DRABBLE
my debut into the world of (kinda-sorta) writing fic for BSG! \o/
Summer
One-shot
Gaius/Caprica
PG
Summary: On the night of the summer solstice, without warning, he takes her to the pale shores of Caprica’s beaches.
Warnings: Gaius is...vaguely a jerk? also, I wrote most of this at work, in under an hour. unbeta'd pretension ahoy.
it was only you and i
On the night of the summer solstice, without warning, he takes her to the pale shores of Caprica’s beaches.
Slowly, slowly, she’s adjusting to this, learning about this, the strange human proclivity for spontaneity. It’s hard to understand, sometimes-a challenge, she imagines, because he lives in a world of one, where she lives in a multiplicity; a constant, if distant awareness of her sisters. A shared dream, of sorts; a collective memory that teaches her and tempers her (and so she is immortal, eternal, and her passions are not her own-and with this thought, she realizes, she must seem so serene alongside him, this man for whom each moment, each want, each breathless laugh is instantaneous and finite and frenetic).
The vast gulf between their experiences being such, perhaps it comes as no surprise that his unannounced arrival catches her off-guard, finds her stammering in her doorway:
Gaius. Gaius, I-what are you doing here?
Because he’s never done this before. Because she thought she understood-he likes to charm her, to woo her, to show her off, but never to surprise her. Not like this. Neuroses, darling, he told her once. I can’t deal with the indistinct boundaries of a relationship full of surprises. I hope you understand.
But here he is and here she stands, still trying to grasp the logic (or illogic) behind this, and now her mouth is full of his kiss and his hands are on her waist and he’s saying something (something stupid, she realizes later, the conjured nonsense that humans pour into their films and their books and their oral traditions celebrating the magic of love-and still, it makes her smile):
Run away with me.
She laughs, and he says it again, and without question she lets him lead her out, out, and away, chasing the long reaches of the sunset in the rush of his car.
.
The resort, she understands, is expensive (another thing she’s learning: the value of expense, especially to him). The main lobby, opulent; their bungalow, pristine. He all but vibrates with excitement, taking her hand as she steps over the threshold-and she wants to ask why. Wants to understand the origin of this, of his sudden bent towards recklessness (and why he wants to run away), but he kisses her again and she forgets all her questions.
You like it? he asks and she says yes, yes, of course, and feels warm all over when he smiles.
Out through the bungalow’s back wall (all full-length windows and sliding glass doors) she can see the ocean lapping in a constant pull against the beach, the sand a long and glittering bar. Bright, now, even in the fall of twilight, catching and refracting the dazzle of a waxing Gemenon.
He has dinner brought to them on that beach, out on the patio where the salty breeze tastes tangy in the back of her throat, and when they’re through, he pulls her up and close to him, swaying them both to the rhythm of the tide. Humming some tune to himself that she doesn’t recognize, that sounds out of key anyway.
Dizzy in the cool air, dizzy from their bubbly drinks (the ones he’d poured for her, so ceremoniously, as though this were a gesture that she ought to recognize and understand), she tucks her face against his neck. Breathes in deep to keep from laughing the laugh that she can feel building up inside her. A shudder of excess energy, mirthless and shivering.
He asks her what is it and she tells him nothing because she can’t find a way to say anything else, doesn’t know how to explain-and, suddenly, is afraid to try. A vision of everything upended and undone; the recognition that the wrong words could put an end to this (this thing that she didn’t realize, until this very moment, she was so afraid of losing). Nothing, she says again, and presses her mouth to his pulse.
When he laughs, low and self-satisfied (a particular and carnal sound) it vibrates through and through her.
.
She wakes before him to the pastel bleed of dawn, out along the sea’s horizon. The bedsheets are cool against her back, tangled and bunched up around her waist. She blinks, muzzy, into the slow-lightening world, and shifts to look at him, the bedding rustling as she moves.
Head pillowed on one arm, he is a soundless sleeper, breathing quietly behind the dark and messy fall of his hair. The sunrise bathes the line of his shoulders in whitegold, casts the ridges of his spine into high relief.
Moved by an impulse that she cannot name, she reaches out and touches him; traces the arc of his shoulder blade, feels the rise and fall of his breaths, constant, like the tide.
There is a scar at the nape of his neck, half hidden by his hair, and she traces that too, as though mapping her memorization of him through touch. She doesn’t know what it’s from, this striated and seamed-up bit of skin, and she’s never asked him (she learned, quickly, that he doesn’t like questions like that, questions about his body and what happened to it-a sensitivity that extends beyond that strange human idea of male pride). She thumbs it again, though, this time with careful intent.
Scars and blemishes, shattered bone and shredded ligaments-they’re all incidental aspects of livelihood to her, she realizes. She’s lived through three bodies, each flawless and unmarked upon waking. Her shared memory is the only evidence of injuries once sustained, of hurts once suffered.
But for him-
She draws her fingers over the fall of his ribs.
For him, every mark is a testament to his living. His breathing. His falling and his standing. No one else in the universe matches him.
Something wells in her chest, enormous and bright, and suddenly she finds it hard to breathe. She flattens her palm in the space between his shoulder blades and, this time, the touch rouses him. He shifts, sucking in a breath, and squints at her, as though confused.
She breathes his name when he rolls onto his back, sits up, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.
You’re crying, he says after a long moment. She isn’t, really, although her eyes are hot and stinging (and she thinks it strange that nothing inspires this unnamable sense of overflowing quite like he does). He leans over her and takes her chin in hand, kissing her and kissing her. Come now, darling, he murmurs. It’s a beautiful morning. Let’s enjoy it.
She laughs, a wet sound, and wonders how she’ll explain this to her sisters, once this body expires and these memories disseminate. She wonders if she’ll ever have the words to describe what is so profoundly precious about this instant, why it matters, even in the face of destiny.
She kisses him this time, and pulls him down on top of her, this flawed and inconsistent man, singular amidst all humanity-and in this moment, alone with her, and the sunrise, and the incessant rush of the tide.
Summer
One-shot
Gaius/Caprica
PG
Summary: On the night of the summer solstice, without warning, he takes her to the pale shores of Caprica’s beaches.
Warnings: Gaius is...vaguely a jerk? also, I wrote most of this at work, in under an hour. unbeta'd pretension ahoy.
it was only you and i
On the night of the summer solstice, without warning, he takes her to the pale shores of Caprica’s beaches.
Slowly, slowly, she’s adjusting to this, learning about this, the strange human proclivity for spontaneity. It’s hard to understand, sometimes-a challenge, she imagines, because he lives in a world of one, where she lives in a multiplicity; a constant, if distant awareness of her sisters. A shared dream, of sorts; a collective memory that teaches her and tempers her (and so she is immortal, eternal, and her passions are not her own-and with this thought, she realizes, she must seem so serene alongside him, this man for whom each moment, each want, each breathless laugh is instantaneous and finite and frenetic).
The vast gulf between their experiences being such, perhaps it comes as no surprise that his unannounced arrival catches her off-guard, finds her stammering in her doorway:
Gaius. Gaius, I-what are you doing here?
Because he’s never done this before. Because she thought she understood-he likes to charm her, to woo her, to show her off, but never to surprise her. Not like this. Neuroses, darling, he told her once. I can’t deal with the indistinct boundaries of a relationship full of surprises. I hope you understand.
But here he is and here she stands, still trying to grasp the logic (or illogic) behind this, and now her mouth is full of his kiss and his hands are on her waist and he’s saying something (something stupid, she realizes later, the conjured nonsense that humans pour into their films and their books and their oral traditions celebrating the magic of love-and still, it makes her smile):
Run away with me.
She laughs, and he says it again, and without question she lets him lead her out, out, and away, chasing the long reaches of the sunset in the rush of his car.
.
The resort, she understands, is expensive (another thing she’s learning: the value of expense, especially to him). The main lobby, opulent; their bungalow, pristine. He all but vibrates with excitement, taking her hand as she steps over the threshold-and she wants to ask why. Wants to understand the origin of this, of his sudden bent towards recklessness (and why he wants to run away), but he kisses her again and she forgets all her questions.
You like it? he asks and she says yes, yes, of course, and feels warm all over when he smiles.
Out through the bungalow’s back wall (all full-length windows and sliding glass doors) she can see the ocean lapping in a constant pull against the beach, the sand a long and glittering bar. Bright, now, even in the fall of twilight, catching and refracting the dazzle of a waxing Gemenon.
He has dinner brought to them on that beach, out on the patio where the salty breeze tastes tangy in the back of her throat, and when they’re through, he pulls her up and close to him, swaying them both to the rhythm of the tide. Humming some tune to himself that she doesn’t recognize, that sounds out of key anyway.
Dizzy in the cool air, dizzy from their bubbly drinks (the ones he’d poured for her, so ceremoniously, as though this were a gesture that she ought to recognize and understand), she tucks her face against his neck. Breathes in deep to keep from laughing the laugh that she can feel building up inside her. A shudder of excess energy, mirthless and shivering.
He asks her what is it and she tells him nothing because she can’t find a way to say anything else, doesn’t know how to explain-and, suddenly, is afraid to try. A vision of everything upended and undone; the recognition that the wrong words could put an end to this (this thing that she didn’t realize, until this very moment, she was so afraid of losing). Nothing, she says again, and presses her mouth to his pulse.
When he laughs, low and self-satisfied (a particular and carnal sound) it vibrates through and through her.
.
She wakes before him to the pastel bleed of dawn, out along the sea’s horizon. The bedsheets are cool against her back, tangled and bunched up around her waist. She blinks, muzzy, into the slow-lightening world, and shifts to look at him, the bedding rustling as she moves.
Head pillowed on one arm, he is a soundless sleeper, breathing quietly behind the dark and messy fall of his hair. The sunrise bathes the line of his shoulders in whitegold, casts the ridges of his spine into high relief.
Moved by an impulse that she cannot name, she reaches out and touches him; traces the arc of his shoulder blade, feels the rise and fall of his breaths, constant, like the tide.
There is a scar at the nape of his neck, half hidden by his hair, and she traces that too, as though mapping her memorization of him through touch. She doesn’t know what it’s from, this striated and seamed-up bit of skin, and she’s never asked him (she learned, quickly, that he doesn’t like questions like that, questions about his body and what happened to it-a sensitivity that extends beyond that strange human idea of male pride). She thumbs it again, though, this time with careful intent.
Scars and blemishes, shattered bone and shredded ligaments-they’re all incidental aspects of livelihood to her, she realizes. She’s lived through three bodies, each flawless and unmarked upon waking. Her shared memory is the only evidence of injuries once sustained, of hurts once suffered.
But for him-
She draws her fingers over the fall of his ribs.
For him, every mark is a testament to his living. His breathing. His falling and his standing. No one else in the universe matches him.
Something wells in her chest, enormous and bright, and suddenly she finds it hard to breathe. She flattens her palm in the space between his shoulder blades and, this time, the touch rouses him. He shifts, sucking in a breath, and squints at her, as though confused.
She breathes his name when he rolls onto his back, sits up, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.
You’re crying, he says after a long moment. She isn’t, really, although her eyes are hot and stinging (and she thinks it strange that nothing inspires this unnamable sense of overflowing quite like he does). He leans over her and takes her chin in hand, kissing her and kissing her. Come now, darling, he murmurs. It’s a beautiful morning. Let’s enjoy it.
She laughs, a wet sound, and wonders how she’ll explain this to her sisters, once this body expires and these memories disseminate. She wonders if she’ll ever have the words to describe what is so profoundly precious about this instant, why it matters, even in the face of destiny.
She kisses him this time, and pulls him down on top of her, this flawed and inconsistent man, singular amidst all humanity-and in this moment, alone with her, and the sunrise, and the incessant rush of the tide.