#battlestarshipping

It starts, as most things do in Oliver’s life, with an apology.

“I’m sorry,” Madie quietly says, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

The television is on, and she’s trying (but failing miserably) to complete a video game level. The best he can make out is it has something to do with levers, pulleys, and a series of movable platforms. It doesn’t look too complicated, thankfully, but he doesn’t understand why she’s struggling as much as she is.

Not until he notices that the platforms move from the system of pulleys and the main lever that moves it all is far away from the end goal. And that it’s clearly a puzzle directed toward two players, definitely not towards a single player who is exhausted.

“Do you want some help?” Oliver asks, pointedly ignoring Madie’s previous statement. She doesn’t need to know that he was awake for hours, staring at the ceiling of his room, waiting for sleep to come. Just like he doesn’t need to know why she’s awake (though he can guess that it has something to do with her unfortunate tendency to doubt herself). 

“I’d like that.” She says, smiling and sinking into the couch. He nods and grabs the spare controller, and then sits down next to her. Oliver stares at the television hard, thinking about what actions would be the best to solve this puzzle that suddenly looks more complicated than what he first thought. 

“You do the platforming and I’ll move the levers and pulleys?” He suggests, and grins when Madie nods. 

“I care about you!”

Madie watched Paulette carefully, not taking her eyes off of her for a moment. She needed to know what she was doing to not have to ask for help again.

It would be embarrassing to have to ask Paulette to fix a simple mistake in her knitting for a tenth time. She was pretty sure she had dropped a stitch or two somewhere in the last few rows but, judging by how much Paulette had to unravel, it was probably worse than she initially thought.

Her goal was simple enough: make a scarf. It didn’t have to be perfect, she wasn’t following any kind of pattern, and she was using the same colour of yarn throughout it so it really shouldn’t have been too hard. Yet, here she was, asking for help when she shouldn’t have. It wasn’t the first time Paulette had to fix a dumb mistake of hers.

She just wanted to make one thing on her own without having to be a burden and she couldn’t even do that.

“Here you go!” Paulette said, passing the now very short blanket back over to Madie. “You dropped a few stitches in the first few rows, as well as two later on. But your technique is really good! All of your stitches have had the same tension to them, that’s more than I can say about my own when I first started!”

Madie tried to smile at Paulette. While that was a nice thing to say, she wasn’t entirely sure she believed it. If there was one thing that she had learned while living with Paulette, it was that she practically perfect at everything.

“Sorry again for making you do this.” She murmured. “I really should have gotten the hang of this by now.”

“No, you’re doing great.” Paulette said, then paused. She chewed on her bottom lip for a few seconds – Madie wondered what she was thinking about – before she sighed. “Remember that I'm more than happy to help out if you need it, okay? It’s what I’m here for.”

She tensed a bit at that, but nodded. Madie didn’t believe her, but it would take too much energy to fight and all she wanted to do was try to get halfway through her scarf without messing up. 

It’s been a while since I did one of these, but here’s the second batch of fankids all dressed up!

Hannah | Oliver | Luna | Richie | Victor | Spencer | David | Owen | Chris | Joshua  

The third set of ten fankids, as they appear in their profiles!