Situation Normal
I had a dream, strange it may seem
it was my perfect day
- the cranberries, never grow old
The call came shortly after curfew; Lee was already deeply involved in reading the chapters that discussed the last round of Colonial wars, the wars that had necessitated the creation of Cylon soldiers. Already irritated at the interruption, Lee's heart rate spiked another few increments when he found out exactly who was on the other end of the line. It was the Officer of the Watch at the guard station -- Kara had been picked up in one of the nearby bars for fighting with other academy students.
Frak. They wanted him to come pick her up. Neither party were levying charges, so she was free to go.
"And please, do it quickly," the officer sounded almost antsy. "She's scaring some of the other detainees."
Lee could just imagine. A hyped up Kara was a thing to behold. An inebriated, torqued-off Kara was something even more unsettling. Lee didn't want to know how the guards knew to call him to settle her down; campus rumors were already more than abundant.
So Lee reassured the officer that he'd rush over to pick up his friend and ended the conversation, but not before inquiring as to what would happen if were caught out past curfew.
By the time Lee got to the station Kara had calmed considerably. Either that or the Officer of the Watch had been blowing things out of proportion based on Kara's considerable past history. Lee figured it was a fairly even toss up between the two.
Leaning on the bars of her cell, Lee watched Kara pace back and forth in the small room. "Ready to go home?"
Kara stopped her pacing and stared at him. "What took you so long?"
"C'mon," he motioned to her that it was time to go. "They're springing you on account of your good behavior."
She rolled her eyes. "What good behavior?"
"Exactly."
He didn't want to broach the subject until they were out of the office, so Lee waited until they were well on the path back to their dorms before he asked. "So what happened this time?"
Kara had been strangely silent ever since her last quip. She had been known to sulk in the past when things didn't go her way, but this awkward silence was starting to worry Lee. When she didn't respond to his query he tried companionably knocking his shoulder against hers to shake her out of it.
"Dammit Lee, what the hell are you doing?"
"I'm trying to get you to tell me how you ended up in hock, again, and why they let you out so easily."
"That's a tall order, Adama."
Frustrated with her stalling, Lee stopped walking and looked around. It was a warm spring evening and everything was a spectacular shade of green under the lights of the buildings. He sometimes forgot how beautiful the grounds at the academy were. With his nose stuck in a book or his mind stuck in a flight simulator, he figured he was missing out on a lot of things.
With a weary sigh, Lee decided to table the issue for the night. It was too nice out to fight with Kara anyway.
"Consider it on hold, then." Lee looked at Kara sternly, but his next words were softer. "You can't keep getting into fights like this. One day someone isn't going to drop it so easily."
"I know, but sometimes there's a good reason to take a swing and crack a few heads."
"Oh yeah, like tonight?"
"Exactly like tonight. Those two had it coming -- "
"Yeah, what did they do?"
It was Kara's turn to have had enough. "They didn't know when to stop!" She threw her hands up and started to walk away leaving a stunned Lee in her wake.
"Wait, oh no." He jogged ahead and was able to catch up with the swiftly moving Kara. "Did they..." His throat closed around the words.
Her voice was hard when spoke. "No. No, they didn't. They just didn't know when to leave well enough alone. I'd been drinking and what they said got under my skin, that's all."
"Don't try to brush it off, Kara. You might overreact on occasion, but usually you've got a good reason for reacting in the first place. What did they say about you?"
"For once it wasn't about me," she laughed bitterly. "It was about you."
"Me?"
"First they started pestering me, wanting to know where my shadow was, and it went from there." Once she had started, the words just flowed out. "First Griggs started teasing me, asking me where my 'shadow' was, and I laughed because it was kind of funny. But then Staupitz started saying that you had only gotten into the academy because of your father, and that's why you had to study so much. Then Chen said that you were frakking half your instructors just to pass." Kara took a deep breath and continued.
"They could've said things like that about me, and I would've knocked them on their collective asses, but Lee, you weren't even there to defend yourself. They were trying to get to you through me, the cowards. They should've known better." She looked at Lee sheepishly, "And now they do."
Lee didn't quite know what to say. "You, so...you took on three of the biggest guys on campus just because they insulted me?"
"Yeah, and because they were being spineless, limp-dicked little weasels about it too."
"Kara!"
"It's true! Not speaking from personal experience, mind you. Besides, every one in the bar heard what those guys said and they were on my side. For a bar brawl it was pretty uniform considering it was the busiest night of the week."
Lee couldn't help shaking his head. "So I take it that's why you weren't charged?"
"They didn't want those comments going on their records and I didn't feel the need to explain another disorderly conduct notation on my record. It worked out for everyone in the end."
"Except for me." At her questioning look, Lee elaborated. "I had to quit studying just to get you out of hock. Your sense of loyalty and your overactive fists of fury ruined my whole night."
"Lords, if that's the thanks I'm going to get --" Kara started to stomp off again, but Lee caught her by the arm and made her face him again.
"I was joking, Kara." Frak, he had such a headache coming on. "Thank you for defending my honor. Thank you for beating the hell out of those assholes. Thank you for making me break curfew for the first time in two years."
Lee had several more things to thank Kara for, most of which he never planned to say except under pain of death, but before he could continue with a few more of the innocuous ones, Kara had interrupted him.
"Lee?"
"Mmmhmmm?" She was very close to him now. It consistently surprised him that they were much the same height; he always swore that Kara was inches shorter.
"Do you want to know the real reason why I started that fight? It wasn't just because they were insulting you, my friend. They were insulting you, the guy...Well, I've been wanting to do this for ages."
Kissing Kara Thrace turned out to be nothing like what Lee had imagined. First of all, she didn't try to punch him; that was better than half the ways he had pictured this happening. Kara kissed him as much as she let him kiss her, and out on that path, beneath the stars, with one hand at the small of her back and the other tangled in her hair, Lee was intensely glad to have been pulled away from his studies.
As it turned out, playing delinquent did have certain advantages.