Fic: Absolution (Gaeta/Seelix, NC-17)
Apr. 14th, 2009 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millarificTitle: Absolution
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
millari
Characters: Gaeta, Seelix, Dee, Tyrol, implied Baltar
Genre: dark!fic
Pairing: Seelix/Gaeta, implied Gaeta/Baltar
Wordcount: 4,756
Rating: R
SPOILERS: Through "Taking a Break From All Your Worries"
Warnings: explicit sexual situations, dark themes, depictions of major depression
Beta:daybreak777, who helped SO miuch with this fic. Thanks, DB!
Author's Note: This is a long-overdue fic fortrovia's "Little Black Dress" Challenge. The prompt was for a Gaeta/Seelix pairing.
Summary: He only would have recognized her in the harsh silhouettes of this dimly-lit bar. Or an airlock.
The first time, Felix didn't quite realize what was happening.
All he knew was one moment he'd been sipping a poor excuse for ambrosia in Joe's, surrounded by a small crowd of people Dee had made friends with a while back on the Pegasus. The next moment, he'd turned around in his seat and there she was - a tall, lean figure looming over him, recognizable only because he'd happened to look up at her at just the right angle. She looked just like when she'd pulled the blindfold off him. Really, it was her haircut that he recognized, her jawline, and the fierce set of her shoulders. He only would have recognized her in the harsh silhouettes of this dimly-lit bar. Or an airlock.
A roiling, crashing wave of nausea ran through him, made worse by the battery fluid Joe's was passing off these days as drinkable. He saw the thick empty glass in her hand and wondered if she meant to hit him with it. The crowd chatter in which he'd been losing himself suddenly transformed into a distant drone, like the sound of a Centurion's predatory red eye. The Pyramid ball across the room connecting with its target sounded like a bomb going off on New Caprica. He was long past flinching at such surprises, but his heart was racing though as he stared up into the eyes of this woman who'd once almost killed him.
"What's your name?" he asked quietly. As soon as he said it, he realized how pointed and bitter he could have made it sound. Dee would have, but it hadn't occurred to him. His heart was only now calming down, though he kept a wary eye on the shot glass in her hand.
A hand flew to her mouth. Felix realized that it had never occurred to her that he wouldn't know her name, although there was no reason he should. He took some satisfaction out of the way she choked out her answer.
"Diana," she said so softly, he didn't hear her say it so much as he saw her mouth it. "It's Diana."
None of the usual things one said in a normal conversation were even remotely appropriate. It took almost a minute before he could come up with anything to say at all, and even then, it wasn't all that momentous.
"What do you want, Diana?"
He didn't ask her last name. Knowing her first name was bad enough. A last name would make her too real. He preferred to keep his awareness of her in the surreal realm of dreams, where it made perfect sense that unsuspecting people in hallways could get snatched out of nowhere, enveloped in darkness, and then wake up in a completely new place, awaiting their execution.
"I . . ."
He watched in idle curiosity as her face went slack, her mouth hanging open in shock and maybe - he'd like to think - maybe horror. His body felt encased in a tingling numbness, the taste of metal strong in his mouth.
"I . . ." she tried again and got nowhere.
"Is there a problem here?" Dee's voice swooped in like a Raider, her tone accusing, unyielding. Felix knew he should be grateful for it, and part of him was, but only the more innocent version of himself that he had trouble accessing anymore. It was like he had a child inside him buried under layers and layers of clothing for a winter that wouldn't end.
The woman who called herself Diana startled at Dee's interruption. She strode out of the bar without a word. Felix watched her mow through the crowd and then turned back indifferently to his drink. The liquid was burning his throat, he knew, but otherwise, he couldn't taste it at all.
"You okay?" Dee asked him with sisterly concern. He had only come out tonight only to appease her repeated insistence that he had to try and get things back to normal. Felix could see that she felt guilty now.
"I'm fine," he managed to smile weakly for her benefit, but she wasn't buying it.
"Was she one of the ones who..." she began.
"She was no one," Felix cut her off. "This is the first time I've ever seen her face." It wasn't entirely a lie.
He jerked up out of his seat. He felt just well enough to make it to his rack without puking in the hallways. A hand waved off the second drink she'd brought him from the bar.
"I think I've already had too much," he said, not meaning the drink, but it was easier to make it seem that way. "I'm getting some rack time."
"I'll walk you back," she declared.
He tried halfheartedly to argue, but she was in big sister mode, and there was no fighting her when she was like this.
"Besides," she told him, "if I have to watch Kara Thrace scan the bar one more time for my husband, I'm gonna break something in here."
"You should break her face, with her husband's Pyramid ball," he quipped, not because he was capable of feeling any actual venom, but because he knew it made Dee feel better to hear it bounced back at her. She needed to know that what Apollo was doing to her was real, not something made up in her head.
Felix assumed that one day, he'd actually be able to feel something about Kara Thrace and what she'd done to him. About what they'd all done to him. Right now though, he couldn't seem to feel much about anything at all.
***
He saw her again just after the Dance.
The pilots and deck crew around the ring were crackling with a barely restrained lust - for excitement, for the sight of blood, and for settling vengeances petty and not so petty. There was also the crackle of just plain lust.
Felix was watching Dee, and Dee was watching Apollo and Starbuck, who were watching no one else but themselves. As they beat the shit out of each other, it became so obvious to everyone what was going on, it actually made people uncomfortable. They started leaving in droves. Felix wondered if he should leave too.
He wasn't far gone enough yet that he couldn't see the pain in his friend's eyes. He was sure that the Felix of a year ago would have been able to think of something viciously mocking to say about this drama playing out before them. It’d be an evilly hilarious image she could use to shield herself later that night when her husband finally crawled into bed with her, his mind still with Starbuck.
But the Felix of the here and now just stared at her in helpless oblivion, trapped behind an invisible wall between them.
He was of no use here, and he hated the feeling. It made him want to put his dog tags in the little box they had next to the ring and let someone call him out, give them all the opportunity to watch him get pummeled until he could maybe feel something again, until both he and they all were satisfied that he'd paid for New Caprica. But it was too late anyway now. The dance was over. He'd been thinking about throwing his tags in all night, but hadn't, because he wasn't ready to die yet. If he threw his tags in, someone might actually take him up on his offer and permanently injure him or even kill him. Felix knew the difference between being numb and depressed and being truly suicidal.
Cottle had told him that he was probably suffering from suicidal ideation. Tyrol had reported that Felix hadn’t fought against the Circle. But Cottle didn’t know shit about psychology, Felix had decided, and he knew very well that he wasn’t suffering from any suicidal tendencies.
There had only been a child therapist available to settle the question anyway, so Felix had been told he could try sleeping pills or Cottle's best guess at an appropriate antidepressant. He had refused both, to show them he wasn't weak. He kept the mask of efficiency and initiative on during his work shifts, during short conversations with people, in order to make book here tonight. He could fake it for ten to twelve hours at a time, but not much more.
It was true that Felix had trouble imagining a future these days; he felt so stuck in the horribleness of each day, it was impossible to imagine it changing. He'd resigned himself to being a permanently hated person on this ship. But he wasn't suicidal. Feeling useful was one of the few things that made him still hang on to life these days. He craved the validation from being indispensable, although these days, he had to admit it was more like a panicky need. He suspected that the moment he ceased being of use to Adama and Roslin in their search for Earth, to Tigh in the CIC, they would turn on him without warning. That thought was probably irrational, but he couldn't help thinking it anyway.
There had been a lot to do to get the Galactica up and running again after the Exodus. But he could do nothing for Dee right now.
So he fled, unsure of where to go.
He was almost relieved when she grabbed hold of him by his tanks under his open jacket as he was leaving the hangar deck. Almost grateful to not have to decide what to do with the emptiness of this night. Almost.
Because his heart was racing like crazy at the all-too-familiar sensations of hands yanking at his clothes, at the way she stumbled him across the hallway against his will. It made him feel out of control and at her mercy, even though he could have fought her. She shoved him against a wall, her hard, bony frame pressing his chest tight against the concrete, pinning his shoulders. He couldn't stop his eyes from gluing shut, as if anticipating a blow. Her breath smelled like stale ambrosia and cigarettes.
The scent awoke in him an unexpected memory of being thrown against a different wall, in unpredictable passion, on Colonial One.
Gaius.
But when his eyes flashed open, he wasn't on Colonial One and the President of the Colonies wasn't staring at him with a drunken, predatory smile.
It was her. With a face was filled with wild-eyed anger and frustration.
"What do you want, Diana?" he said again. He recognized his tone as the same one from the night in the bar. "What do you want?"
"Go ahead," she said hoarsely, ripping herself away from him to give him space. "Hit me."
His eyes widened. "What?"
"Come on," she goaded him. "I'm offering you the chance for a free shot." She shrugged. "Really, take as many shots as you want. I don't care." She stood still and straight, arms balled in fists by her side, her chin jutted out, ready for the blow.
He fixed a confused stare at her.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" she said in a low voice.
He thought he probably should feel like hitting her.
"I- I can't," he admitted.
"Why not?" Her voice flew at him, strained and angry. "I almost killed you! For Gods' sake, Gaeta! Don't you want revenge?"
"Revenge?" He could hear how dully annoyed his own voice sounded. "This isn't some Libran melodrama."
She stood there, coltish before him, clearly unsure of whether to stay or storm off.
"This is frakked-up, isn't it?" she asked.
He stared at her. "Yeah."
"Look, just tell me what I need to do to make this even between us."
"Frak if I know. No one's ever tried to kill me before."
She grimaced. "At least let me say I'm sorry. I know it doesn't solve anything..."
"You're right," he nodded, cutting her off.
"What?"
"It doesn't."
He left her standing there in silence.
***
That night, his dreams took him back to New Caprica. He was on Colonial One and the scent of expensive, black-market cologne loomed over Felix, wafting into his nostrils as his boss, his president, gently but firmly pushed him down onto the bed on his back, splaying Felix's arms to his sides.
I shouldn't let him do this, he said in the dream, just as he had said several times in real life, once he had realized that Gaius was only interested in him as a satisfying, comforting toy. But as always, the familiar whiff of cigarette smoke in Gaius' hair and the ambrosia on his breath overpowered Felix's senses. The calm strength of Gaius' command distracted him from his resolve.
"You will keep your hands where I have left them until I tell you to move," Gaius ordered with a pleased, confident growl into his neck. Kisses trailed under Felix’s ear. "Is that understood?"
He nodded, his heart racing the whole time, his legs turning to rubber, even though this ritual was well-practiced. Gaius knew his weakness, knew that Felix wouldn't be able to resist the chance to cast off the burden of managing everything in Colonial One. Of course, Gaius' refusal to take the lead on anything these days was the reason Felix was carrying such a burden; this irony was not lost on either of them. But during these brief interludes, Gaius roused up the vestigial side of himself that wanted to be in charge, only for Felix, only in the bedroom. Felix had two jobs when Gaius was like this – to obey and to not ask why becoming president had only made Gaius weaker.
Felix kept his hands carefully in place on the bed, the sheets pleasantly cool underneath his rough fingertips. Gaius pulled back and smiled at his still body and fiddled with his own silk tie until it came undone into his soft hands. He never smiled anymore except when they were together like this, Felix thought, refusing to acknowledge the pain it caused him.
Don't ruin this, he told himself. Enjoy it for the few moments it'll last.
Felix watched Gaius take both ends of the striped tie into his hands, pull it taut and move in to fasten it around Felix's eyes. He made Felix blind, and Felix did not fight it.
"You never fight me, do you?" Gaius muttered, and Felix could feel his lover's tepid breath hovering over his body.
There was something harder-edged and strangely higher-pitched than usual in Gaius' voice. It disturbed Felix, but Gaius' fingers were already pulling open Felix's shirt buttons and his lips had settled onto Felix's mouth, pulling deep kisses from him, full of hot wetness and biting teeth. In his drunkenness, Gaius sometimes bit hard enough on Felix to make him wince, but Felix knew better than to fight it in any way, because the minute he appeared to struggle against this, the spell between them would be broken. That was the unspoken rule of this game. If Felix resisted, Gaius would roll off him in annoyance and simply vanish back into an ambrosia bottle for the night.
"That's why they all hate you, you know."
Gaius' voice sounded angry in his ear, still high-pitched and strange, and a bit frightening. He realized he could no longer feel the brush of the man's hair against his naked skin. Suddenly wished he weren't blindfolded.
"They know you never fight me."
Felix struggled to explain himself. "I wanted you to be better," he protested. "I believed in you. I kept thinking if I kept things going, that you would eventually come around."
But even as he spoke, he realized how useless this was. Gaius wouldn't listen. No one would.
"Then you were a fool. You were running everything anyway, Felix."
He froze. The voice was female; all along it had been female. Where was Gaius?
"You should have gotten rid of him when you had the chance, before the Cylons came."
In two swift movements, a pair of hands yanked the tie off his eyes, then ripped tape off his mouth. He realized a second later that there had been no tape on his mouth before. He scrambled up half-naked in Gaius' bed, on his knees, eyes flashing open in bleary-eyed surprise at the blinding ray of sunlight casting everywhere in the room. He brought up a hand to shield himself.
Diana loomed over the bed in front of him. Her hand was reaching out to cup his chin in a tender gesture that reminded him bewilderingly of Gaius.
"I don't know what else I could have done." His words sounded like a recording being played back to him, but in an angrier tone.
She pulled his face into hers, and he didn't fight it.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" he exhaled. "What do you want from me?"
Her fingers curled under his chin and trailed down his neck and chest. It felt like a jolt of electricity coursing through him. He recognized the scent of his own sex still hanging in the air around them and realized that this was turning him on.
"The same thing you want," she said matter-of-factly. Her face moved into his, her lips fleshy and parted. His eyes widened as he realized she was going to kiss him.
He startled awake with his sheets tangled, heart racing, and the feel of her kiss still on his lips. His cock, when he took it into his hand, felt thick and wet with arousal, and he pumped it idly and without purpose in the dark, his head swimming with confusion.
***
"Look, I've had enough of your bitching about this. Just go on your break with everyone else, and then get to work. You're on laundry duty until you get your head straight and that's final, all right?"
It was late at night and Felix was taking a lone walk around Galactica since he couldn't sleep. He had just opened the hatch to the hangar deck when he heard the voice of Chief Tyrol, running the skeleton night crew. The deck looked empty.
"But it's not like I did it on purpose! I made a mistake!"
Felix froze as he recognized Diana's voice. He stopped at entrance where he stood. They didn't notice him at all. He could see Tyrol shaking his head in frustration.
"For Gods' sake, Seelix, you almost got the CAG killed!" Tyrol hissed at her. "How did you not notice a trail of tylium from his Viper all the way down the landing bay?"
"I don't know!" She hesitated. "I've been a little scattered lately, okay? But I can get it together!"
Her voice sounded out of control, on the verge of tears. After a long pause, Tyrol's tone softened.
"Look," he said, "you gotta get over this. It's been two months now."
"What are you talking about?" she snapped.
"You know what I'm talking about," he shot back. "We were doing something our government asked us to. What we were doing was legally sanctioned by Zarek, who was President at the time."
She didn't say anything for a long time. Felix couldn't move. He listened in fascination.
"You have to move past this. Otherwise, one of these days, you're gonna kill one of the pilots, and then you'll really feel guilty."
"I didn't do it for noble reasons. I did it because I wanted someone to pay, Chief," she said. Even from across the hangar deck, Felix could feel the mix of rage and pain in her voice bouncing off the walls. "I wanted payback, plain and simple."
"You gotta get over this," he repeated stubbornly. "Whatever you want to think of what you did, you can't go back and change it now. Forget about it, It's done."
"We killed thirteen people!" The voice grew more frantic. "What if they weren't guilty?"
"We were careful," he insisted, his voice terse. "We looked at the evidence. We offered people the chance to defend themselves."
"We killed Jammer!" she shouted. "He used to work with us!" Felix heard sobs in her voice. "I mean, what the frak, Chief? What am I supposed to do with that?"
"What you gotta do," he sighed. "Move on.
"Look," he added, "I didn't say anything about your screw up in front of the crew, because I know how this has been eating at you. As soon as your head is right, I'll trust you with my birds again, okay? You know I need you on my deck. But right now you're useless to me."
"Frak you, Chief," she exclaimed miserably.
Felix heard another long pause.
"Seriously, get your head straight, Seelix. You're on laundry duty 'til further notice."
For a moment, Felix thought she might actually take a swing at the man, she looked so angry. But she just stormed off in the opposite direction.
***
She was evidently still lost in her angry thoughts after leaving the Chief, because it took calling her twice before she seemed to notice his voice behind her.
"Diana," he repeated one last time once he had her startled attention.
She straightened herself self-consciously. "What do you want?" Her tone hovered in wait for a cue from him.
"Come with me," he said.
Her eyes narrowed. "Where?"
He thought of her in his dreams last night, how her fingers had trailed along his chest. "You want to make things even between us?" he growled. "Come with me."
He saw her arms cross over her chest in confusion, her unease showing in the taut muscles of her face. But after a moment, she nodded and followed him without a word.
***
They said nothing as Felix led her on the long shadowy walk through the deserted parts of the hangar deck. There was no way to gracefully say what he had in mind or where they were going. However, when they arrived, it was clear that she recognized the location.
"Okay," she said, like she'd known their destination all along. "What? You gonna airlock me?"
He shook his head, leaning against one of the walls of the airlock, forcing back a shiver. It was as cold here as he remembered.
"Get on your knees," he said quietly. He wondered if he could pull this off, actually. He wondered why he thought this would help, but he couldn't think of anything else to do.
She looked askance at him. "Sure sounds like you want to air-" she began.
"You want this or not?" he cut her off tersely. "Get on your knees." After a whole day in the CIC, summoning up this kind of intensity took up almost all his energy.
Felix watched her shoulders tighten, her jaw set. But a moment later, she sagged and collapsed into herself, falling to a kneeling position. She kept her eyes on him defiantly, but Felix noticed her hands fidgeting uncertainly in her lap. She almost looked right, he thought, almost exactly in the same position as he'd been that day. But what now? Something should happen now, shouldn't it? He tried willing it to happen.
After too long a moment, he closed his eyes frustrated. He had thought somehow that if he'd gotten her here, recreated the moment for her – the cold metal like ice on his knees, the chafing plastic around his wrists, the floodlights’ glare blinding him . . .
He’d hoped the moment would take on a life of its own and lead them to some kind of resolution, so they could end this pointless feedback loop going on between them. But she was here, on her knees in this little-used airlock, and neither of them felt any better.
His eyes flashed open at the sensation of fingers grazing over his crotch. He looked down to see her undoing the zipper on his pants. He stood against the wall, frozen, as he felt the fabric parting open and her hands reaching in for his cock.
"What are you doing?" he choked.
She sounded confused and just as frustrated as him. "Isn't this why you brought me down here?"
He frowned. Did he want something like this from her? The pressure was just starting to build inside his pelvis, and he understood that at least his body did seem to want it.
"Yeah, go ahead," he growled, to cover over the shame at his body’s reaction. Her mouth felt hot and wet as it began pumping him into a full erection. He wasn't sure why he was letting her do this to him. It only made him feel passive and defiled. He looked straight ahead, trying to divorce himself from the arousal, and kept his hands carefully still against the wall as she worked. He thought of the DRADIS, of every single pin on his uniform, but nothing worked. His body had a plan of its own, and Felix was only glad he couldn't really feel it.
"Don't touch me," he gasped when her fingers began to feather along his shaft. He wasn't sure why this stipulation felt so necessary, he only knew he couldn't bear the contact of her hands upon his skin right now. The intimacy of it would feel like a cruel joke.
She removed her hands without rancor, keeping her fingertips pressed flat on the floor as her tongue flicked at the tip of his cock. The scent of his own juices - fetid like the rotting-grain stink of ambrosia on a drunkard's breath - wafted up into his nostrils, and it felt sickeningly familiar. As she took him deeper into her mouth, she made a little choking noise and gagged slightly when his cock rose and thickened in her, giving her more than she expected. He was neither repulsed nor excited by these proceedings, even though his legs were going rubbery and he could feel his heart racing. Felix monitored it all with the meticulous dispassion of a man who collects pinned butterflies, stuffed birds and other dead things.
"I'm going to come," he told her matter-of-factly, but his brain wasn't processing information fast enough to warn her, his cock already exploding into her mouth. She recoiled in surprise as his come spurted down her throat, but it was too late, and she swallowed it reflexively, looking stunned.
"I'm sorry," he gasped out, panting for breath. "I tried. I really tried, but I'm . . ." His mind flashed to an image of himself in Colonial One, shouting at Gaius, waving a list of condemned names at him, begging him to intervene. ". . . I'm weak."
As soon as he spoke, he realized that she would probably misunderstand his apology, more of a confession, really. But Diana didn't even seem to hear him. Her body had crumpled into itself and she covered her face with her hands.
"I thought I could do this," she whispered.
He closed his eyes, disgusted with himself and then slid down against the wall to the floor.
"This was a mistake," he agreed miserably. The taste in his mouth felt acrid, like his tongue was sucking on a piece of metal. His body rapidly awoke to a deep-set pain, to bruises he knew he wouldn’t find if he went looking.
"Diana," he said, tired and frustrated, sore and aching all over. "We're even, okay?" He wanted to be done with this.
At the sound of her name, her head popped up and she stared at him bewildered, as if she'd forgotten that he was in the room.
"Even?" she echoed softly, shoving a rough hand through her hair, eyes shining with threatened tears. She laughed in a mirthless way. "Frak, Gaeta."
He didn't reply, even though he knew exactly what she meant. They'd been fools to think they could find a scale with which to weigh this kind of justice.
He watched her with as she scissored her body upward in one fluid motion, avoiding his gaze. He was just fine with that. He couldn't bear to look at her either right now as he zipped up and smoothed down the fabric into a neat, straight line.
He stayed against the wall like that for a long time - his legs drawn up in front of him, his chin resting on his knees, listening to the sound of her heavy boots, each thudding footfall widening the chasm that continued to lie between them.
Author:
millariCharacters: Gaeta, Seelix, Dee, Tyrol, implied Baltar
Genre: dark!fic
Pairing: Seelix/Gaeta, implied Gaeta/Baltar
Wordcount: 4,756
Rating: R
SPOILERS: Through "Taking a Break From All Your Worries"
Warnings: explicit sexual situations, dark themes, depictions of major depression
Beta:
daybreak777, who helped SO miuch with this fic. Thanks, DB!Author's Note: This is a long-overdue fic for
trovia's "Little Black Dress" Challenge. The prompt was for a Gaeta/Seelix pairing. Summary: He only would have recognized her in the harsh silhouettes of this dimly-lit bar. Or an airlock.
The first time, Felix didn't quite realize what was happening.
All he knew was one moment he'd been sipping a poor excuse for ambrosia in Joe's, surrounded by a small crowd of people Dee had made friends with a while back on the Pegasus. The next moment, he'd turned around in his seat and there she was - a tall, lean figure looming over him, recognizable only because he'd happened to look up at her at just the right angle. She looked just like when she'd pulled the blindfold off him. Really, it was her haircut that he recognized, her jawline, and the fierce set of her shoulders. He only would have recognized her in the harsh silhouettes of this dimly-lit bar. Or an airlock.
A roiling, crashing wave of nausea ran through him, made worse by the battery fluid Joe's was passing off these days as drinkable. He saw the thick empty glass in her hand and wondered if she meant to hit him with it. The crowd chatter in which he'd been losing himself suddenly transformed into a distant drone, like the sound of a Centurion's predatory red eye. The Pyramid ball across the room connecting with its target sounded like a bomb going off on New Caprica. He was long past flinching at such surprises, but his heart was racing though as he stared up into the eyes of this woman who'd once almost killed him.
"What's your name?" he asked quietly. As soon as he said it, he realized how pointed and bitter he could have made it sound. Dee would have, but it hadn't occurred to him. His heart was only now calming down, though he kept a wary eye on the shot glass in her hand.
A hand flew to her mouth. Felix realized that it had never occurred to her that he wouldn't know her name, although there was no reason he should. He took some satisfaction out of the way she choked out her answer.
"Diana," she said so softly, he didn't hear her say it so much as he saw her mouth it. "It's Diana."
None of the usual things one said in a normal conversation were even remotely appropriate. It took almost a minute before he could come up with anything to say at all, and even then, it wasn't all that momentous.
"What do you want, Diana?"
He didn't ask her last name. Knowing her first name was bad enough. A last name would make her too real. He preferred to keep his awareness of her in the surreal realm of dreams, where it made perfect sense that unsuspecting people in hallways could get snatched out of nowhere, enveloped in darkness, and then wake up in a completely new place, awaiting their execution.
"I . . ."
He watched in idle curiosity as her face went slack, her mouth hanging open in shock and maybe - he'd like to think - maybe horror. His body felt encased in a tingling numbness, the taste of metal strong in his mouth.
"I . . ." she tried again and got nowhere.
"Is there a problem here?" Dee's voice swooped in like a Raider, her tone accusing, unyielding. Felix knew he should be grateful for it, and part of him was, but only the more innocent version of himself that he had trouble accessing anymore. It was like he had a child inside him buried under layers and layers of clothing for a winter that wouldn't end.
The woman who called herself Diana startled at Dee's interruption. She strode out of the bar without a word. Felix watched her mow through the crowd and then turned back indifferently to his drink. The liquid was burning his throat, he knew, but otherwise, he couldn't taste it at all.
"You okay?" Dee asked him with sisterly concern. He had only come out tonight only to appease her repeated insistence that he had to try and get things back to normal. Felix could see that she felt guilty now.
"I'm fine," he managed to smile weakly for her benefit, but she wasn't buying it.
"Was she one of the ones who..." she began.
"She was no one," Felix cut her off. "This is the first time I've ever seen her face." It wasn't entirely a lie.
He jerked up out of his seat. He felt just well enough to make it to his rack without puking in the hallways. A hand waved off the second drink she'd brought him from the bar.
"I think I've already had too much," he said, not meaning the drink, but it was easier to make it seem that way. "I'm getting some rack time."
"I'll walk you back," she declared.
He tried halfheartedly to argue, but she was in big sister mode, and there was no fighting her when she was like this.
"Besides," she told him, "if I have to watch Kara Thrace scan the bar one more time for my husband, I'm gonna break something in here."
"You should break her face, with her husband's Pyramid ball," he quipped, not because he was capable of feeling any actual venom, but because he knew it made Dee feel better to hear it bounced back at her. She needed to know that what Apollo was doing to her was real, not something made up in her head.
Felix assumed that one day, he'd actually be able to feel something about Kara Thrace and what she'd done to him. About what they'd all done to him. Right now though, he couldn't seem to feel much about anything at all.
He saw her again just after the Dance.
The pilots and deck crew around the ring were crackling with a barely restrained lust - for excitement, for the sight of blood, and for settling vengeances petty and not so petty. There was also the crackle of just plain lust.
Felix was watching Dee, and Dee was watching Apollo and Starbuck, who were watching no one else but themselves. As they beat the shit out of each other, it became so obvious to everyone what was going on, it actually made people uncomfortable. They started leaving in droves. Felix wondered if he should leave too.
He wasn't far gone enough yet that he couldn't see the pain in his friend's eyes. He was sure that the Felix of a year ago would have been able to think of something viciously mocking to say about this drama playing out before them. It’d be an evilly hilarious image she could use to shield herself later that night when her husband finally crawled into bed with her, his mind still with Starbuck.
But the Felix of the here and now just stared at her in helpless oblivion, trapped behind an invisible wall between them.
He was of no use here, and he hated the feeling. It made him want to put his dog tags in the little box they had next to the ring and let someone call him out, give them all the opportunity to watch him get pummeled until he could maybe feel something again, until both he and they all were satisfied that he'd paid for New Caprica. But it was too late anyway now. The dance was over. He'd been thinking about throwing his tags in all night, but hadn't, because he wasn't ready to die yet. If he threw his tags in, someone might actually take him up on his offer and permanently injure him or even kill him. Felix knew the difference between being numb and depressed and being truly suicidal.
Cottle had told him that he was probably suffering from suicidal ideation. Tyrol had reported that Felix hadn’t fought against the Circle. But Cottle didn’t know shit about psychology, Felix had decided, and he knew very well that he wasn’t suffering from any suicidal tendencies.
There had only been a child therapist available to settle the question anyway, so Felix had been told he could try sleeping pills or Cottle's best guess at an appropriate antidepressant. He had refused both, to show them he wasn't weak. He kept the mask of efficiency and initiative on during his work shifts, during short conversations with people, in order to make book here tonight. He could fake it for ten to twelve hours at a time, but not much more.
It was true that Felix had trouble imagining a future these days; he felt so stuck in the horribleness of each day, it was impossible to imagine it changing. He'd resigned himself to being a permanently hated person on this ship. But he wasn't suicidal. Feeling useful was one of the few things that made him still hang on to life these days. He craved the validation from being indispensable, although these days, he had to admit it was more like a panicky need. He suspected that the moment he ceased being of use to Adama and Roslin in their search for Earth, to Tigh in the CIC, they would turn on him without warning. That thought was probably irrational, but he couldn't help thinking it anyway.
There had been a lot to do to get the Galactica up and running again after the Exodus. But he could do nothing for Dee right now.
So he fled, unsure of where to go.
He was almost relieved when she grabbed hold of him by his tanks under his open jacket as he was leaving the hangar deck. Almost grateful to not have to decide what to do with the emptiness of this night. Almost.
Because his heart was racing like crazy at the all-too-familiar sensations of hands yanking at his clothes, at the way she stumbled him across the hallway against his will. It made him feel out of control and at her mercy, even though he could have fought her. She shoved him against a wall, her hard, bony frame pressing his chest tight against the concrete, pinning his shoulders. He couldn't stop his eyes from gluing shut, as if anticipating a blow. Her breath smelled like stale ambrosia and cigarettes.
The scent awoke in him an unexpected memory of being thrown against a different wall, in unpredictable passion, on Colonial One.
Gaius.
But when his eyes flashed open, he wasn't on Colonial One and the President of the Colonies wasn't staring at him with a drunken, predatory smile.
It was her. With a face was filled with wild-eyed anger and frustration.
"What do you want, Diana?" he said again. He recognized his tone as the same one from the night in the bar. "What do you want?"
"Go ahead," she said hoarsely, ripping herself away from him to give him space. "Hit me."
His eyes widened. "What?"
"Come on," she goaded him. "I'm offering you the chance for a free shot." She shrugged. "Really, take as many shots as you want. I don't care." She stood still and straight, arms balled in fists by her side, her chin jutted out, ready for the blow.
He fixed a confused stare at her.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" she said in a low voice.
He thought he probably should feel like hitting her.
"I- I can't," he admitted.
"Why not?" Her voice flew at him, strained and angry. "I almost killed you! For Gods' sake, Gaeta! Don't you want revenge?"
"Revenge?" He could hear how dully annoyed his own voice sounded. "This isn't some Libran melodrama."
She stood there, coltish before him, clearly unsure of whether to stay or storm off.
"This is frakked-up, isn't it?" she asked.
He stared at her. "Yeah."
"Look, just tell me what I need to do to make this even between us."
"Frak if I know. No one's ever tried to kill me before."
She grimaced. "At least let me say I'm sorry. I know it doesn't solve anything..."
"You're right," he nodded, cutting her off.
"What?"
"It doesn't."
He left her standing there in silence.
That night, his dreams took him back to New Caprica. He was on Colonial One and the scent of expensive, black-market cologne loomed over Felix, wafting into his nostrils as his boss, his president, gently but firmly pushed him down onto the bed on his back, splaying Felix's arms to his sides.
I shouldn't let him do this, he said in the dream, just as he had said several times in real life, once he had realized that Gaius was only interested in him as a satisfying, comforting toy. But as always, the familiar whiff of cigarette smoke in Gaius' hair and the ambrosia on his breath overpowered Felix's senses. The calm strength of Gaius' command distracted him from his resolve.
"You will keep your hands where I have left them until I tell you to move," Gaius ordered with a pleased, confident growl into his neck. Kisses trailed under Felix’s ear. "Is that understood?"
He nodded, his heart racing the whole time, his legs turning to rubber, even though this ritual was well-practiced. Gaius knew his weakness, knew that Felix wouldn't be able to resist the chance to cast off the burden of managing everything in Colonial One. Of course, Gaius' refusal to take the lead on anything these days was the reason Felix was carrying such a burden; this irony was not lost on either of them. But during these brief interludes, Gaius roused up the vestigial side of himself that wanted to be in charge, only for Felix, only in the bedroom. Felix had two jobs when Gaius was like this – to obey and to not ask why becoming president had only made Gaius weaker.
Felix kept his hands carefully in place on the bed, the sheets pleasantly cool underneath his rough fingertips. Gaius pulled back and smiled at his still body and fiddled with his own silk tie until it came undone into his soft hands. He never smiled anymore except when they were together like this, Felix thought, refusing to acknowledge the pain it caused him.
Don't ruin this, he told himself. Enjoy it for the few moments it'll last.
Felix watched Gaius take both ends of the striped tie into his hands, pull it taut and move in to fasten it around Felix's eyes. He made Felix blind, and Felix did not fight it.
"You never fight me, do you?" Gaius muttered, and Felix could feel his lover's tepid breath hovering over his body.
There was something harder-edged and strangely higher-pitched than usual in Gaius' voice. It disturbed Felix, but Gaius' fingers were already pulling open Felix's shirt buttons and his lips had settled onto Felix's mouth, pulling deep kisses from him, full of hot wetness and biting teeth. In his drunkenness, Gaius sometimes bit hard enough on Felix to make him wince, but Felix knew better than to fight it in any way, because the minute he appeared to struggle against this, the spell between them would be broken. That was the unspoken rule of this game. If Felix resisted, Gaius would roll off him in annoyance and simply vanish back into an ambrosia bottle for the night.
"That's why they all hate you, you know."
Gaius' voice sounded angry in his ear, still high-pitched and strange, and a bit frightening. He realized he could no longer feel the brush of the man's hair against his naked skin. Suddenly wished he weren't blindfolded.
"They know you never fight me."
Felix struggled to explain himself. "I wanted you to be better," he protested. "I believed in you. I kept thinking if I kept things going, that you would eventually come around."
But even as he spoke, he realized how useless this was. Gaius wouldn't listen. No one would.
"Then you were a fool. You were running everything anyway, Felix."
He froze. The voice was female; all along it had been female. Where was Gaius?
"You should have gotten rid of him when you had the chance, before the Cylons came."
In two swift movements, a pair of hands yanked the tie off his eyes, then ripped tape off his mouth. He realized a second later that there had been no tape on his mouth before. He scrambled up half-naked in Gaius' bed, on his knees, eyes flashing open in bleary-eyed surprise at the blinding ray of sunlight casting everywhere in the room. He brought up a hand to shield himself.
Diana loomed over the bed in front of him. Her hand was reaching out to cup his chin in a tender gesture that reminded him bewilderingly of Gaius.
"I don't know what else I could have done." His words sounded like a recording being played back to him, but in an angrier tone.
She pulled his face into hers, and he didn't fight it.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" he exhaled. "What do you want from me?"
Her fingers curled under his chin and trailed down his neck and chest. It felt like a jolt of electricity coursing through him. He recognized the scent of his own sex still hanging in the air around them and realized that this was turning him on.
"The same thing you want," she said matter-of-factly. Her face moved into his, her lips fleshy and parted. His eyes widened as he realized she was going to kiss him.
He startled awake with his sheets tangled, heart racing, and the feel of her kiss still on his lips. His cock, when he took it into his hand, felt thick and wet with arousal, and he pumped it idly and without purpose in the dark, his head swimming with confusion.
"Look, I've had enough of your bitching about this. Just go on your break with everyone else, and then get to work. You're on laundry duty until you get your head straight and that's final, all right?"
It was late at night and Felix was taking a lone walk around Galactica since he couldn't sleep. He had just opened the hatch to the hangar deck when he heard the voice of Chief Tyrol, running the skeleton night crew. The deck looked empty.
"But it's not like I did it on purpose! I made a mistake!"
Felix froze as he recognized Diana's voice. He stopped at entrance where he stood. They didn't notice him at all. He could see Tyrol shaking his head in frustration.
"For Gods' sake, Seelix, you almost got the CAG killed!" Tyrol hissed at her. "How did you not notice a trail of tylium from his Viper all the way down the landing bay?"
"I don't know!" She hesitated. "I've been a little scattered lately, okay? But I can get it together!"
Her voice sounded out of control, on the verge of tears. After a long pause, Tyrol's tone softened.
"Look," he said, "you gotta get over this. It's been two months now."
"What are you talking about?" she snapped.
"You know what I'm talking about," he shot back. "We were doing something our government asked us to. What we were doing was legally sanctioned by Zarek, who was President at the time."
She didn't say anything for a long time. Felix couldn't move. He listened in fascination.
"You have to move past this. Otherwise, one of these days, you're gonna kill one of the pilots, and then you'll really feel guilty."
"I didn't do it for noble reasons. I did it because I wanted someone to pay, Chief," she said. Even from across the hangar deck, Felix could feel the mix of rage and pain in her voice bouncing off the walls. "I wanted payback, plain and simple."
"You gotta get over this," he repeated stubbornly. "Whatever you want to think of what you did, you can't go back and change it now. Forget about it, It's done."
"We killed thirteen people!" The voice grew more frantic. "What if they weren't guilty?"
"We were careful," he insisted, his voice terse. "We looked at the evidence. We offered people the chance to defend themselves."
"We killed Jammer!" she shouted. "He used to work with us!" Felix heard sobs in her voice. "I mean, what the frak, Chief? What am I supposed to do with that?"
"What you gotta do," he sighed. "Move on.
"Look," he added, "I didn't say anything about your screw up in front of the crew, because I know how this has been eating at you. As soon as your head is right, I'll trust you with my birds again, okay? You know I need you on my deck. But right now you're useless to me."
"Frak you, Chief," she exclaimed miserably.
Felix heard another long pause.
"Seriously, get your head straight, Seelix. You're on laundry duty 'til further notice."
For a moment, Felix thought she might actually take a swing at the man, she looked so angry. But she just stormed off in the opposite direction.
She was evidently still lost in her angry thoughts after leaving the Chief, because it took calling her twice before she seemed to notice his voice behind her.
"Diana," he repeated one last time once he had her startled attention.
She straightened herself self-consciously. "What do you want?" Her tone hovered in wait for a cue from him.
"Come with me," he said.
Her eyes narrowed. "Where?"
He thought of her in his dreams last night, how her fingers had trailed along his chest. "You want to make things even between us?" he growled. "Come with me."
He saw her arms cross over her chest in confusion, her unease showing in the taut muscles of her face. But after a moment, she nodded and followed him without a word.
They said nothing as Felix led her on the long shadowy walk through the deserted parts of the hangar deck. There was no way to gracefully say what he had in mind or where they were going. However, when they arrived, it was clear that she recognized the location.
"Okay," she said, like she'd known their destination all along. "What? You gonna airlock me?"
He shook his head, leaning against one of the walls of the airlock, forcing back a shiver. It was as cold here as he remembered.
"Get on your knees," he said quietly. He wondered if he could pull this off, actually. He wondered why he thought this would help, but he couldn't think of anything else to do.
She looked askance at him. "Sure sounds like you want to air-" she began.
"You want this or not?" he cut her off tersely. "Get on your knees." After a whole day in the CIC, summoning up this kind of intensity took up almost all his energy.
Felix watched her shoulders tighten, her jaw set. But a moment later, she sagged and collapsed into herself, falling to a kneeling position. She kept her eyes on him defiantly, but Felix noticed her hands fidgeting uncertainly in her lap. She almost looked right, he thought, almost exactly in the same position as he'd been that day. But what now? Something should happen now, shouldn't it? He tried willing it to happen.
After too long a moment, he closed his eyes frustrated. He had thought somehow that if he'd gotten her here, recreated the moment for her – the cold metal like ice on his knees, the chafing plastic around his wrists, the floodlights’ glare blinding him . . .
He’d hoped the moment would take on a life of its own and lead them to some kind of resolution, so they could end this pointless feedback loop going on between them. But she was here, on her knees in this little-used airlock, and neither of them felt any better.
His eyes flashed open at the sensation of fingers grazing over his crotch. He looked down to see her undoing the zipper on his pants. He stood against the wall, frozen, as he felt the fabric parting open and her hands reaching in for his cock.
"What are you doing?" he choked.
She sounded confused and just as frustrated as him. "Isn't this why you brought me down here?"
He frowned. Did he want something like this from her? The pressure was just starting to build inside his pelvis, and he understood that at least his body did seem to want it.
"Yeah, go ahead," he growled, to cover over the shame at his body’s reaction. Her mouth felt hot and wet as it began pumping him into a full erection. He wasn't sure why he was letting her do this to him. It only made him feel passive and defiled. He looked straight ahead, trying to divorce himself from the arousal, and kept his hands carefully still against the wall as she worked. He thought of the DRADIS, of every single pin on his uniform, but nothing worked. His body had a plan of its own, and Felix was only glad he couldn't really feel it.
"Don't touch me," he gasped when her fingers began to feather along his shaft. He wasn't sure why this stipulation felt so necessary, he only knew he couldn't bear the contact of her hands upon his skin right now. The intimacy of it would feel like a cruel joke.
She removed her hands without rancor, keeping her fingertips pressed flat on the floor as her tongue flicked at the tip of his cock. The scent of his own juices - fetid like the rotting-grain stink of ambrosia on a drunkard's breath - wafted up into his nostrils, and it felt sickeningly familiar. As she took him deeper into her mouth, she made a little choking noise and gagged slightly when his cock rose and thickened in her, giving her more than she expected. He was neither repulsed nor excited by these proceedings, even though his legs were going rubbery and he could feel his heart racing. Felix monitored it all with the meticulous dispassion of a man who collects pinned butterflies, stuffed birds and other dead things.
"I'm going to come," he told her matter-of-factly, but his brain wasn't processing information fast enough to warn her, his cock already exploding into her mouth. She recoiled in surprise as his come spurted down her throat, but it was too late, and she swallowed it reflexively, looking stunned.
"I'm sorry," he gasped out, panting for breath. "I tried. I really tried, but I'm . . ." His mind flashed to an image of himself in Colonial One, shouting at Gaius, waving a list of condemned names at him, begging him to intervene. ". . . I'm weak."
As soon as he spoke, he realized that she would probably misunderstand his apology, more of a confession, really. But Diana didn't even seem to hear him. Her body had crumpled into itself and she covered her face with her hands.
"I thought I could do this," she whispered.
He closed his eyes, disgusted with himself and then slid down against the wall to the floor.
"This was a mistake," he agreed miserably. The taste in his mouth felt acrid, like his tongue was sucking on a piece of metal. His body rapidly awoke to a deep-set pain, to bruises he knew he wouldn’t find if he went looking.
"Diana," he said, tired and frustrated, sore and aching all over. "We're even, okay?" He wanted to be done with this.
At the sound of her name, her head popped up and she stared at him bewildered, as if she'd forgotten that he was in the room.
"Even?" she echoed softly, shoving a rough hand through her hair, eyes shining with threatened tears. She laughed in a mirthless way. "Frak, Gaeta."
He didn't reply, even though he knew exactly what she meant. They'd been fools to think they could find a scale with which to weigh this kind of justice.
He watched her with as she scissored her body upward in one fluid motion, avoiding his gaze. He was just fine with that. He couldn't bear to look at her either right now as he zipped up and smoothed down the fabric into a neat, straight line.
He stayed against the wall like that for a long time - his legs drawn up in front of him, his chin resting on his knees, listening to the sound of her heavy boots, each thudding footfall widening the chasm that continued to lie between them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-04-14 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 12:47 am (UTC)It's fixed now. Thanks for the heads-up.
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Date: 2009-04-15 10:05 am (UTC)Needless to say, I'm delighted that you wrote this fic and tackled this very interesting pairing. I adore unusual pairings. This one was great. In a dark and disturbing and entirely fascinating way.
I love how Seelix and Gaeta try to handle their complicated feelings but fail miserably. They recognize that the other one's experiences serve as a counterpart to their own problems. Yet they are wrong in their assumption that the other one can help them out. If the roles were reversed, I could easily picture Gaeta trying to deal with it the exact same way Seelix did. But it doesn't fit. It just doesn't work out. It's powerful and real in its hopelessness.
There are many details I enjoyed a lot, like that Dee made friends on the Pegasus and that Gaeta talked to a child therapist. It makes sense that Gaeta wouldn't be able to reconnect with his old life even if there are people who try to help him (although it's fun to isolate him from everybody, too).
I'll forever be fascinated by depictions of depression in fic. I don't think I ever mentioned it before but I've suffered from various forms of depression ever since I was a child (I'm fine now, mind). It's quite a fic kink of mine. While Gaeta is nothing like me, and his perception is different from anything I've ever experienced, I enjoyed that aspect of the fic especially. You know, when I had a first look at the fic (when the HTML didn't work), the quotation marks were all gone. I didn't read all of it then, but as a measure of style, this actually accentuated Gaeta's feeling of disconnection. It's much less confusing with the quotation marks in place, though. :)
That said, I really liked the dream sequence with Baltar. It made me rather uncomfortable to read the sex scene, but in a good way. It's a complex situation, the D/S aspect interlaced with a bit of dubcon. It's also a great way to depict the way Gaeta might have experienced his time on New Caprica, and a clever bit of symbolism (or characterization, depending on your definition of symbolism).
Of course, I'm delighted about there being a new challenge entry, in general. If somebody takes care of Gaeta/Jake, Gaeta/Cottle and Gaeta/Figurski, I promise I'll write the rest and we can actually declare Gaeta to have been paired with everybody. :D I tried my hand at Gaeta/Cottle. But it was just too disturbing.
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Date: 2009-04-16 07:16 pm (UTC)They recognize that the other one's experiences serve as a counterpart to their own problems. Yet they are wrong in their assumption that the other one can help them out.
Yes, this is exactly what I wanted to get across. Thanks for validating my efforts! They are both really damaged, aren't they? I sort of kept asking them myself, "What are you guys doing????"
It's powerful and real in its hopelessness.
But yes, in all seriousness, this was what I was hoping for. I wanted it to end in hopelessness. Even though in canon they seem to have reconciled, they have shared one of the most disturbing connections two humans can share, and I really wanted to be honest about that. I wouldn't have felt good about a pat resolution.
There are many details I enjoyed a lot, like that Dee made friends on the Pegasus and that Gaeta talked to a child therapist.
I remembered that Helo had once mentioned to Kara that Hera had been seeing a child therapist and it made me ask for the first time, huh, where are the therapists? If there are any, they must be extremely busy! BSG is not a happy place. I liked the idea that like with everything, there'd be shortages of therapists, or maybe none for Felix. It served to heighten his lack of emotional release, which I thought was crucial for this fic.
I'll forever be fascinated by depictions of depression in fic ... It's quite a fic kink of mine.
No, you've never mentioned that about your history. I'm glad you're well these days. :) I can see how it would interest you in fic then. I hope you think I did it justice, having never suffered from depression like this, not by far. I did read up on PTSD though for background on Felix in my fics. I do think all that time on NC fearing for his life and then the Circle had to have quite an effect on him!
You know, when I had a first look at the fic (when the HTML didn't work), the quotation marks were all gone. I didn't read all of it then, but as a measure of style, this actually accentuated Gaeta's feeling of disconnection.
You know,
That said, I really liked the dream sequence with Baltar. It made me rather uncomfortable to read the sex scene, but in a good way.
You know, I got such interesting reactions to the Baltar/Gaeta sex scene. I'm curious what made you uncomfortable about it? (Not that I can't see lots of possibilities, but I'm curious what specifically made you uncomfortable with it?)
...and a clever bit of symbolism (or characterization, depending on your definition of symbolism).
Yay! I'm glad you didn't feel it was heavyhanded.
If somebody takes care of Gaeta/Jake, Gaeta/Cottle and Gaeta/Figurski, I promise I'll write the rest and we can actually declare Gaeta to have been paired with everybody. :D I tried my hand at Gaeta/Cottle. But it was just too disturbing.
I still have to ready
And thanks for providing a great challenge that really pushed me beyond my comfort zone.
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Date: 2009-04-16 08:09 pm (UTC)My depression was of the viscous and chronic variation; contrary to Gaeta, I've never suffered from any specific and acute trauma. So I'm playing a guessing game as much as you are when I write about PTSD. But I agree, he'd be pretty messed up. I certainly thought your fic felt real. The feelings of deadlock and numbness are things I recognize. The lack of progress, and the inability to find a solution. Sometimes, I feel depression is just like an x-rated version of boredom. I think also that this is one of the reasons why people never write about chronic forms of depression. ;)
You know, I got such interesting reactions to the Baltar/Gaeta sex scene. I'm curious what made you uncomfortable about it? (Not that I can't see lots of possibilities, but I'm curious what specifically made you uncomfortable with it?)
Uhm, it's the D/S. That's supposed to be about trust. It's something I can't imagine to be any kind of fun without trust. But the way Baltar does it, it's about domination and control in the ugly sense of the word. There is no trace of a hint that he cares. Yet it's not a violation, since Gaeta could just walk out of it if he could only make himself. It's a messy situation. It makes you wonder who took away Gaeta's dignity -- Baltar or Gaeta himself? It's like being raped without being victimized. It's certainly a rather personal reaction, since I imagine it wouldn't have made me uncomfortable if I had never put any thought into this kind of thing before.
Cottle/Gaeta too disturbing? Was it because of the doctor/patient relationship? The age difference? The grumpiness factor? ;)
Hee. No, my plotbunny specifically was too disturbing. I had this idea set after NC, where Cottle starts noticing that Gaeta reports to sickbay a lot with minor injuries, asking for sleeping pills, that kind of thing. And he clues in on the fact that Gaeta keeps finding excuses to go to sickbay. Because he's messed up and touch-deprived, see. Everybody acts like he isn't a part of the world anymore, and he feels like a ghost. He gets attention in sickbay, and positive attention at that. Gaeta feels like a wimp for doing this, but he can't make himself stop. So he sublimates and kind of transforms this need into a belief that he feels attracted to Cottle. And Cottle keeps being suspicious but he's also flattered that such a young, handsome lieutenant would feel attracted to him, so he goes along eventually. Anyway, this got into very dark territory. I couldn't make up my mind about how to end it, and it was a bit too much to handle. I wanted it to be really disturbing, since both of them make themselves do things they don't actually want to do**, but my mind refused to go there. :)
** It's like your sex scene, no? Looks like I have a major squick in that department. Huh. Thanks for making me aware of that!
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Date: 2009-04-23 04:13 pm (UTC)Of course I understand why you wouldn't want to write it. I tried my hand at Gaeta/Cavil for the little black dress challenge and had to pull myself back.
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Date: 2009-04-23 04:31 pm (UTC)I'm curious. What was disturbing about your Gaeta/Cavil fic?
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Date: 2009-04-14 09:05 pm (UTC)I have a soft spot for fiction with wildly unusual and unlikely pairings having resonance, and I think this one really sold me. That in a way they have so much in common during this period, so many of the same emotions playing out in the same way, even if they came from such different places.
Thank you.
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Date: 2009-04-15 01:07 am (UTC)(Btw, you are a total saint for reading the story having to wade through all the stupid, distracting coding problems. Last time I trust Semagic...)
A "miserable flood of emotions" is a good way to describe these two. I was intrigued by the idea that even though they came from opposing sides vis a vis the trauma of The Circle, they would both nevertheless be driven to punish themselves in this highly uncomfortable, symbolic re-enactment of the moment that binds them. Yes, I think it's fair to say that they both felt debased and unresolved in the end.
I'm glad you liked the links between the present and Felix's past with Gaius on New Caprica. I kept having doubts that I was just putting them in because I felt like it. But in the end, I decided that so much of Felix's guilt about New Caprica is about him feeling like a blind fool who waited far too long to act on his people's behalf, and *that* is all about Gaius, for sure.
Thanks again for the feedback!
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Date: 2009-04-15 12:37 am (UTC)I also really liked the scene with Chief and Seelix. It just... the bond that was there between them and the anger and the hurt and the pain and the fact he's been able to move on (maybe because he was the one who let Felix go?)... it was such good stuff.
And the scene at the end. Felix's state of mind in that scene was just so painful. I wouldn't quite call it fragile, but it was so messed up and so... ouchy. ::hugs Felix, although I don't think he wanted hugs much in this fic::
Great stuff!!!
(I finally got my hands on Echoes today, btw, so looking forward to more morally gray stuff :):):) )
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Date: 2009-04-15 01:30 am (UTC)his utter denial that he was in any way suicidal...
Yeah, it's the only way I can reconcile the Felix we see in "Collaborators," in "Taking a Break..." and "Crossroads" with the Felix we see in Joe's, joking with Dee, etc. I think Felix kept up that mask of efficiency as much to convince himself as to convince others.
Oh, and I'm glad you found Diana not only believable but the selling point of the fic. I have never tried to write her before, and I don't feel I know much about her other than her buried rage, so I hoped she wouldn't come across as one-dimensional.
The connection between Chiefy and Seelix was something that only occurred to me three quarters of the way through the fic, believe it or not. It was so obvious when I thought about it. Tyrol always had a big brother kind of thing for his deck crew kids, and when I thought about it, it made sense to me that he would keep a special eye out for Seelix in the aftermath of the Circle, but he wouldn't coddle her either. But I also think that Tyrol's the kind of guy who believes in fixing problems with actions, not words, and especially not angst. It goes along with his love of working with his hands. So I think he would feel a deep bond with Seelix, and cut her a certain amount of slack, but he wouldn't put up with her angsting about it forever either. (I'm also awfully fond of the fact that I found an interesting explanation as to why a competent mechanic and medic got laundry duty, other than they just needed a warm body.)
I finally got my hands on Echoes today, btw, so looking forward to more morally gray stuff.
I'm so hoping my husband brings home "Echoes" tomorrow night with the weekly comics shipment. :) You have to let me know if that guy on the cover is Felix or not. :D
Also, thanks for putting up with all the coding garbage that was on this posting earlier today when you read it. Semagic totally betrayed me. :(
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Date: 2009-04-16 02:37 pm (UTC)You know, I still have no clue who it's supposed to be. But I'm 2/3 of the way through, and so far, Felix hasn't been mentioned once. :P
I liked your explanation as to why she would end up with laundry duty. It was one of those things I'd never thought about before but now that you mention it, it IS "hey, wait a minute!!!!" Heh.
Definitely great stuff. :)
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Date: 2009-04-15 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 09:30 pm (UTC)Btw, iconlove!
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Date: 2009-04-15 02:57 am (UTC)Little Black Dress challenge is hard! Because in some ways some people shouldn't ever be together sexually. And in this one, the two actually acknowledge that at the end. There are some things you can never make up for, never fix.
You know one thing I liked about this fic that I haven't mentioned yet? I like Seelix here, maybe even more than on the show. Not many try to figure out her point of view. I don't know if she felt confused or guilty about her part in the Circle but I'm glad that she got some fic attention. We know how the Circle affected Felix, but not much on Diana so I was glad to see her POV explored in this story.
Like
Hopefully, we'll see more fic from you soon, y/y? :-)
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Date: 2009-04-17 09:37 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked Seelix's characterization, because you're right, there isn't much to go on in canon, and certainly not about the Circle. I don't think I could have based a whole fic on her POV without making it completely OOC, but I remember how horrified the members of The Circle were when Tyrol told them that Felix was the inside source. I'd think she would carry around guilt about it, and she's a character so full of buried rage, I could maybe see it coming out this way.
difficult, messy, full of shame and remorse is just the perfect set of adjectives for the interactions here. I'm glad that really came across.
Hopefully, we'll see more fic from you soon, y/y? :-)
I am working on Hoshi fic for the
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Date: 2009-04-17 10:21 pm (UTC)Hee! Clothes fic! Yeah, I was going to expand on some Felix/Gaius drabbles for you too, but I can't write them to save my life apparently.
Maybe the
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Date: 2009-04-15 04:24 am (UTC)I think my favorite thing is that you didn't give either of them a happy ending. Nothing so simple as a guilt-frak in an airlock is going to make either of them better. Seriously, seriously awesome.
Oh, and I love the idea of Baltar only being able to give orders in bed, the one thing he is really good at (besides science, and clearly that was lacking on New Caprica.) Having Felix passively follow those orders, then mind-fraking it into the airlock, that was creepy and really cool.
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Date: 2009-04-17 09:42 pm (UTC)I'm glad the Baltar/Gaeta dream sequence worked for you. I think I did start out writing the scene because B/G are my comfort zone and this fic was definitely WAY outside my comfort zone. But quickly, I realized there were excellent symbolic possibilities to be had with Felix's passivity around Seelix and his passivity with Gaius. Even in canon, those two always seemed so passive-aggressive with each other. I'm so glad you thought the intertwining of the past and present for Felix was cool.
Thanks for all your comments!
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Date: 2009-04-18 10:28 pm (UTC):) I love comments too, when I get around to posting fics. (Or rather, get around to writing them) So yes. All kinds of love for this, look forward to more.
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Date: 2009-04-15 06:48 pm (UTC)You know, I've always liked Seelix as a character. She can be a bit of a twisted bully sometimes, but no more so than Kara really. I had a bit of a soft spot for her following her role in Dirty Hands. I found it interesting that after the Circle Seelix and Felix seemed okay with each other - crewing the Demetrius together, crying over Dee together and of course Seelix was on Felix's side during the mutiny. It's interesting to consider how they made amends; whether Seelix felt guilty for the Circle or maybe came to admire Felix for his courage and cleverness as a Resistance spy. Felix seems to focus his Circle resentment on Kara and Tigh. It's interesting to consider Felix resolving his issues with a Circle member that he didn't know so well. Ah, nothing like oral sex in an airlock to smooth over that psychological baggage!
I love the idea of Dee being sisterly and protective of Felix in the aftermath of the New Caprica exodus, and Felix in turn being brotherly and protective of Dee when the Kara/Lee thing becomes obvious during the Dance. It is always so crushing to think that Felix developed this self-punishing guilt complex after the Circle; something that Cottle picks up on but can't help with and something that Felix obviously never recovers from.
And not only do we get insight into Felix's trauma, but his attacker Seelix is equally traumatised. It's very much my fanon that Jammer's execution caught up with Chief and Seelix after Felix's mistrial and the blanket amnesty. He was their friend and a decent guy and I like to think his cruel unnecessary death haunted them for a long time. I also like the idea that after Felix the Circle would get paranoid and wonder if they killed any other people who were innocent of their crimes.
Lots of creepy sex in this! Me likey. The dream/flashback to Felix sleeping with Gaius on New Caprica was scarily convincing. Gaius was such a twisted egotist during that peroid I can believe in him using sexual power play and amusing himself over Felix; who is so submissive and has such low self-worth at this time. I also like that when Felix takes Seelix down to the airlock he doesn't even know what he wants out of the situation. Again it is more of a power play scenario; like Felix hopes to make himself feel secure by making Seelix feel vulnerable. Yet Felix once again becomes the passive one and doesn't fight, letting Seelix defile him. And he apologises afterwards! Even though Felix was the injured party of the Circle he still feels guilty and will invite further degradation from them. That's so frakked up. *cries*
Great to have you back in the fandom, mill! Can't wait for more new fic from you.
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Date: 2009-04-17 09:59 pm (UTC)As a consumnate Baltar/Gaeta shipper, I was glad to hear that the dream sequence worked for you. I really wanted to highlight Felix's passiveness, so I am so pleased that you got that right away, that it came true. Even though I was the one writing it, I felt so heartbroken that poor Felix was unable to resist Gaius objectifying him like that, that he was too numb and too grateful for any connection at all, even a dysfunctional one, that he would consent to this on a regular basis. In my mind, Gaius was also attracted to the game because he had abdicated control of everything to Felix out of laziness, yet craved the rush of controlling something. He probably also wanted to reassure himself that Felix wasn't really a better person than him, since the guy couldn't resist Gaius repeatedly demeaning him like that.
I also like that when Felix takes Seelix down to the airlock he doesn't even know what he wants out of the situation. Again it is more of a power play scenario
I agree. I was trying very hard to link Felix's frakked-up guilt and passivity with Gaius on New Caprica and the situation with Seelix, the way he kept reacting to her harrassment with such passivity, not informing anyone about it, not even letting Dee in on what was going on. I think at this point that Felix had such a sense of a foreshortened future that he couldn't even conceive of how to start to feel better, so he just repeats the power plays he's been subject to by others, unable to think of any other solution. And of course, it doesn't work at all, and he just feels degraded in the process.
Oh, and thanks for mentioning the Dee and Felix parts. I always loved their relationship throughout the series, and I always wondered how New Caprica affected their relationship, and how much Dee tried to help Felix with his trauma, which she must have had a hard time understanding/identifying with.
Thanks so much for your lovely comment to this difficult fic!
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Date: 2009-04-15 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 10:01 pm (UTC)Thank you! This is one of the major themes I wanted to get across in this fic. Thank you for validating my efforts!
They all really *are* so frakked up, aren't they?
Thank you so much for reading and commenting.
*looks up at your icon and cries*
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Date: 2010-04-27 10:52 pm (UTC)I have a question. trovia has given me permission to write her Gaeta/Cottle plot bunny she mentions here and if you have the time I was wondering if you'd beta it for me.
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Date: 2010-04-28 01:50 am (UTC)And sure, I'd be happy to beta something from you. I'm glad someone's writing the Gaeta/Cottle idea. Do you still have my email?