Little White Lies (Little Black Dress Challenge)
Title: Little White Lies
Author:kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gaeta, Caprica Six, Gaius, and…you’ll see
Summary: Felix has a very good night and a very confusing morning. A bit cracky.
Pairings: Gaeta/Baltar, Caprica/Baltar, and Gaeta/you’ll see ;)
Notes: I finally found a way to contribute to the “Little Black Dress” challenge, despite my mundane taste in pairings. ;)
Little White Lies
“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Felix stared at the ceiling above Gaius’s bed as he tried to catch his breath. It was a view he knew well, but one he hadn’t seen for quite a long time-since the Cylons arrived, in fact. The thought that he should feel disgusted and angry at himself for doing this again flitted through his mind, but luckily, the afterglow was still so intense that he really wasn’t yet capable of coherent thought.
Felix turned his head when he heard Gaius’s throaty, satisfied chuckle. He was surprised to see that Gaius was already nearly dressed, his pants and button-down shirt miraculously unwrinkled, even though they’d left them in a heap on the floor.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to try that,” Gaius purred, eyeing Felix over his shoulder as he stood up from the bed. “Now I see what I see in you.”
Felix wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be flattered or offended by that remark, so he just settled for confused. He almost asked if Gaius was feeling all right, but after that performance, it would be a rather silly question. Gaius had been more like himself than he’d been since Founder’s Day. No, Felix realized, if he was really honest, Felix had never seen Gaius this much like himself. From the self-assured, elegant seduction to the mind-blowing sex last night (not to mention this morning, gods) to the saturnine, roguish smirk playing on his lips now as he stood over the bed, he was more like Felix had fantasized Gaius would be like in those early days when he knew more about Gaius from what he’d seen in interviews and magazines than from contact with him in real life.
“We absolutely must do this again sometime, Mr. Gaeta,” Gaius said, jauntily throwing his suit jacket over his shoulder.
Felix swallowed hard. “Uh, Gaius,” he stuttered, “you know we probably shouldn’t have even done it this time.”
Gaius turned and raised an eyebrow. “Why? I didn’t live up to your standards?” he said in a playful tone that conveyed just how certain he was that he had.
“No! I-it’s just-Caprica Six…” Felix whispered the last two words.
Gaius laughed. “Caprica Six? You think I’m afraid of what she thinks? Oh, that is rich, Felix. Honestly, you’re worse than I am.” Gaius’s playful smirk twisted into an evil grin. “It would be no small entertainment to see what she thought of it, though, wouldn’t it? Thank you, Felix, for such an excellent idea.”
“Wait, no!” Felix flew out of bed and frantically pulled his clothes on as Gaius sauntered out the door. Not only, despite what Gaius thought in this odd (though admittedly, very sexy) mood, was that a spectacularly bad idea, but Felix was also already feeling guilty about his role in Gaius’s infidelity. Even though he didn’t like Caprica Six, he still remembered what it felt like to be cheated on all too well.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that his pants had somehow ended up tangled in the overhead light fixture, Felix might have caught up with Gaius before he found Caprica Six.
*~*~*
“Oh, Caprica, darling.” Caprica Six’s head snapped up from her paperwork. She instantly knew from the clean shave and smug demeanor that this was not the corporeal Gaius. Frak. “Don’t frown like that; you’ll get horrid little wrinkles in your brow. Though I suppose you can have someone bean you in the head with a two-by-four whenever you like and get a new pretty little head to worry, can’t you?”
Caprica sighed. She hadn’t seen this Gaius since she’d found the real Gaius again on New Caprica. She’d thought she was rid of this one. No such luck, apparently.
This Gaius evidently picked up on her frustration. “What, enslaving the human race under the guise of benevolent missionary work isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?” he smirked.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, right when a rather disheveled Mr. Gaeta stumbled into the room. He gave her a look, but much to her surprise, instead of incredulously asking why Caprica was questioning him being at work, he blushed and slid into his desk on the far side of the room, only venturing an occasional glance at her.
“What was I doing here? Oh, just frakking Mr. Gaeta through the mattress,” her Gaius murmured as flippantly as if he were talking about having a particularly good cup of coffee at breakfast this morning. Caprica rolled her eyes. “You don’t believe me. It was quite enjoyable. He makes the most delectably lewd little noises when…oh, but if I told you, that would be spoiling the surprise.”
Caprica scoffed quietly. “Me and Gaeta. That’ll be a cold day in hell.”
“Well, it is rather chilly out, and not to disparage your city-planning abilities, but…” Caprica scowled, and Gaius simpered. “Oh, come now. After a long, hard day of subjugating the human masses, you deserve a nice frak like him. Release some of that ugly tension. Especially since I hear my corporeal counterpart hasn’t been…performing up to par recently.”
The thought of the figmentary Gaius watching her with the real Gaius sent a very unpleasant chill up Caprica’s spine. “That’s none of your business,” she whispered.
The imaginary Gaius sat on the corner of Caprica’s desk and leaned in close to her ear. “I do believe that Mr. Gaeta is simply wracked with guilt over our little romp, thinking he participated in making me even more unfaithful. But all the liaisons Gaius has had, you’ve never given a whit for those.”
“Of course not,” Caprica answered. “Gaius thought I was dead, or at least gone from him forever. He moved on. And anyway, I always understood the way Gaius was about other women.”
“Because for all the lays he had, you were his only lover.”
Caprica silently looked at Gaeta across the room, hunched over his paperwork. Gaius followed her gaze. “He believed he had a lover, poor fool. Little did he know that all Gaius had in him was a very convenient, amenable spaniel who could blow him and draft legislation.”
“That’s unkind,” Caprica said through clenched teeth.
“We’re being kind to Mr. Gaeta? He did just sleep with your beloved, or at least he thinks he did. Not to mention, sugarcoating the truth with kindness has never been my modus operandi, darling, and you know it.” Gaius hopped off the desk and slid around behind Caprica, resting his hands on her shoulders and pressing his cheek to hers. “Of course, you’ve never been worried that Gaius loved Felix more than he does you. No,” he whispered the last part painfully slowly, “What you’re afraid of is that you mean exactly as much to him as Felix did.”
Caprica stared at Gaeta until Gaius came around and blocked him from her view. “But don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Gaius said loudly, then leaned over to kiss Caprica. Caprica knew Gaeta might be watching, so she did her best to kiss back without looking like she was kissing at all.
Gaius broke the kiss, winked, and strutted toward the door.
“Uh, Mr. President,” Gaeta said as Gaius passed his desk. “There’s a meeting at 1030 that you should really go to.”
Caprica’s eyes nearly bugged out of her skull.
The Gaius that Caprica had been sure was just a figment of her imagination passed Gaeta without any acknowledgment, but before he got to the doorway, he paused. He turned on his heel, took three swift steps toward Gaeta’s desk, and pulled the unsuspecting presidential aide up by his coat lapels and into a crushing kiss. He released him and turned to both Caprica and Gaeta.
“Ta,” Gaius called airily as he waved at them, then walked out of the room.
Both Caprica and Gaeta stared at each other in wide-eyed shock for a few moments.
“I…I don’t know what’s gotten into him today,” Gaeta said, still struggling to catch his breath. He shook his head and looked back at the door, then at Caprica, then at the door again several times before he collected himself. “What did he say to you?” he asked, cautiously approaching her desk.
“Just that he frakked you through the mattress,” she answered distractedly, her gaze still fixed on the spot where Gaius had been. When she turned to look at Gaeta, she saw that all the color had drained from his face. “He did actually kiss you on the way out, though, right? You felt it?”
“Gods,” Gaeta said, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I have no idea what the frak was up with that last part, but… Look, I know you know that Gaius and I…had…something, but it’s not happening again. Last night, I wanted to forget all the reasons why it wouldn’t work now, and he let me. But those reasons are all still there, so…it was a mistake, I recognize it, and it won’t be repeated.”
“What?” Caprica said, finally tuning in to Gaeta’s blathering at the end. “Oh. Whatever. Why should I care if you slept with him?”
Gaeta’s face was a strange mix of relieved and insulted. “Oh. Well, I knew Cylon attitudes about sex were different, but…Gaius and I, we were together for quite some time. You know what ‘together’ means, right…?”
“Ugh!” said a voice on the far side of the room as the curtain on the door swished open. A rumpled, greasy-haired Gaius with bloodshot eyes shuffled into the room. Gaeta’s jaw dropped, but Gaius shushed him before he could form a sentence. “Mr. Gaeta, I’m sure I don’t want to hear about it. I have a terrible hangover.” Gaius shambled past Gaeta and Caprica, then went into his bed chamber and slammed the door shut behind him.
Gaeta’s eyes were round as saucers. “Oh my gods, he’s a Cylon.”
Caprica sighed. That frakking figment-it was on his prodding that she saved Boomer and bought into the plan of living with the humans, after all; why did he always have to cause her so much trouble? “No, Gaeta, he’s not a Cylon.”
“How else do you explain him growing a five o’clock shadow in five minutes?”
Caprica got up from her desk and stood toe-to-toe with Gaeta, towering over him a little. “I will act as if what happened between you and Gaius last night and this morning never occurred if you do two things for me. One, you believe me when I tell you he’s not a Cylon, and two, you never mention any of this to me or to Gaius again. Ever. Do we have a deal?”
Gaeta still looked completely baffled, but he murmured, “Okay.”
“Look at it this way: you got to have a happy, albeit strange, ending with Gaius. I have a feeling that’s more than anyone else has ever gotten with him.”
“Yeah,” Gaeta said, looking at the door to the bed chamber, a wistful little smile tugging at his lips. Caprica prayed to God it was nostalgia and not a rekindling of hope, for both of their sakes.
Gaeta snapped back to reality. “Do you have the water ration reports done?”
“I’m finishing them up right now,” answered Caprica, both of their cool, professional demeanors falling back into place.
“Let me look it over when you’re done, please,” Gaeta said, retreating to his desk.
Caprica barely suppressed the urge to jump when the Gaius in her mind leaned in over her shoulder. “I’m surprised,” he whispered. “Sugarcoating the truth with kindness has never been your modus operandi, either.”
“Everyone needs to lie to themselves sometimes, just to stay sane,” said Caprica. “I merely helped him to do so, and certainly no more than you did.”
“Lying to one’s own self to retain one’s sanity,” this Gaius repeated. “Ah, when it comes to that skill, both of you learned from the best, didn’t you?”