Six Ducks Lined In a Row
by ALC Punk!

She fascinates him.

"You've done everything you were supposed to do." She says, mouth closing on his skin, pulling at it, sucking. And her fingers trail down his chest.

"What was I supposed to do?" Tyrol is certain he knows something that he shouldn't.

"What you've done."

And he doesn't get a chance to question her more because her leg goes across him and she impales herself, and it's so good. (can'tthink don'tthink feelsgood can'tthink SHARON don'tthink) So good and he writhes underneath her as she expertly utilizes muscles he didn't think women had, and he breaks with her laughing at him.

He wakes alone.

Confused.

"You're such a good man," she says another time, fingers working out the kinks in his shoulders.

He's pulled a 68-hour shift on the hangar deck, and he's not sure he's even feeling anything real anymore. He can't remember the last time he was this tired.

Can't remember where he was three years ago, either. And he doesn't know his parents, or why he joined the Fleet or a hundred other things he thinks he should know, but they don't matter. They've never mattered, really.

She kisses his cheek, her blonde hair tickling his nose as she moves towards his lips. Tyrol is impressed at her flexibility as she bends over and around him.

And he thinks this is a memory he will always have.

The gunshot was loud, by all accounts. And Boomer calls him 'Chief Petty Officer' and looks through him. And so he goes back to her. To curly blonde hair and a tongue that drifts along his ear. And he doesn't know where she came from.

But she isn't Sharon, isn't Boomer, isn't something that rips his heart out and stomps on it.

She is simple.

Or not so simple, he knows because she can always find him, and her fingers do things that roll his eyes back into his head. And it was never like *this* with her. The other her (and why did he think that? Pale skin versus dark isn't a competition, and she doesn't glow properly, but that thought disconnects before he understands it).

Tyrol reminds himself who he is every morning before leaving his rack. He is the Chief Petty Officer of the Battlestar Galactica and his duties are to keep the ship running.

No more, no less.

But sometimes, he wonders when her mouth is soft against his and her body is wrapping his, if this is correct.

-=-

2. Galactica. Warped Detecting.

"Isn't that interesting?" She was purring again, Gaius thought. And leaning against him, her nipples stiff and poking into his back. She liked to do that, as if it gave her an extra hold over him, knowing that rubbing hard nipples against him made him think of sex.

Baltar considered if she had learned what turned him on easily, or if he was hard. "Hrm?" Definitely the latter. In both senses of the word. This damned test could not end fast enough.

"What is it, doctor?" Tyrol was staring, his gaze almost penetrating. One of his hands was nervously twitching, tugging at the fabric of his coverall. Dark eyes watching him.

(Them) "Oh, nothing, nothing. Just... waiting for it to finish." He didn't want to ask her.

Didn't have to. She knew all of his secrets. "He's a Cylon. Of course, if you tell him that..." She chuckled, "I wonder how fast he can kill you?"

Kill? Kill. Kill was bad. Gaius stared at the blinking information on his cobbled-together device, and wondered if he'd look pretty in his coffin.

"Doctor?" Chief Tyrol shifted in his chair, "What's the hold-up?"

"Just a, a--"

"Flick of his wrist, Gaius, and you're dead. What *are* you going to tell him?" She was purring against his ear.

"--moment. Ah!" Gaius smiled, "You're clean, Chief. Not a Cylon."

Relief filled the man. "Thank you, doctor. I'll, ah, let you get back to your work." He stood and smiled.

"Right. Take care..." He didn't bother saying it very loud, and the Chief was out the door before he could vocalize it, anyway.

"Oh, Gaius," Her lips tickled his ear, "I knew your self-interest would win out in the end. Do you think he'd reward you if he knew?"

Flashes of what that reward would entail flickered through his mind. "N-no."

"Pity. I think I'd like to have him." Her blonde head, bobbing up and down, Tyrol's dark eyes taunting him from across the room.

"Well, I wouldn't."

-=-

3. Shore leave. Mercy In You.

Rumor has it that the Galactica is about to be decommissioned. Tyrol doesn't care about that, doesn't care that he's going to be transferred, have to find a new post, new placement (hoping for one where he can be near her).

Instead, he's drinking. Heavily.

Because he saw her with Helo, he saw them leaning close (too close), and he asked her about it. She got angry. Yelled. Said he didn't trust her (how do you trust a woman so beautiful she makes your heart ache?), and that was no basis for a relationship.

"What's a guy like you doin' in a bar like this?"

She's blonde, and golden-skinned and lithe (and not Sharon), and he can't help but answer her smile with a shake of his head. "I'm an engineer, the pilots are next door."

"Maybe I like a man who knows what to do with his hands."

She does, too. When she's above him, back arched, mouth spewing obscenities he didn't think a woman like her could know, his hands are traveling every inch of her body like she's a machine he's getting to know. And he likes that feeling.

Likes it enough that in the morning, when she's just the bitter taste of alcohol in his mouth, he remembers that she glowed.

-=-

4. Caprica. And Then You Kissed Me.

His leg ached.

Galen knew he had only himself to blame. If he hadn't insisted Boomer leave him here, he would even now be on board the Galactica with Cottle's best drugs coursing through him. Instead of here, with the radiation slowly poisoning his skin and the wound in his leg half-healed.

Of course, if she hadn't left him, he wouldn't have her.

The blonde head of hair ahead of him bobbed as she turned to glance at him. "What?"

"Just... thinking."

"Think later." She instructed, turning to face forwards again, "If we don't come up with a way of getting off this planet, we're dead."

"Right." Still not sure he trusted her, Galen moved past to peer ahead. In the distance, he could see Caprica City. "We should look for more survivors."

"Do you think that's wise?" Her breath was ghosting along his skin (neck and ear, and he wondered if she tasted like strawberries).

"Maybe." A shrug, and then he was reminded. "What is your name again?"

-=-

5. Galactica. Fear.

"The sixth model of the sixth dynasty of the sixth holy house of Cylon?"

"You're mocking me."

"Shouldn't I?"

Her hand connects with his face, and he giggles.

"Should it have been Royal House, dear?"

Away, she paces, then she's back, angry and defiant. "I don't understand. I don't understand why I'm here and, and--" She looks at him with scorn in her blue eyes. "With you. You're nowhere near the perfect specimen for what they want."

"I should feel insulted. I'm sure." Galen rolls out of the bed (her bed, their bed--maybe it's simply the rack he's supposed to have), and stands. "And I need to get back on duty."

"And what am I supposed to do?"

"Well, you could stay here. Or come keep me company."

Her lips firm. "I'm staying."

"Sulk all you want."

-=-

6. Galactica. Dream On.

Galen Tyrol knows he shouldn't be seeing her. Shouldn't even be talking to her. Hell, if the old man knew that she was still on board the Galactica, he'd have her interrogated. But she's real and human, and Sharon isn't speaking to him any longer.

"I like your hands," she manages, one time.

And he feels obscure pride because he has the sense that she's well-versed in sex, and a compliment on his technique means he isn't awful.

Hopes he isn't awful as he slides roughly into her.

She likes to bite his shoulder. Always in the same spot, with a strange precision that if he were thinking clearly about would trouble him.

He always thinks too late about asking her why she's still around. What she does when he's on the hangar deck, hands buried in engines and oil. Frequently, he's surprised that she isn't turned off by the smell of grease.

There is nothing antagonistic about her, nothing like what sparked the anger and fueled the passion between he and Sharon.

Sometimes, he misses that.

-f-

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© 2005 ALC Punk!