a day in the life. sort of.

[to_be_caprican]

Who: Gaius Baltar et Toi
Where: Around and about, but specifically: the labs (closedish), the library, cafeteria (late at night), and then wherever your heart desires.
When: Probably spread out over more than just a day. Hazy vagueness go.
Warnings: Will update but probably nada

Comments

late, late night at the cafeteria. open!

[to_be_caprican]

With his communicator-- roughly-- in working order, Gaius is typing in a message, that generally frazzled look he sometimes has evident in his own sleeplessness, like someone who just arose from a bad dream.

"I'm aware of that," he's murmuring, putting the device away again. "But don't mind me if I just need a break, now and then, from your constant frakking--"

Hrk.

His head snaps back as if pulled by something invisible, casually distributing him off his seat which goes skittering out from beneath him, and he lands with an almighty crash on the cafeteria floor. There's a shocked and rather annoyed sound of injured pride over body, letting out a shaky breath as he starts, slowly, to get all his limbs in order to get back up.

Oh good. Sarah looks like shit, too. Hi Gaius.

[terminatefate]

"Jesus fucking Christ, Gaius." She'd been mid-carrying her coffee around the corner when she'd caught sight of him go down. That meant she'd dropped her coffee in some bizarre hope of...intervening.

Which, yeah, didn't happen.

She did, however offer him a hand up. One hand. Because the other was red and stinging from the coffee she'd managed to dump. There was always more coffee.

[to_be_caprican]

He goes very still at that familiar voice, foregoing attempts to get up to instead twist enough to see. Ah, wonderful. He glances at her hand before he grips it, his palm cool and damp to touch, getting to his feet with the help of both Sarah and the table edge. A pause, before Gaius sets the chair to rights as well.

New bruises twinge musically, pulling a grimace at his mouth.

"Evening."

[terminatefate]

"What the hell is going on, Gaius?"

Because crashing to the floor wasn't her idea of awesome and falling off chairs wasn't normal. Nor was the fact that he looked like shit--which was pretty much the pot calling the fucking kettle black. Her eyes searched his face before she gently made sure he wasn't bleeding. Because her inmate bleeding was not on her list of shit to deal with this late.

Her expression said she wasn't going to drop the issue they'd both been avoiding. If he was getting hurt? Hell no.

[to_be_caprican]

Breaking a chocolate bar in my backpocket, what're you up to?

But glib responses, maybe even lies, stall out before he can actually summon them, mostly at the steel in her expression, the phrasing of her question. He studies her in turn, her own sleeplessness, the way her age only begins to show when something is going wrong, when she's waking in a panic. The situation abruptly strikes Gaius as absurd and a choked giggle occurs, one that only cracks a brief smile on his face, one he struggles back.

A hand flapping up to excuse himself. Not funny. None of this is. "Sorry, I'm tired." There's a tremor in his fingers, and he turns his focus on making sure his communicator is still pocketed. "I don't know." A beat, and he clarifies, "What the hell is going on."

[terminatefate]

He's damn right. It was absurd. More so in that it might be less so if he'd talk to her. Sarah leaned into the bar, her eyes fixed on his, back to drilling holes like she was mining his brain for information, which she couldn't do. She wanted to just scoop it all out of him so he'd stop being a dumbass.

"Goddfuckingdammit," she snapped. "I'm...you're--" Sarah scowled up at him fiercely. "I can't help you if you sit there and fucking lie to me. I can't do jack if you won't let know what the shit is going on." She crossed her arms, helplessness and frustration radiating from her.

"I'm tired of dancing around you like a fucking mother hen, trying to give you space, trying not to push you too hard. Your dreams aren't just dreams, are they?" Because it was the one thing he'd talked to her about, the only thing that made sense when she stuck all the other odd shit together into some sort of fucked up behavioral puzzle.

[to_be_caprican]

His head starts to shake, like he doesn't know what she means, but the movement is aborted as soon as it begins, eyes gone open and innocent which is, at least, better than hooded defense. His attention ducks to his hand on the back of the chair. "They were--" Gaius clears his throat, when that comes out weaker than he wants it to. "They were dreams. Or maybe they were just--

"I'm not lying," he says, then, sudden conviction and insistence. "I'm not lying when I say I don't know what the hell is going on. I don't. If you saw someone walking around and talking to you and no one else could, what would you think?"

He stops there, going still as if expecting some form of repercussion. From Sarah, or a godly bolt of lightning, or the same thing that dragged him to the ground. These last two don't occur, and his shoulders relax a fraction.

[terminatefate]

"I'd think I needed fucking help figuring it out," Sarah said flatly and leaned in closer, upset but not at him. "Not coming to me? Not fucking telling me this shit was getting more intense?"

She cupped his face in her hands to make sure he saw her, fuck personal space. Part of her wanted to rattle sense back into his head, but all she could do was stare at him, distraught.

"I'm your Warden," she said in a softly graveled voice. "If you can't come to me about this, then what the fuck use am I? Do you want another Warden?"

[to_be_caprican]

The contact, the handling is endured up to that final question; then Gaius twists himself out of her grasp and backs up, depositing himself into the seat he just righted more or less by accident, but remaining there upon landing. His fingers drum against the table, and he has that trying hard not to cry lest my mascara run look about him, all tension.

"That's rather it, isn't it. I don't want another Warden. But how are you meant to--"

He cuts himself off. Gaius is king of mean, backhanded comments, and somewhat aware of it enough that he knows to tread careful so as not to default to it.

[terminatefate]

"I'm a fucked up mess," she said quietly. "You're a fucked up mess. So. Somewhere between one mess and the other, we need to make this work."

She scrubbed at her face and leaned into the table heavily.

"I just--" her hands curled against the edge of the table, hard enough that her knuckles turned white. "You think I'm going to sit and judge you? After the shit I've been through? After Pescadero? You know what went down. And if you say shit is going on, then shit's going on. I am the fucking last person to chalk you up as being crazy."

Sarah closed her eyes for a moment.

"For the record, I don't want another fucking inmate."

[to_be_caprican]

"Really?"

This is asked both dryly and thickly, self-deprecating humour as he tips a look back up at her. "I mean, this place runs the gamut of murderers and thieves and drug dealers. Maybe they'd be an easier task." Gaius chances, then, a glance around, but if there are any over 6' tall blonde women in impossible red dresses lurking in the corners since Sarah walked in, she's making herself scarce.

More seriously, he adds, "It isn't about judging, is it. It's about how quickly one can get themselves out of this place. I'm not keen to add to the laundry list."

[terminatefate]

"If I wanted easy I'd have dumped your ass on day one," Sarah said softly. "So you can jam that sentiment."

Feeling more than a little miserable, she let out a frustrated sound.

"I don't give a fucking shit how long it takes me to get out of this rustbucket, so you can take that shit off the table. In order to get you back where you came from, we have some real shit to shovel through. The more you ignore it, the worse it'll get and the longer you'll be stuck here. I'm here, at this point, for you."

[to_be_caprican]

The look he gives her is long and a little-- detached, still. Gaius has a way of looking at people as if he were a mere observor than participant, some great distance lying between his own intellect and spiraling, selfish rationales and everyone else, transcending physical proximity. There are cool fingers again, now, at the nape of his neck, a reminder, but he doesn't twitch from it.

It does spur him to speak, regardless of the intent. "I believe you," he states, gently. "I've always done that much."

[terminatefate]

Sarah just nodded wordlessly, withdrawing a little. She glanced at Gaius for awhile and slowly let out a breath.

"I just--" She frowned gently. "Don't shut me out. You do whatever, but..." Sarah studied her hands, finding traces of thin white scars on her knuckles as she flattened her palms against the tabletop.

"Don't omit things. Not to me." Her voice lowered as her brow furrowed. "Please."

[to_be_caprican]

He's all angles and tension, made more so when worn down slightly in honest conversation. A hand travels up to itch and rub the back of his neck, thin shoulders at a slump and mouth pinched. None of this, the Barge and all it entails, is the sort of thing that comes naturally to Gaius. But perhaps that's to be expected.

"Alright." He flicks a glance back at her. "I'll try. What do you--" Another glance about, not too obvious but just checking. He lowers his voice like that would help at all. "--need to know, exactly?"

[terminatefate]

"Start from the beginning, tell me about her, about your...dreams, about the things you're hearing and seeing now. Tell me, honestly, what you're experiencing. I don't care how dumb it sounds, Gaius. Or how crazy. Tell me everything you can, no matter how difficult or minuscule it seems."

Sarah was open to all of it, no matter what it was and she'd do her best to help where and when she could.