius Frakking Baltar. Boozing and popping pills and frakking cheap whores while the colonists struggle to survive. While Felix rots in a cell because he refused to give the cylons an idea about where the remainder of fleet may have jumped. (Why do they even care? Seriously, cylons? Seriously? 2,000 frakking people at the very most. Let them go, godsdamnit.)

"Sometimes I think you have more lives than a cat," says Felix. "Thought when that Two took you that you were most certainly dead."

From Starbuck's cell, a snort that comes out like a snarl. "Didn't realize you cared how many lives I had," Starbuck says. Felix can tell that she's stopped crying (thank goodness. The sound of Kara Thrace weeping was just too incongruous to deal with right now). "So what? You stalking me now, Mr. Gaeta?"

"Yes, Starbuck. That's exactly it. I've been mooning over you for years now."

And all this feels weirdly good. Despite the dank prison, the minimal food, the cuts and bruises, there's something peaceful about being here. Starbuck's bad attitude is refreshing in its familiarity.

How sad is that? The closest thing he has to home is mouthing off with a suicidal viper jock who has little if no respect for what he does.

"But really," Felix says. "What's wrong?"

What a stupid question. What isn'twrong? "I mean why are you here? Why now?" he corrects.

"Paid for a room upgrade," says Starbuck. "And you? What did you do to piss off the toasters?"

"Well, it doesn't take much, does it?" Felix says.

That earns him a laugh from her. Wimpy and mirthless, but a laugh nonetheless.

"No, it doesn't," says Starbuck.

That's when she reaches her hand through the small opening between their respective cells. It's bloody, scratched, and bruised. Defensive wounds. Like she'd been fighting someone off.

"Do you want a high five?" Felix asks. "Really not the time."

"Just touch me, you bastard," says Starbuck. "Touch my hand."

Felix doesn't really know what to do with that. He's not unaffectionate, but this is a bit unexpected. Felix doesn't do unexpected. He likes patterns and numbers and figures and equations. Things working out in a fine, perfect system. Certainly, he can think on his feet. That's what makes him so damn good at his job. But his preference is for the usual.

"Damn it, come on."

He sees her fingers pushed into the crevice up to the second knuckle. It's too small to fit her whole hand.

Felix grabs her outstretched fingers, surprised to feel how clammy and soft they are. His own are calloused and rough from all the digging and scraping he done in his attempts to escape. But Starbuck—it's been too many months since she's been in a viper.

Her breath quickens as he takes hold, her fingers tangling with his own, clasping tight, holding onto him for dear life.

Then she lets go, pulls her hand back.

Okay. Whatever.

"Thanks for that," Starbuck says. "Just been a while since I've felt a human hand, you know? Not that I can tell the difference. I thought when I felt you it'd be somehow different. Warmer, maybe. More tingly."

"Sorry to disappoint," says Felix. He means that. Her hand, it had been nice. Not warm or tingly or particularly human. Just a hand. A sweet hand. A hand that was neither beating or slapping him. That's a luxury these days.

And somehow he can sense that Starbuck is shrugging, even though he is unable to see her.

"No, it's good," says Starbuck. "It's nice to be touched on purpose. It's nice to want it."

Felix doesn't want to think too hard about what that means.

"It's good to hear your voice, Starbuck," says Felix. He thinks of that time with the Blackbird, when she disappeared from dradis and her voice had dissolved into the blackness of the universe.

Then suddenly she was back, and her voice had been a welcome sound, indeed.

"You don't have to call me that, Mr.Gaeta," she says.

"Isn't that what a call sign is for? For calling someone?"

"Feels weird is all," says Starbuck. "It's like a nickname that doesn't make sense anymore."

To Felix it makes perfect sense. New Caprica had erased him. He was a tactical officer without jumps to calculate. A navigator with no course to plot. A soldier with no war. A geneticist with no lab. The cylons had stripped him of all that he was, and what's left? Felix the…Felix the? Felix the prisoner?

Alone in the cell, he sings songs. Chants old nursery rhymes. Runs through equations in his head. Recites the ancient Caprican epics. For the hell of it he even prays, sometimes. Spiteful prayers. LordsofKobol,Ipraythatyougofuckyourselves.AlthoughIguesstodothatyou'dhavetoactuallyexist.All of this he does in the hopes that after all this is over (will it ever be over?) he'll still be a man. Some kind of man. Any kind of man. He just doesn't want to be a shell.

"Alright, Kara," Felix says. "But no more Mr. Gaeta either. I'm not your sixth year math teacher."

"Deal," she says.

For the rest of the day (night? who keeps track?) she's silent save for the in and out of her labored breathing. Felix is sure that it's the most beautiful sound he's heard in a very long time.

Neither of them really sleeps. They're tired. Dead tired. But with the cylons, you might go to sleep and wake up with—who knows what. Neither Felix nor Kara is anxious to find out.

At night, they sleep in three hour shifts. Approximately two precious sleep cycles.

They teach each other little things during what they assume is the day time, but there's not enough light to ever tell for sure.

Kara teaches him the words and melody to a song she wrote when she was a little girl. He sings it.

She says, "One more time."

He sings it again.

She says, "Just once more. For real this time."

He obliges because there's something a little irresistible about her.

After he's done (it ends up being five more times, actually), Felix teaches her the songs that he knows. Her voice is pretty. Not bad. Not great. She can carry a tune well enough. But there's this wicked, raspy quality to it that gives him chills. It's beautiful in its own way.

When they're bored of music they move on to science. He teaches her roughly how FTLs work. Explaining the relativity of space and time, how they warp the universe itself. He goes on and on, stopping only when he thinks he hears the faintest sounds of her snores.

"Do you get it now?" he asks.

"What I'm getting is, it's basically magic, right?"

He smiles because it might as well be true.

"I like the way you laugh," Felix says.

Shit.

What the frak had just come over him?

"My mom used to say that I sounded possessed when I laughed. That I needed to learn how to reign it in. That warriors only laugh at the face of death, and even then, only very, very quietly."

That's the first time Kara has mentioned her family.

"Well, she was wrong," says Felix. "Your laugh is really very beautiful. What would I say if this were a romance novel? That it's like an angel?"

She's silent for a bit, and Felix is pretty sure that he's blushing, his words starting to catch up with him. What had he been thinking? What is he going to say next? That her eyes are like diamonds? Or like the stars? The thought of it makes him sick. Whoever had the idea to compare eyes to stars was ridiculously…misguided. A ball of matter so hot that it's no longer a gas. Just plasma. Fusing hydrogen.

And maybe the wildness of it and the energy of it and the light of it isn't unlike Kara's eyes at all.

Gods, did he really just think that? Hell, he barely remembers what she looks like it's been so long since he's seen her face.

"Felix," Kara says, and her voice is uncharacteristically hesitant.

"Mmm?"

"Are you flirting with me?"

"Gods, no," he says, maybe a bit too quickly.

He hears a sound that he can't quite place. Like a choked sob? Like maybe she's offended? Frak.

"Look," he goes on, "I'm just stating the perfectly obvious. Am I not free to make an observation without being accused of engaging in flirtation?" He says that word—the otherf-word—with marked disdain. It's just, flirting is what giddy schoolgirls do. Flirting is what the asswipes who bullied him in high school took part in.

He didn't want in on that nonsense.

"Well, excuse me, Mr. Gaeta," she says. "I was only asking because—well, I didn't think I was exactly your type, okay?"

Even knowing she can't see him, he shrugs. "I'm fluid," is all he says.

It's true. His tastes are unpredictable and untamed. He doesn't have a type. Men, women, folks who identified as neither of those things. Doesn't much matter to him. And no, he doesn't claim to only be attracted to "personalities", he can just never quite foresee what's going to get him going.

Right now, his type is Kar—

No. He's not going to even think it. They're all going to die here anyway. What the frak does it matter?

He's delirious from lack of food and sleep and sunlight. Anybody could be in the cell next to him and he'd probably develop feelings for them. It's only natural. She's the only human voice he's heard in quite a long time.

When they get out (which, of course, will never happen) he'll come to his senses.

They do an insane amount of pushups.

They race to see who can finish sets of 100 first. Next its crunches and sit ups. Then wall-sits. Jumping jacks. Running in place. Kara insists that they need to keep their muscles from atrophying. That when they're rescued, they need to be able to run, not walk, out of here.

He disagrees with the premise that a few exercises are going to be the difference between life and death, but he goes along with it for her.

He admits that after a month it's satisfying to look down and see his broadened chest, his defined arm muscles, his toned abs.

During his watch shift, when Kara is getting her three hours of sleep, he thinks about how she must look. Like him, she must be dirty as frakking frak. Bloody. Bruised. How long is her hair now? Have her eyes darkened from all the sadness, all the pain?

But under all that there's something perfect. A toned, curved form. Full, dark lips. Breasts soft to touch. He imagines the pebbled flesh of her nipples under his thumb, the slickness between her legs.

Without thinking he groans, and Kara stirs.

She sleeps too godsdamned lightly. But it only takes a few moments for the steady sound of her breathing to come, signifying that she's back to sleeping.

Felix squeezes his eyes shut. Is he really about to do this? In a frakking cylon prison?

He unbuttons his pants and removes his already hardening length from his briefs. His breathing is as quiet as he can make it, not wanting to disturb Kara again.

He rubs gently, up and down, folding his thumb over the head of his cock, imagining Kara's fingers. By now, he knows exactly what they feel like, having held them a number of times when she puts her hand through the hole.

"Felix?"

It's Kara.

"Go back to sleep," he says, not because he wants to wank in peace, but because she needs the rest. It's been a long day for her. Number Two had dragged her off earlier to gods know where to do gods know what.

"Can't," she says.

"Nightmares?"

"No," she says, snapping.

"I have them too, you know," he says.

"I don't have frakking nightmares," she says. "I'm not a little girl."

"And I am?" says Felix, tired of her unwillingness to show any vulnerability. They were in a cylon prison for frak's sake. He'd heard her being beaten numerous times. She'd heard the same on his side. When would she stop pretending that she's a tough as nails pilot?

"I don't want to fight," Kara says. He hears her voice deflating.

"That'd be a first time for you."

"You're sick, you know," Kara says. Her voice is cold and detached, so different than the warmth he's come to know over the last few months.

"Sick?"

"I know you were jacking off," she says, "while I was sleeping."

"Oh, and you don't?" he says, trying to keep his voice calm and cool.

"Never while thinking of you," she says.

And that hurts. It really hurts.

One day, casually, he asks, "Do you miss Sam? Or Lee? Or whoever the last person you were frakking was?"

They've just finished doing a set of pushups. Through a slot, a cylon sends in a plate of food. Slop, mostly. Gray and gelatinous.

"Nope," says Kara, and Felix can tell she's still doing pushups.

"You don't miss them?"

"I don't do 'missing'. There's the here and now, and that's it."

"Say we get out of here, though," says Felix.

"Say we do?"

"You gonna go back to being Mrs. Sam Anders?"

He keeps his tone light, curious.

"Doubt it," she says. "Not that I was ever really that girl."

"Then why did you do it?" Felix choked down a spoonful of gray slop, his head aching from lack of food.

He fully expects her to say noneofyourfrakkingbusiness,Felix but instead she's quiet. Thoughtful.

"Everybody wants so much of me," she says. "Without caring a damn bit about I want."

"I care about what you want, Kara," Felix says. And maybe he's wrong. Maybe he's falling into the same trap as Lee. As Sam. Making Starbuck into their personal savior. Maybe it was the strength she exuded. Her brokenness a shield rather than a point of weakness.

"Do you?" Kara asks. "Do you care?"

Felix replies honestly. "I don't know. I'm glad that it's you in the cell next to me, though, and not someone else."

He hears Kara laughing, that perfect, perfect laugh. It was like when an equation works out just so, the solution some beautiful, even, whole thing.

"You know," she starts, "When Leoben upgraded me to this heap, and I heard you next to me, I thought, 'Gaeta'? Seriously? Of all the people they could put me next to I get stuck next to a glorified code monkey? Gods, my luck really is running out."

"Upgraded?" Felix asks, not sure how sarcastic she's being. He can't imagine a worse prison than this, but Kara has been very quiet about where she was before she came to the cell next to him.

"Yeah," Kara says. And it surprises him. It's a topic she's been fairly closemouthed on. Felix doesn't prompt any further. Doesn't want to push her. "Before…before I was in this apartment, I guess."

An apartment? Again, Felix doesn't ask any more questions. Allows her to go at her own pace.

"Leoben had this idea, see. That I was meant for him."

Already Felix wants to puke.

"I guess I didn't get with the program fast enough for him. Killed him too many godsdamned times. Refused him too often."

"Did he—" Felix begins, unable to stop himself from posing the question.

"Might as well have," says Kara.

Felix exhales a breath of relief, even though he probably shouldn't. He suspects that Kara might be leaving out the gorier details, and the fact that the Two didn't trespass her completely was just a minor detail. She'd had everything taken from her. Lost all control of her. Lived in constant stress of what could happen.

"I'm glad you're here now," Felix says.

"So," says Kara, "your turn."

"My turn?"

"Yeah. Quid pro quo. I showed you mine. Now you show me yours. It's time to start revealing some secrets."

"My mum tried to commit suicide in front of me," Felix says because it's the first secret that pops into his head.

"Shit," she says.

"Yeah," says Felix. "I was ten, maybe eleven."

"What happened?"

"Pills. We were eating breakfast. Everything was so frakking normal. My dad had just left for work. I was finishing up a drawing, I think. A building I was designing. It was supposed to be the perfect funhouse. Designed in a train car style, so you had to go through each room to get to the next. I was outlining room number six, the no-gravity room with sponge walls, when my mum just grabbed a bottle of pills and swallowed the entire contents. Washed it down with grapefruit juice. I remember not even being sad. Just…confused. Like, had I done something wrong? She'd been pretty pissed because I'd gotten a low mark on my report card, all because I refused to dissect this stupid garter snake. I used to kind of have a thing for them."

Felix realizes that he's been blathering on a bit and stops talking abruptly.

"My mom was kind of a crazy, too," Kara says.

"Yeah," says Felix. "She had to be to think that your laughter was anything but divine."

And he swears to gods that even through the stone wall, he can see her blushing.

He wakes up and she's gone. Gone. Just like that.

"Kara?" he asks.

Nothing. Not even the in and out of her breath. "Kara?"

He tries to distract himself, tells himself that maybe the cylons released her. Despite still being locked in here, he feels relief. The thought of her out there. Free from all this shit. It makes him happy.

But then why? Why would they do that? It's not logical. It doesn't make sense. And Felix is all about things being logical, things making sense. Why 2,4,6,8,10, then…13? It doesn't work. It doesn't fit.

They're doing something to her. Hurting her. It's like he's ten years old again, watching his mother die in front of him unable to do a damn thing.

"Let me out," he says, his voice rough and croaky with sleep. He crawls to the door of his cell, starts banging his fists against it. "Don't you frakking hurt her!" he screams. "Don't you frakking dare. He screams and screams and screams until his voice is hoarse. Then he screams some more until he can barely utter a sound at all.

The cell is too much. The stench of his waste. The absence of Kara's voice. The realization that all he has to hope for is rescue by a bucket of a ship where he'd be forced to work endless shifts, face derision by dumb, cocky pilots. Frak that. Frak that.

He collapses to the floor, vomiting up everything inside his stomach until all that's left is bitter bile.

He bangs his head against the walls of his hellish prison, trying to knock himself out, hoping he can get the right spot and end himself right here. Right now.

There's pink and yellow spots. Then grayness. Then blackness.

The sound of someone sobbing wakes him. He rubs his eyes, his throbbing head.

"Kara?" he rasps.

He gets confirmation that it's her when he sees her fingers snake through the opening between their cells.

She doesn't even have to ask. Felix takes Kara's fingers into his hand and squeezes. They stay like this for hours until both of them fall into fitful sleep.

Days (weeks?) later she starts talking to him again, her fingers, just like always nowadays, in his hand.

"What's your favorite number?" she asks him. He almost doesn't believe it. She hasn't spoken a word since—since whatever happened. "Well, what is it?" she presses, impatient as ever, just like Starbuck and not like Kara at all.

"9," says Felix.

"Really?"

"Yeah, why," he asks.

"It's mine, too," says Kara.

Hardly reason to declare each other soul mates (not that such things exist, obviously), but still, it's cool.

"How come?"

"Multiplication," she says. "How it always, someway, adds up to nine or a multiple of 9. I remember my dad taught me that trick when I was 7, and I just thought it was so bizarre how a number could work like that. Seemed like magic or something."

"9 times 14," Felix says, smiling.

"126. 1 + 2 + 6 is 9. So how come nine is your favorite?"

"Same reason," Felix says. "Same exact reason."

"Weirdest mathematical concept?" Felix asks.

"What the Frak, Gaeta?" says Kara. "Can you not be a geek for five seconds? Is that even possible for you?"

Felix brushes off the teasing. "For me it's multiple infinities. There are infinite numbers between 1 and 2, and infinite numbers between 3 and 4, and if you add together all those numbers, you get an even bigger infinity. How can there be a bigger infinity? It's all just…infinity. What the frak, you know?"

"Dork," Kara says. "Just don't start talking to yourself, okay? Like our friend President Baltar."

"You've noticed that, huh?" asks Felix.

"Is it possible not to?"

"I'm pretty sure he's schizophrenic," says Felix. "I can't believe I helped him get the presidency."

It just kind of slipped out, the way a lot of things do when he's talking with Kara.

"What," she asks?

And frak, what the hell does he have to lose but his only friend (maybe more?). He tells her the story, about how Roslin tried to steal the election but he stopped it.

She's silent for a moment. Then she pulls away her fingers from his hand.

For two days, she doesn't utter a word to him.

He doesn't blame her. Hell, he doesn't want to talk to him. Why would she? He's made the wrong choice. Too big of a mistake. Just like that jump he frakked up a while ago when he forgot to pass along updated coordinates. He can't afford to make mistakes. He did and people died. People did die. How much does he have on his hands for being overly curious? For investigating the election fraud?

But, frak, it had been the right thing to do! How could they have known New Caprica would be such a frakking disaster? How?

But he doesn't bother explaining this to Kara. What is there to say? Oops,I'msorry.Mydoingtherightthingledtoyourcapture,torture,andtotalviolation.Forgiveme?

Please?

Felix has become addicted to pushups. It feels good to do something physical in the tiny cell. He sees why Kara had encouraged him to do them in the first place.

Then, like a frakkin beacon of hope, her voice.

"Wanna play a game or something?"

Has she finally forgiven him?

"Sorry, Kara. I forgot my Triad deck in my other cell."

And he's sure she's rolling her eyes.

"Not in the mood, Felix. Wanna play or not?"

"I'm game," he says. At this point, he's game for anything she asks, just thankful to have her talking to him again.

"Okay, so this is called 'Blush.'"

"Blush? Are you serious? How are we going to play when we can't even see each other?" He knows the rules well enough. He's never played, never belonged to the type of circle of friends who involve themselves in such childishness.

The premise was, person A had to say something to make person B blush. Then vice versa. The only stipulation is that everything said has to be true. It's like a tamer, less touchy version of 'Nervous', Felix recalls.

"We'll just have to be honest with each other, Felix. Can you do that?"

The way that she says it, her voice a sexy, low growl, has him on edge. This should be interesting. Very, very interesting.

"Okay, you first," he says.

"Coward," says Kara, but there's no real bite to the words. "Alright. Hmmmmm." She's thinking. "Okay. You know that night I woke up and caught you wanking?"

Mission accomplished. Felix is already blushing. "I remember the night of the alleged wanking, yes," Felix says, cool as ever.

"I lied, you know."

"You lied?"

What is she talking about?

"Lately, when I do it, I do think of you."

The confidence she had in her voice previously has dissipated. She says that last bit almost meekly. Testing the waters.

"Well," she asks, the trepidation in her voice still present. "Did it work? Did you blush?"

"Yes," Felix says simply. "It worked. My turn."

Now it's his turn to start thinking.

Okay. He's got it.

"Even before the total clusterfrak that is New Caprica, I thought of you. Not necessarily in a romantic way, but in a sexual way, definitely. I remember wanting to lick you off, to get you really close before just stopping, until you begged me to take you. I don't know. I guess I just wanted your cocky ass to get taken down a notch. And even then, in my quarters, I'd try to imagine how you taste. What it'd be like to have the great and might Starbuck trembling with her legs wrapped around my neck as she grinded herself against my tongue."

It's the end of life as we know it. What's he got to lose? Baltar robbed him of the last of his dignity.

He hears Kara clear her throat.

"Damn, Felix," she says. "You win."

He's not surprised to find out that Kara's mother abused her, though of course those aren't the words Kara uses to describe the torture of a childhood her mother put her through.

It all makes sense. It's logical. It's why she's such a discipline case.

"You didn't deserve that," he says.

"Didn't I?" she asks. "Didn't I?"

Their games of Blush devolve into…through-the-wall sex? Cell sex? What the frak would you even call it? They say dirty things to each other while clasping hands and getting themselves off. He hears her moaning as he comes, the way she rasps his name.

And it's gross and foul in this horror movie of a prison. This isn't how it's supposed to be. None of this is how it's supposed to be.

But gods, he can't stop himself. He really can't.

Just like that, it's over. They're rescued. His cell is opened and Felix stumbles out. He sees Sam going to Kara's cell, and even as people are rushing him along, telling him to run, he lingers.

Kara's unconscious. Sam has her hoisted over his shoulder.

She's safe. That's all that matters, right? It only takes her a little while to come to. She struggles out of Sam's grasp.

She's muttering something.

His name.

"Felix, where's Felix?"

He rushes toward her and grabs her hand in his. He can't imagine what he must look like, beard unshaven, hair too long.

She looks up and even dirt-smudged with tangled and matted hair, she's a frakking goddess. Not that he believes in goddesses. But if he did, this is the one he'd pray to.

They run out of the prison together, making their way toward Galactica.

He thought it would feel nicer back on the ship. But it's just another cell. A bigger one, yes, but with even more oppressive walls—the vacuum of space surrounding him on all sides.

Overly long shifts. Only marginally better food.

And a lot less Kara.

The happiest he feels is seeing her viper on dradis, flying back toward the landing bay.

But the fantasy is over. She's married to Sam. Probably still in love with Lee. What they'd shared in the cell had just been…momentary insanity. Odd. Curious.

Then there's a knock on the hatch.

These days, the anomalies seem to be adding up.

Just outside the hatch stands Starbuck. Since the last time he's seen her, she's been cleaned up quite a bit, no dirt smudges. Just a few cuts here and there. Her hair has been trimmed to just above her shoulders.

"Kara," he says. He keeps his voice even, not wanting to let on how godsdamned happy he is to see her here, at his door, even if it's just to let him down easy.

"Gonna let me in, or what?" she says, and she's already started pushing herself into his private quarters.

She takes a seat atop his desk, over some paperwork he'd been working on.

"You clean up pretty good," Kara says. "Last time I saw you, you looked not unlike a yeti."

Felix shrugs. "A cylon prison will do that to a man. May I ask what you're doing here?"

He goes over to his bed and takes a seat, watching Kara up on his desk, dangling her legs back and forth, knocking her feet into the chair.

She's quiet. He notices for the first time a bottle in her hand. She takes a long swig and chokes it down, as if it were merely apple juice. "Come here," she says.

"Why?"

"Please?" she says, setting down the whiskey on the desk beside her. She's in her dress blues, probably having just gotten off duty.

Felix walks toward her, slowly, smoothly, calculating the various possibilities. Why is she here? What does she want?

Once in front of her, she spreads her pants-cover legs a bit, gesturing with her pointer finger for him to come stand between them.

"What about Sam?" Felix asks.

"Frak Sam."

"Well, is that what you're going to do tomorrow? After you're finished with me? Go and frak Sam?"

He regrets the words immediately, but so it goes sometimes. So it frakking goes.

She dips her head, swallows. He thinks of the phrase suckingitup.Then she looks up at him. Her eyes are hot and radiating, and he thinks for the second time, maybe that whole star analogy isn't total bullshit. A little bit of bullshit. But not totalbullshit.

"Fine," she says. "I'm gone."

She slides off the top of the desk and starts to push him aside, but not before he grabs her shoulder.

"Kara."

"Get the frak off of me, Felix."

But he doesn't let go.

"Is that what you want, Kara? For me to let go?"

He presses himself into her, backs her into the desk. He hears her breath hitch.

"Is that what you came to my room for? To tell me to frak off? Or did you come here because you want me to frak you? 'Cause your all-Caprican pretty boy, Mr. Vanilla Sam wasn't doing it for you anymore, hm?"

He knows how to do this. Seduction is just another science. The right combination of words. A gentle caress.

He knows enough to know that Kara probably likes it a little rough, likes forfeiting a bit of control. She takes care of everything all the time, and for once, for just frakking once, she needs to be dominated and taken care of.

The trick is not losing it.

The trick is staying cool, focusing on her.

The trick is ignoring his throbbing cock. Ignoring how sweet she smells. How much he wants to taste her lips.

"Gods, Felix, please," Kara says, and she probably doesn't even know what she's begging for.

"What do you want? Tell me what you want."

He's unbuttoning her blue jacket, slowly. He leans forward, hovering centimeters away from her lips.

He wants her to be the one to go for it. The one to initiate. To be vulnerable.

And she does. She pushes her lips, deliciously soft and full, towards. He loses it. Everything is warm and buzzing and fierce. He pushes her lips open with the tip of his tongue and she relents, letting him in. The taste of her is magical. The feel of her tongue tangling with his shoots a wave of pleasure to his groin.

She moans a little, the quietest of sounds. It's so frakking un-her. So small and nervous. Gods, nothing should be allowed to sound that frakking good. So frakking sexy.

"Gods, Felix."

Her hands are all over his back, reaching under his shirt, her nails scratching already broken flesh.

As he continues to kiss her, he moves his hand under her shirt, dragging his fingers over her bra, teasing the pebbled, raised flesh through the fabric. He's rewarded with another mewl. She's melting into him, and he lifts her up on the desk.

He moves his fingers down, ripping the buttons of her pants. As his hand reaches the warm center of her briefs, already wet, she pushes her hips into him.

"I just wanna be inside you," he says.

He's been too busy enjoying the sound of her moans, the feel of her center through her panties, the soft pressing of her tongue in his mouth to realize that she's unbuttoned his pants.

His cock is painfully hard, and all he wants right now is release.

"Please," she says, pulling him toward her.

Usually he'd be all about taking his time. Teasing. Building it up. Torturing her a little bit by making her wait. But he just can't. Not now. He needs her.

He pushes his cock into her and it's a flurry of sensation that leaves him unable to produce thoughts. It's warm and tight and clenching and, and, and it's Kara.

She's so beautiful like this, sitting there spread open for him, head dropped back in pleasure as he fraks her hard.

Her breasts, still covered with fabric, bounce lewdly as he goes in and out. Felix can't help but reach his hand out, moving her bra up so he can see her bare breasts.

"So frakking beautiful."

Now Kara's matching his movements, pressing her hips up and down in tandem with his strokes.

She's getting closer. While one hand braces on her shoulder, he works the other over her clit.

She's tightening over his cock, and he knows he won't be able to take much more of this.

But then he doesn't have that. All at once she's shaking, pulling him tighter, letting out the most beautiful sound he's ever heard.

He follows close behind, his body overtaken with a rush like a storming stampede through his body.

Kara leans forward into his chest, her hair caressing the skin of his abs. She hasn't let go of him, and her breaths are only just now slowing. "Frak," she says.

"Did I make you blush?" asks Felix.

She's nestled into his arms, and there's no way this should feel so good, her warm breath on his neck, her legs tangled around his.

"You know what you asked me before?" she says, "back on New Caprica? About whether or not I missed Sam? Or Lee? Or whoever I'd been frakking last?"

"I was jealous," Felix admits readily.

"I know," he says. "I just…I want you to know. Maybe I do. Maybe I do miss them. But it's the same way I miss Caprica. There's no going back. It's now who I am now. Not where I am."

"And where are you now?" he asks.

"Looks like I'm in your bed, Felix," she says.

He smiles.

She puts out her hand and he holds it tight. That night, they both sleep well.