Puel, Wrongsexual (puella_nerdii) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2008-07-05 00:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 2008 twelve characters challenge, author: puella_nerdii, fandom: battlestar galactica, pairing: baltar/gaeta |
Military Time (BSG, Baltar/Gaeta)
Title: Military Time
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters/Pairing: Gaius Baltar/Felix Gaeta, Tom Zarek
Rating: PG-13 (language, mild sexual content)
Warnings: Spoilers through 2.20
Prompt: Baltar and Gaeta: they fight crime!
Wordcount: ~4000
Summary: This is Felix's life. He's getting good at it.
A/N: ...this is probably entirely too serious, given what the prompt implies. ahem.
0800
Life on New Caprica follows different protocols and different regulations than life on Galactica did, but the rules are still there, even if Felix has to create half of them himself. He wakes up at oh six hundred thirty—and that feels almost like luxury, the fact that he has the opportunity to rise with the sun—and goes in to wake Gaius at oh eight hundred, but Gaius prefers to sleep in these days. With company, usually. Felix tries to avert his eyes, but Gaius is flagrant about it, lying sprawled over the sheets without a shred of clothing on.
“Mr. President,” he says, and when that doesn’t work, “Baltar,” and finally, “Gaius.”
The President of Humanity lifts his head from his pillow; red-eyed, his hair matted with dried sweat, he fixes Felix with a bleary stare. “Hm?”
“You have a press conference in two hours,” Felix says. “About your decision to halt—”
Gaius kneads his temples, flops back onto his mattress, groans as though he’s hung over, and for all Felix knows he is. It wouldn’t be the first time or even close to it. The room reeks of cheap drink, cheap perfume, cheap kisses, stagnation. “Felix, I just woke up—”
Felix overrides him. “About your decision to halt the tylium refinery on the Daru Mozu—”
“We discussed this,” Gaius says, trying to talk over Felix, his voice creaking from its exertions last night, “we need the labor elsewhere and we can’t force so many of our people to sustain so few of theirs—”
“Theirs?” Felix asks.
Condescension comes as naturally to Gaius Baltar as breathing. “Admiral Adama and those loyal to him have made it quite clear that they want nothing to do with this administration, and at this point in time, I am more than happy to accommodate that wish. Those who chose orbit over settlement have likewise made it clear that they have no desire to contribute to our efforts, though they’ll be happy enough to extort us when they can. If they don’t want anything to do with me, if they don’t want to participate in the system they’re sworn to defend, if they don’t want anything to do with humanity, then they are not our people. I thought you of all people would understand that.”
“Don’t tell me,” Felix says—grits, if he’s being honest, which is rare enough these days. “Tell the press in two hours.”
“They’re parasites,” Gaius says, burying his forehead in his hands, rubbing his palms against his hairline. “They feed off our failures. They’ll lend us no assistance, but they’ll cheer our downfall.”
Did you think it would be different? Felix wants to ask, but he knows the answer: they all did, they all hoped for a clean start and a fresh beginning, they forgot they were refugees and started thinking of themselves as pioneers instead, direct descendants of the original colonists—which they are, but not the way they want to be. He sighs. It’s still better than fleeing through space, isn’t it?
But now he knows what Gaius really dreams about—or doesn’t dream about, on the nights when he can’t sleep and Felix discovers him hunched over in his chair the next morning, staring into the grounds of his coffee—and the words ring hollow in his head.
What he says is, “You might want to omit that part when you address them.”
Gaius tuts, rolls his eyes. “What else?”
“Galen Tyrol’s continuing to organize the planetside laborers into a union—”
“I think I’m beginning to despise unions.”
“They have some legitimate grievances.”
“And some utterly ludicrous complaints,” Gaius says.
“But that doesn’t undermine the validity of—”
“Can we please have this discussion later?” Gaius tugs on a bathrobe, belts it loosely around his waist—the cloth’s getting filthy, stained grey with sweat and streaked with grime—and stumbles towards the bathroom, cleaving close to the walls of the Colonial One.
Felix grinds his teeth together until they ache. “There’s a dispute between Gemenese and Sagittaron settlers over the site of a temple dedicated to—”
“Felix.” Gaius pivots, his torso sagging, his fist propped against the wall. “I need to get dressed.”
And shower, Felix thinks.
“I’ll attend to matters of state when I’m clothed, but not before.” He drags himself to the door and slams it shut behind him; the lock clicks, the water starts to trickle.
Felix drives his knuckles into his temples, for all the good it does him. His head still pounds, aches, hammers. It hurts when he uncurls his fist from its position around his clipboard, hurts when the rounded edges bite into his palm and leave lines imprinted in his skin. The itinerary he drew up for today rests on top: the President meets with the press at ten hundred, takes lunch with Pergia Envito at twelve hundred thirty (and from what he remembers of Pergia Envito, he might need to extend Gaius’s lunch break if certain activities make their meeting run over the time he’s allotted them), pays his respects at the new temple to Athena at seventeen hundred thirty, and reads over the Quorum’s latest proposals at nineteen hundred. No, he’d better give the proposals to Zarek first so Zarek can decide the administration’s official stance while Gaius—while Gaius stays wrapped in his rank sheets and drinks himself to sleep.
He wonders why he bothers printing these out, some days.
0935
Felix could do this by computer, but tallying the administration’s weekly expenses by hand is soothing, almost. Numbers are straightforward, constant. One plus one is two, two plus two is four, and that’s immutable, that doesn’t change, he can look at a row of numbers scrawled in smudged blue ink and predict the outcome.
(Unless he has to mask Gaius’s misappropriations of government funds, which he’s had to do with increasing frequencies these days, hiding the prescriptions and empty bottles and evening companions in a tangle of numbers. Gaius makes everything less straightforward.)
“The reporters are going to ask Baltar about the assault,” Zarek says.
Felix’s pen skips, skitters over the paper. “The what?”
“The assault,” Zarek repeats. “Earlier this morning, one young man attacked another young man with a steel pipe. The victim’s with Cottle now; I think his skull is fractured. I have men looking for the attacker, but we—”
“We can’t detain him, can we,” Felix says. “We don’t have the facilities.”
“Or a civilian law enforcement agency,” Zarek says.
The pen’s nib digs into the space between Felix’s forefinger and thumb. “We have the military.”
“The military,” Zarek says, “keeps us safe from external threats, not internal ones.”
Felix sighs. Ink runs down the cracks in his palm. “We don’t have anyone else.”
“And we need to remedy that. Immediately. This administration can’t rely on the military’s support—no administration should,” he adds, “a civil governing body can’t remain so when the military props it up, and we want a civil system. Run by fairly elected officials, not admirals.”
“The military has a place,” Felix says.
“The military doesn’t know its place,” Zarek counters. “And you’ve seen what happens when the military meddles with civil proceedings.”
Felix grits his teeth, does sums in his head. Three hundred sixty five cubits for food, one hundred ninety for repairs, that’s five hundred fifty five cubits so far and they’re going to need to implement a more efficient method of taxation soon if they’re going to keep spending at this rate, especially if Zarek’s proposal becomes reality…
“This might get the Quorum to finish revising the legal code,” Zarek says. “We’ll need a court system soon. This is no matter for a military tribunal.”
“Gaius could sign an executive order waiving the right to trial.” Felix gets up from his desk, pushes his chair in, paces the same stretch of floor for however long, he loses count of the steps and the time. “We can make it a matter for a military tribunal.”
“Is that what you believe, Mister Gaeta?”
The pen slips from his hand. The carpet absorbs the noise it makes when it falls to the ground.
“I’ll tell Gaius,” he says. “He won’t like it.”
“He doesn’t have to like it,” Zarek says. “He just has to make the best of it.”
1014
With a fresh shave and a clean shirt, Gaius almost looks presentable.
Then John Sowell presses forward with his microphone and asks, “Mister President, how will the administration handle the matter of Dorne Kyros’s assailant?” and the greasy shadows under Gaius’s eyes spread and darken. Felix remains military-still.
“We’ve dispatched Marines to apprehend the suspect,” Gaius says, his voice reduced to a croak. Felix notes that he says suspect instead of perpetrator. Innocent until proven guilty. “Once we’ve brought him in, we’ll proceed with the case as any civilian government would.”
“Mister President—” Sekou Hamilton this time; Felix briefly wonders when he took the time to learn all their names, or if the knowledge just seeped in after countless press conferences. “Mister President, if you’re determined to keep this a civilian matter, why call in the Marines?”
Felix watches sweat bead on Gaius’s neck, soak through his collar. “As of this time, we have no force more suited for the task.”
“As of this time?” John Sowell again. “Mister President, does that imply—”
“No further questions at this time,” Gaius says, almost too softly for the microphone to pick up.
“Mister President—”
“Mister President, do—”
“Mister President, if I—”
“Mister President—”
Felix can’t tell one voice from another. They clamor all at once, sounds overlapping, their shouts thickening the air in the room.
“No further questions at this time,” Gaius says again, and this time they hear him. He staggers back through the curtains, makes a beeline for his bedroom once the cloth flutters shut behind him.
“I don’t know what more they want from me,” he mutters, pressing the heel of his palm into his forehead.
“Commitment,” Felix says. “They want to know that you have a plan, and that you’re going to follow the course you’ve set out.”
“That I’ve set out.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I’m beginning to wonder if any of this was my doing after all.”
1234
Pergia Envito sweeps into Colonial One at twelve hundred twenty-six, spends five minutes outlining her proposal for a new irrigation system—Gaius, in turn, spends most of those five minutes running his eyes up and down the curves of her legs, which she’s kind enough to display for him—and pushes the necessary paperwork across his desk at twelve hundred thirty-one.
“The work crews will begin two days after we get your signature,” she says. Her nails click against the glass of Leonis Estates Sparkling Wine he’s thoughtfully poured for her. Felix’s jaw twitches at the sound. She turns her head and gives Felix a good whiff of her perfume in the process; it clouds his nose, gags him. “We want to see this problem dealt with quickly.”
“Then I’ll be expedient,” Gaius says. “Felix, would you look over the paperwork? Make sure everything’s in order.”
“Of course,” Felix says. It’s a formality, but this whole exchange is a formality, a prelude to Pergia tumbling into Gaius’s bed. He knows it, Gaius knows it, Pergia knows it, but they still have to follow the protocol, say and do what they’re expected to in order to give this an air of legitimacy.
“I assure you, everything’s in order,” Pergia says, pushing her lips into a pout.
“Doubtless,” he says, “doubtless it is, but I’d prefer to err on the side of caution nonetheless—we can retire somewhere private while that’s going on, if you’d like, and you can, ah, familiarize me with some of the more intricate details of your plan.”
Pergia smiles. “It would be my pleasure.”
Gaius closes the door to his bedroom at twelve hundred thirty-three. Felix picks up the bill, pages through it, circles a few deliberately vague phrases and dense sections of legalese, but does it matter? There might be a kickback for her in this somewhere, but the thought of wading through more of these words makes his head ache. And he’ll be lucky if Gaius so much as half-listens to his recommendations, especially if Pergia—
Thumps issue from behind the door, thumps and breathy moans and the sound of cloth tearing. Didn’t Gaius know about discretion, once?
He drops the papers, half-watches them flutter into his lap. It’s not his business, or rather it shouldn’t be any of his business, Gaius can frak all of humanity and frak over all of humanity for all he cares, drag everyone and everything down with him into that pungent cesspool his room’s becoming, Felix needs to get someone in there to clean. Is this how great men live? Is this what great men become?
Felix can hear their lips smacking. Frak, he’s listening for the sound, craning his neck towards the door to hear better.
The cloth sectioning off the president’s office rustles. “Come in,” Felix says.
Zarek, it would be Zarek. “Is he busy?” he asks.
“He’s always busy.”
“Is he really.” It’s not a question.
“I said busy, not productive.” Drinking, sleeping, frakking: they all count as ways Gaius occupies his time, Felix supposes. Gaius occupies time but doesn’t use it, takes up space but doesn’t impose his presence, doesn’t assert himself, hasn’t since they swore him in.
Zarek’s smile oozes satisfaction. “You’re getting good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“Making words mean what you want them to. It’s a skill every politician needs to cultivate.”
“What do you want?” Felix snaps. He unclenches his hands, lets each finger peel free of his fists. “What do you want?” he repeats, and keeps his tone measured this time.
“The Marines apprehended Timothy Aurelian twenty minutes ago.”
“Timothy Aurelian.” Felix massages a knot forming between his eyebrows. “The assailant?”
“The presumed assailant,” Zarek says. “He hasn’t confessed.” There’s an unspoken yet hanging at the end of that sentence.
Pergia moans: low, wanton, rough. Zarek glances at the door. “Now’s not the best time, I take it.”
It’s never the best time, Felix thinks.
1447
Dorne Kyros’s head is swathed in pink-tinged bandages; his left eye purples and swells shut. Congealed blood coats his eyelashes, the corners of his lips, the side of his mangled nose, and a nasty red weal cuts across his cheek.
“It could have been worse,” Cottle says appraisingly, smoke curling from the lit end of his cigarette. Felix wonders what he’ll do, what the other addicts might do, when they finally run out of cigarettes. Or have they already switched over to some algae synthetic? Can you fake addiction, substitute one poison for another?
“How bad is it?” Felix asks.
“Bruised ribs, broken collarbone and jaw, hairline fracture across the back of his skull, and one hell of a concussion,” Cottle says. “And his nose looks like it’s been run through the algae processor. But he’ll pull through.”
Monitors drone on in the background, a steady series of blips and beeps. “Well, we caught the man who did it,” Felix says.
“And then what?”
“We’ll work something out.” He forces himself to look at Dorne Kyros’s face, at the battered bloody mass standing where his nose used to be. “Our criminal justice system is rudimentary at best. We—I don’t think any of us anticipated this.”
Cottle grunts.
“We thought we were safe,” Felix says. “But we weren’t. We aren’t.”
1601
More accounts, more expenses, more finances. Felix thinks back to Zarek’s speech—was it really over a year ago?—about the worthlessness of currency, how there’s nothing to prop the cubit up anymore, how all the banks and stock exchanges are irradiated rubble, how money only means anything because people give it value, believe in its power. The cubit’s value is determined by faith. But isn’t that the way everything is, these days?
“The Marines are holding Aurelian in a tent outside the Daru Mozu,” Zarek says.
Felix shuffles his paperwork to the side. “And after that?”
“After that,” Zarek says, “we’ll need to find a more permanent detention facility. Find one or construct one.”
“We could use the Astral Queen.”
Zarek’s eyes narrow. Good. “No.”
“Regardless of your personal reservations,” Felix says, makes the last two words stand out, “the facilities—”
Zarek’s fingers dig into the desk inches from Felix’s palms, dent and crumple the stacks of paper he’s spent all morning organizing. “The Astral Queen,” Zarek says softly, “is a symbol of the colonial injustice we now find ourselves in a position to correct. Putting Aurelian on that ship announces our intent to maintain the status quo, to return to the old systems, to squander the opportunities the people have given us. Actions, Mister Gaeta, mean more than mere physical fact. What we do has meaning beyond that, has significance and repercussions and weight. That’s how you need to think.”
Felix pulls his hands back, hides them in his lap. They shake. “And have things changed?”
“Circumstances,” Zarek asks, “or people?”
Felix doesn’t answer.
1725
Felix ends up going to see Timothy Aurelian, of course. Gaius could, Gaius should, but he’s elected to spend the rest of the day frakking Pergia Envito, and what does that gesture say?
Dark circles ring Timothy Aurelian’s eyes, paler reflections of the marks he’s left on Dorne Kyros’s face. He’s gaunt, hollow-cheeked and thin-lipped, but who isn’t these days?
The first thing Felix asks is, “Why?”
“I want a lawyer,” Aurelian says. “I know my rights.”
“We haven’t decided what your rights are yet,” Felix says. There’s steel in his voice, in his posture, and it’s almost familiar, almost welcome. So many almosts.
“Figures.” Aurelian slumps as much as his shackles will let him. “Who’re you?”
“Felix Gaeta. Chief of Staff for the President of Humanity.”
Aurelian’s eyebrows contract, form a question: don’t I know you from somewhere else? Felix doesn’t answer it. His professional history has no bearing on this interview, none whatsoever. The Marines stand at attention, ramrod-straight, the glare from the interrogation lights spilling across their boots.
“Now tell me who you are,” Felix says.
“Timothy Aurelian,” he mumbles. “Used to be a waiter. Don’t have a job now.” He pauses. “If you don’t have a court or anything,” he says, “then what I’m going to say don’t count as a confession, right?”
“That’s something the Quorum has to work out,” Felix says. “But I don’t think it does.”
Aurelian stares at his scuffed shoes. “He frakked my sister. Frakked her and turned around and married another woman. Your new court system gonna handle that kind of thing?”
“No,” Felix says. “It can’t.”
Aurelian laughs, bitter and harsh. “Figures.”
The tent’s canvas, so Felix can’t exactly punch the wall; even if he could, he’s not sure how much good it would do him. He’d probably shatter his knuckles or sprain his wrist, and cleaning up after Gaius would get a lot harder if he couldn’t use one of his hands. “So you assaulted him.”
“If that’s what you’re calling it.” Aurelian shrugs, scrunches up his protruding shoulders and lowers them. “You gonna throw me in the brig or something?”
“We don’t plan to implement military justice,” Felix says, chants it like a mantra.
“Then what are you gonna do?”
“Something,” Felix says. “We’ll do something. We’ll do what we have to.”
Aurelian’s eyes burn into his back when he walks out of the tent, the flap fluttering behind him in the weak breeze.
1859
Zarek, again. It always goes back to Zarek.
“He confessed,” Felix says. “His confession probably won’t be admissible in a court of law, if and when we have a functioning court of law, but he confessed.”
“Good.” Zarek laces his fingers together, rests them on the desk, leans forward. “We might not need a full trial, then—just a hearing. That’ll give us enough time to hammer out the relevant sections of the legal code in time before this happens again.”
Before this happens again. Felix hears the implication, doesn’t acknowledge it. “Why are you so invested in this—no,” he says, “I know why you’re invested in this. How much more power do you want to take away from the Admiral?”
Zarek pauses, considers, smiles. “The greatest threats to any government, fledgling or well-established, aren’t external,” he says. “They’re internal. No military has ever understood that, not until too late.”
Felix fights not to push himself from the desk, from Zarek, from the portrait of Gaius Baltar hanging on the wall behind him. “It’s not too late.”
“I certainly hope not,” Zarek says.
2116
When Felix tries the door to Gaius’s room, the knob twists in his hand. Unlocked, so Pergia must have left by now. Gaius reclines on his back, his arm flung over his eyes, his shirt torn open because what does it matter to him if he ruins his clothes, he can always get new ones or get Felix to grab new ones for him, and it’s increasingly the latter these days. He steps into the room, treads lightly enough that he won’t wake Gaius up, if Gaius is in fact asleep. Gaius doesn’t stir, doesn’t twitch, doesn’t even snore.
Frak this. “Gaius,” he says, somewhere between a whisper and actual speech.
Gaius lifts his head from the rumpled lump serving as his pillow, blinks three times, groans. “How late is it?”
“Fifteen minutes past twenty-one hundred,” Felix says. “At least.”
“Is it really?” Gaius pulls himself up until he’s sitting—half slumped over, his head lolling forward, but sitting. “Felix, I—”
“Don’t,” Felix says, before Gaius says whatever it is he’s going to say, “just—don’t.”
“Felix.”
“I hope your day was productive,” he says, tries to keep his voice from shaking and fails when it cracks, halts. Pergia’s lipstick stains Gaius’s collar.
“Felix,” Gaius repeats, swings himself out of bed and steps closer; Felix half-steps half-shuffles back until the wall stops him from moving any further. “You don’t look well.”
You noticed? he wants to say, but he can’t decide on the tone he should use. Several versions of the phrase ring in his head, compete and struggle until the moment passes and he ends up shaking his head, mute.
Gaius’s fingertips hover above Felix’s cheek—his touch, when he finally applies it, isn’t as gentle as he probably thinks it is, his fingers skid down Felix’s face like his skin’s made of glass.
“I should sleep,” Felix says, when his throat’s damp enough to work again. “I’ve been fighting crime all day.”
Gaius glances sidelong at the bed, doesn’t even try to mask it, and Felix isn’t sure how much he should hate himself when he hears his heart stutter. “I think I can find room for you.”
Felix closes his eyes, and Gaius—kisses him, rough hot lips and wanton tongue and the scrape of his stubble against Felix’s jaw. He threads his fingers in Gaius’s hair, feels the oil from it working its way into his skin, and tries not to compare this to any of the thousand fantasies he’s constructed since he was—frak, since he was fifteen and saw a taped interview with the man, the Gaius he imagined then was erudite and polished and yes, sensual, that much came across even with the footage as grainy as it was, but Gaius’s mouth didn’t taste like alcohol in his dreams and he didn’t stink of women's perfume.
Still, Felix has to admit when Gaius catches his lower lip between his teeth and licks it, sucks on it, the man is a godsdamned good kisser.
Gaius breaks the kiss to nip Felix’s earlobe. “Bed?” he suggests; the heat in his breath matches the heat surging through Felix, from his chest to his cock.
“Bed,” Felix agrees, because what else can he say? Gaius’s fingers close around his wrist, and he tries to pretend this is what he wants, this is what he’s always wanted. He’s getting good at it.