Title: Chasing Nightmares
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Pairing: Cally/Chief
Word Count: 816
Cally’s never told anyone about the nightmares.
It was easy to hide them on Galactica; after all, she wasn’t the only one who woke up in the middle of the night, breathing harshly from trying to outrun the Cylons chasing them in their dreams as well as their waking.
But Cally’s dreams have never been of Cylons.
She dreams about getting shot on the Astral Queen.
She dreams about Socinus lying bleeding in
front of her, sees
She dreams about Boomer bleeding in the Chief’s arms as strong arms pull her away, and she can hear her own voice, screaming and maniacal.
She dreams of the Chief above her, face contorted by rage and hatred, his fists raining blows on her body until she cries out in pain.
That’s the only dream where she wakes up crying.
She does so now, but tonight, she doesn’t wake herself up. Instead she hears a voice that she knows telling her to wake up, that it’s ok, that she’s safe. She opens her eyes, sees the Chief in front of her, feels his hands on her shoulders, and she screams a little, in spite of herself. The second she sees hurt and guilt searing through his eyes, she’s wide awake, and a quick look around her assures her of where she is.
In her tent, on New Caprica. She and the Chief had been there earlier, working on some contraption or other that had broken down yet again, and although she knows she was tired, she can’t remember falling asleep.
Yet here she is, lying on her makeshift bed, with the Chief sitting beside her.
“I’m ok,” she says, although she’s not so sure she is. He doesn’t look so sure either, and he moves a little further away from her, giving her the space he thinks she needs. Except it’s cold on New Caprica at night, and even though he’s hardly sitting close, she still misses the warmth of him. Reaching out, her fingers close around his wrist, squeeze it gently. “I’m ok,” she says again, trying to inject some sincerity into it.
She must fail utterly, because the lines on his forehead deepen, the shadows under his eyes appearing to darken tenfold. “Sure,” he says flatly. He breaks the hold her fingers have on him, but he doesn’t stand like she thinks he will, instead pulling his hand back so he can capture his fingers with hers. His hands are warm and strong, and when his thumb rubs the inside of her palm, she tries to tell herself that it’s that friction that generates heat in her cheeks.
She tries to give him a smile. “I will be,” she tells him, and she knows it’s the truth. Eventually, the dreams will fade to a distant memory, and the scar tissue left behind will only pull at certain times of the year. She has to believe that, otherwise she’ll go crazy.
Wonder of wonders, the Chief smiles at that too. “Somehow, I believe that,” he tells her, with enough certainty that she feels it’s all right to sit up properly, put her arms around his neck and pull him into a hug. His arms go around her, palms sliding up and down her back, and he’s so warm that she doesn’t ever want to let him go.
“Thanks Chief,” she murmurs into his shoulder, and she feels him chuckle.
“You can call me Galen you know.”
She wants to, has wanted to do that for a long time, but it still feels awkward – there have been times when she’s wondered if he had a first name at all; everyone calls him Chief. So she pulls back, looks in his eyes to see if he means it, and with fire in her cheeks says, “Thank you… Galen.”
He smiles then, brighter than she ever remembers seeing before. “No-one’s called me that in a long time…” he says, and for a second, she could swear that he’s forgotten she’s there.
Then his eyes meet her, and she sees him realise that not only is she there, but their lips are a breath away from one another, and they are sitting on her bed.
Next thing she knows, their lips are no longer a breath away from one another, but are meeting, and it’s passionate and fiery and desperate and needy and they’re clutching at one another as if the world is about to end all over again. His beard tickles her chin, makes her smile, and when he tries to pull away, she refuses to let him go, lying back and pulling him down on top of her.
His warmth surrounds her, chasing all the nightmares away, and she knows that she was right earlier – she never wants to let him go, and she’s not going to.