BSG drabbles
So daybreak777 has told me this is what is called WIP Amnesty. I don't know I'd really call it that, because these drabbly bits don't really feel to me like they were ever truly going to be works, and they just mostly sat on my hard drive after a burst of energy, never really "in progress." But I've been feeling ill, in bed, and I'm a little bored and restless and blergh. So I've decided to do something I almost never do - post a few drabbles of things I doubt I'll ever do anything more with. They are random, unbeta'd, written a long time ago, maybe slightly OOC, and in some cases, pretty much trail off in the middle. With all those caveats, I hereby present:
The drabbles:
Season 4.0 Felix/Sharon/Helo. R. 467 words. On the Demetrius. Felix finds out his navigating skills were not the only reason Helo asked Adama to assign him to Starbuck's mission.
“Whose idea was it to suggest me for this mission, anyway?” Felix asked, eyeing them both suspiciously.
Helo looked away sheepishly, but Sharon (He’d never think of her as Athena. He just never would be able to do it, not when she looked like the woman he’d spent two years pining after until the Attacks changed everything.) looked at him steadily, unembarrassed.
“We both did,” she said, her tone patient, her eyes assessing him. Out of a sense of duty, Felix had buried his feelings for Sharon a long time ago, when everybody knew she was frakking the Chief. He’d thought they were totally gone when she'd returned from nuked Caprica with Helo and she wasn't even the one he'd been attracted to anymore. He hadn't realized how much need for her he still carried with him until this moment. I shouldn't be attracted this easily to Helo's wife, he thought.
So he tried retreating into outrage, a move that felt clear and comfortable and morally correct, unlike the confusing desire that was rising within him, far too strongly, far too quickly.
“Are you telling me you convinced the Old Man to assign me to a floating garbage scow with Starbuck?” He didn’t so much say the name as spit it out. “Just so you two could get me into your rack?”
But Sharon was walking towards him with a smile on her lips that Felix was already pre-disposed to find intoxicating. He knew he should be angry, but should seemed like a word he had left behind so very long ago at this point. Back on New Caprica, really.
Before he knew it, her mouth was pressing onto his, her tongue pushing his lips apart, and her hands had wrapped around the back of his head. She was hurtling the two of them backward in tandem. Felix only found out where when he felt his back hit the sheets of their rack. All the while, her tongue never stopped probing, licking, tickling the roof of his mouth. Felix felt his dick growing hard way too fast, felt his muscles going rubbery as Sharon pressed his body ruthlessly into the mattress. His eyes opened wide with astonishment as he felt her fingers yanking with expert precision at his belt buckle and undoing the button to his khakis. Her long hair curtained his face, and through a sliver gap between the long, brown strands, Felix got a gauzy glimpse of nothing but Helo’s taut, naked midriff moving towards him, filling up the gap completely, like a moon eclipsing the sun.
“Ohhh.” He managed to pull his mouth away long enough to catch a few gasping breaths. Sharon finally noticed his erection and turned her attention downward to his crotch, taking him into her mouth in one shocking, overwhelming sensation that quickly had Felix whimpering like an animal. He opened half-lidded eyes just enough to see Helo perched over him, stroking his own dick in his hand, eyes sparkling with approval. Felix smiled weakly back at him. Really, he couldn't believe this was happening.
It felt like the first bit of luck Felix had seen in a very, very long time.
Pre-Mini Gaius Baltar/OFC. NC-17. 643 words. Teen!Gaius losing his virginity on Aerelon.
No one could accuse him of doing things halfway, Gaius figured.
He was a sixteen-year-old farm boy who’d just experienced his first real kiss. If he didn’t frak things up in the next ten minutes or so, he was pretty sure he would also lose his virginity soon, and to a woman so beautiful it made Gaius’ heart feel like it had stopped in amazed gratitude. Her platinum blonde, wavy ringlets tickled his face. Every once in a while, whenever he managed to say something clever enough, she treated him to that throaty, lustful laugh that he craved with almost more desire than for her body. Almost. Her body was gorgeous, and she was slowly revealing it to him, bit by bit, discarding each piece of clothing as if on whim.
No, no one could accuse Gaius of doing things halfway. Not when this gorgeous woman was thirteen years older than him and also his religion teacher at school. And for some reason - one that Gaius didn’t care enough to ask her about in case she changed her mind about the whole virginity thing - she seemed hell bent on sending him to Hades an atheist.
None of this worried him as much as it should have though, for he was quickly becoming high out of his mind on chokeweed.
“Gaius,” her voice filtered through his hazy consciousness and bounced around in his head. She sounded like an angel calling to him across a cavern. Slowly, he lifted his head to find her through all the echoing noise.
“Stay with me, Gaius.” It was an order, but her tone was gentle, patient, and full of amusement at a private joke. “Surely your singularly brilliant mind can handle that, can’t it?”
Probing fingers accompanied the question, sliding under the scratchy canvas of his shirt to his bare chest, trailing up the sides of his torso, faintly brushing against his nipples, but they quickly hardened under even just the hint of her touch. Gaius heard a swift rasping sound in his head and realized that he’d just gasped in pathetically obvious arousal.
He needed a quip to impress her, but words stayed stuck in his throat, silenced by the drug and his growing terror of saying anything that would end the electricity coursing through his body.
This was nothing like kissing Sherry Bennett on the playground. This was nothing like his furtive nocturnal explorations under the sheets while his brothers slept a few feet away.
“You’re all right, Gaius,” she crooned somewhere in the back of his consciousness, as if her voice lived inside his head now. “You know I wouldn’t let anything hurt you, don’t you? Just do what I say and I promise I’ll make it wonderful. Do you believe me?”
Honestly, he didn’t know if he did. He didn’t know anything right now. He was feeling so muzzy-headed. But he nodded mutely as her fingers moved under his shoulders and he felt his shirt coming off.
Please don’t stop, he begged inwardly. Then, when he heard her laughter - the sound of wind chimes tinkling in a breeze - he froze, terrified he’d said those words aloud.
The fingers traced down his sides, and Gaius shuddered with delight at the sensation. and crept onto the waistband of his pants, moments later, undoing his fly.
“Do what I say and everything will be fine, all right?” she reminded him.
“I…” He realized that this was his last chance to stop this, that he should probably stop this, because if they were ever caught, he would be in so much trouble.
Her hand was stroking his cock steadily now, her toothy smile determined and full of desire. Gaius felt himself growing hard and thick between her fingers.
Frak it, he decided as he took another hit off the chokeweed rapidly turning to ash in the tray. I’ll figure it out later.
Season 1 Baltar/Gaeta/Starbuck. PG-13. 818 words. The beginnings of a strip Triad PWP that never happened.
Even ridiculously drunk, he could still count cards without even thinking about it.
But nobody knew this about Felix Gaeta, because he hardly ever won at Triad. He often didn’t even play. He was always too busy paying more attention to the real reason he played Triad in the rec room - the banter.
He loved watching the pilots tease each other, and he didn’t even mind when they teased him. He understood that teasing meant people liked you enough to pay attention to you, keep track of your foibles. It meant you were part of the group.
But that was not why he was watching right now. All the pilots were gone, that is except Starbuck, who was locked in a battle of gambling wills with the last man standing in the Triad game since Skulls had folded his last hand twenty minutes earlier with a resigned grimace.
Starbuck was locked in this battle of wills with the man who was possibly Felix’s favorite person in the world these days - Gaius Baltar.
Drunk as he was, Felix didn’t even care that much that Doctor Baltar was paying much more attention to Kara Thrace than him. It made Felix smile to see the man in his element, happily trashed on ambrosia and in full seduction mode.
It was about to end, though. The cards Felix had seen already since the deck was last shuffled told him that Starbuck was bluffing. She couldn’t possibly have a decent hand. He suspected that the Doctor might know as well, for despite his exaggerated drunken gestures and his less than crisp tones, Felix could see he was moving in for the kill.
He called the bet with slurring triumph in his voice, theatrically fanning his cards down onto the table so Starbuck couldn’t miss her defeat.
“Full colors,” she muttered in dismay. Doctor Baltar grinned at her lingering chagrin and shook his head as he gathered the pool of cubits towards himself like a pirate surrounded by his loot.
“Such a shame, Thrace,” he taunted. “And I was so enjoying playing with you. But what can I do? The cards want to go my way tonight, and you, my dear, are out of cubits.”
Starbuck rolled her eyes. But Felix could tell she was frustrated.
“You know,” Felix interrupted, knowing he’d probably really regret saying this tomorrow, “there is one way you could keep the game going.”
His face went hot with embarrassment at the way the two of them snapped their heads back and suddenly all their attention was on him for a moment, as if they’d just remembered he was there.
“How’s that, Felix?” Baltar looked into his eyes with a mischievous grin that was unnerving. But the ambrosia shots had emboldened him.
“There’s always strip Triad,” he said baldly, willing himself to keep the man’s gaze.
Kara chortled, taking a puff of her cigar and damping it out on the ashtray. “Oh sure, so you can watch?” She let her voice curl into a throaty suggestion as she mock whispered, “But really, Gaeta, which one of us are you hoping to see naked?”
Baltar’s face broke out into a confident, thoroughly drunken grin as his arm came out and he lazily brushed the scruff of Felix’s neck. Felix visibly startled at the touch, and his eyes widened at the soft pleasure he heard in Doctor Baltar’s chuckle.
“Nothing wrong with a little strip Triad,” the man declared, a forgotten hand still lingering on Felix’s neck. Felix saw Starbuck’s eyebrows raise at the familiarity of it. Felix was as surprised as she probably was, but he was really drunk, and so he covered it over with a self-satisfied, uninhibited grin. He let his tongue drag slightly over his lower lip, in a way the compartmentalized part of his brain knew went straight past dirty and right into obscene. His insides fluttered as he saw her notice and nod appreciatively.
“You serious?” she pressed Baltar.
“I’m completely serious,” Baltar replied, voice still slurring, but there was an edge of excitement there.
“Fine,” she agreed, “but only if Felix plays too.”
Baltar’s forefinger raised itself up and started making tiny, absent circles on the back of Felix’s neck. “I agree,” he said expansively, cocking his head endearingly. "Felix?” he beckoned.
When did he suddenly become Felix to them, he wondered.
“Come on, Felix,” Baltar prompted, his half-closed brown eyes no longer capable of subtle nuances under the ambrosia’s influence, but he looked happy. He reminded Felix of a cat lying in the sun. “What do you say?”
He would give almost anything to keep that expression focused on him. Felix closed his eyes with pleasure, relishing the soft contact of Baltar’s fingers, which had moved upward and were now digging slightly into his hair.
“I’d like that, Gaius,” he said, the name a barely audible experiment.
Baltar just chuckled softly again.
Pre-Mini Felix Gaeta, OMC, OFC. G. 875 words. A Felix childhood drabble:
“Felix Gaeta, get your nose out of whatever book you're reading and get down here! You’re going to make us late for Temple!”
Jerome Gaeta tried futilely to make his disapproving frown radiate all the way from the bottom of the stairs into his son’s bedroom.
“I should have taken that lock off his door ages ago,” he complained to his wife, only a few feet away in one of the oversized living room chairs, where she’d been since six or seven this morning. “Why is your son always with his head in the clouds? And on today, of all days!”
Felicia Gaeta’s head remained in furrowed concentration over an open folder overflowing with all different sizes of papers, most of which had even smaller notes to herself tacked onto them. “My son?” A chuckle crept into her voice as she twisted one of her long dark curls in between her fingers. “His head isn’t in the clouds, Jerome; it’s in a book.”
“Same thing,” he muttered. “All I know is once he gets his head in a book, he can’t get it out again. He’s going to make us late. Again.”
Her green eyes finally left her papers and twinkled up at her husband. “He’s just excited about books, Jerome. That’s a good thing. Don’t you want your child to be intelligent?”
“He already is intelligent, Felicia,” he said gruffly. “And that’s not the problem. Of course I approve of him studying and doing well in school, and being well-read. That’s not the problem. When it comes to books, though, he’s got no off-switch. He’s disorganized. He’s scatterbrained…”
“He’s ten years old,” she cut him off, stared at him with arched eyebrows, then dropped her head back down into her work, the pen in her fingers beginning its dance of scratches and swirls, spinning out mathematical calculations along the margins her husband couldn’t even hope to understand.
“He’s eleven,” he corrected her. “Or have you forgotten what day today is?”
She didn’t answer. He had lost her already.
“Felix!” he yelled in frustration up the stairs. “If you make us late for your audience with the Oracle today, I’m canceling your birthday party. You hear me? And I’ll take your presents back to the store.”
The ceiling above them exploded with the sudden scurrying and thumping of barely-eleven-year-old feet. A moment after the lock clicked, Felix’s bespectacled face poked out from behind the bedroom door, quickly followed by the rest of his body in ungainly aftermath. His tie was askew, his shirt unevenly tucked into his trousers. The military surplus satchel Jerome had bought him not long ago to help him organize was sprawled across his body like a lopsided sash.
Jerome sighed.
“You’re a mess, son,” he admonished. “We’ve talked about this. Do you know what kind of disrespect it shows to the Oracle to show up in her Temple looking this way? Especially on your Prophecy Day? It disrespects the Gods.”
Felix looked down at his clothes, apparently for the first time, his expression turning crestfallen.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to.” He made as if to move back into the room. “I can fix it. Just give me a minute.”
“No! Don’t you dare go back into that room!” Jerome thundered, then immediately softened at the startled expression in his son’s eyes. “No, son,” he said more gently. “Just come down here. I’ll help you.”
He straightened his son's tie, folded down his starched collar. “Go to the bathroom and get a comb. Your hair's a rat’s nest,” he told him.
Felix leapt into action and almost ran into the living room doorframe in the process.
“Slowly,” Jerome warned him, a touch of exhaustion in his voice as his son disappeared around the corner.
He shook his head. “We’ve already gotten three notes from his teachers this term.”
“His teachers are well-meaning, but they’re sheep,” Felicia’s voice sauntered back into the conversation. “He thinks circles around his math teacher already, and all they want to do is make sure he does his homework neatly. The minute he turns twelve, we’re enrolling him in Mt. Olympus Academy, where his intelligence won’t be going to waste.”
“They’re trying to instill discipline into him,” Jerome countered. “It won’t matter that he’s the world’s biggest genius if he can’t apply himself and accomplish a task because he’s too scatterbrained.”
Felix shuffled back into the room with the dreaded comb.
“What you reading, Mom?” he asked, wincing as his father pulled his matted curls free.
“Notes I’ve been taking for that Colonial military project,” she said casually.
“What kinda notes?” he pressed, his voice full of curiosity.
“I’m trying to construct a program that will create randomized trajectories for the Viper Mark VII series.”
“Why do you want them to be randomized?”
“Why do you think?” She suddenly became the college math professor she was. “Why might Vipers need to be able to broadcast randomized trajectories?”
He thought about this for a long moment. “For DRADIS decoys?” he asked.
“Yes! Very good, Felix!" She turned to her husband affectionately. "Jerome, I do believe we have a genius on our hands." Her husband smiled back at her.
She opened her arms wide towards her son. "Come over here, genius, and give your mom a hug."
Felix grinned and broke free from the comb, running impulsively into his mother with wide arms, sending her papers flying. She squealed with dismay, but quickly gave in to the mess and hugged him back.
"Mind your feet," was her only concession. "Don't step on your Mom's notes, all right?"
"Okay." He shuffled his feet cooperatively. "It's my birthday today," he reminded, his tone turning serious.
"What, you think I've forgotten?" Felicia held her son's face in her hands. "So what do you want this year?" she asked.
"Can I use the computer in your office?" he asked immediately. He'd been clearly waiting for an opening.
"Hmm..." she said coyly. "For what?"
"I want to try to jump again."
Felicia pursed her lips for exaggerated effect. "You want to jump? What, you want a trampoline for your birthday?"
"Mom!"
She could hold back her laughter for no more than a few seconds. Her hands let go of his face and pulled a tiny portable hard drive out of her pocket. "I don't suppose you mean this copy I made of the FTL plotting software from my office computer yesterday?" she teased, holding the item aloft in front of him. Excited, Felix swiped at it unsuccessfully.
"Wait for it, kiddo," she said in mock warning, then gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. "Happy Birthday, genius." She pressed the hard drive into his small hands.
"Cool!" He hurtled out of her embrace, his feet clearly intent on running back upstairs to try out the program; but his father's eyes stopped him without a word.
Jerome watched with surprise and a growing pride as his son carefully put the tiny drive into his own pocket and turned to his mom with regret in his voice.
"Thanks, Mom. I'll try it later."
He looked down at his tie, which had gone askew again when he'd ran to hug his mother, and did his best to straighten it. It wasn't as neat as Jerome would have made it, and his hair was still matted, but Jerome was more than happy to let that go in exchange for the surprising show of impulse control he'd just witnessed.
"I'm ready, Dad," he said, waving his primer on the Scrolls of Pythia at Jerome. "Can you quiz me in the car?"
"You got it, Son." All of a sudden, Jerome felt like it was his birthday instead.
The drabbles:
Season 4.0 Felix/Sharon/Helo. R. 467 words. On the Demetrius. Felix finds out his navigating skills were not the only reason Helo asked Adama to assign him to Starbuck's mission.
“Whose idea was it to suggest me for this mission, anyway?” Felix asked, eyeing them both suspiciously.
Helo looked away sheepishly, but Sharon (He’d never think of her as Athena. He just never would be able to do it, not when she looked like the woman he’d spent two years pining after until the Attacks changed everything.) looked at him steadily, unembarrassed.
“We both did,” she said, her tone patient, her eyes assessing him. Out of a sense of duty, Felix had buried his feelings for Sharon a long time ago, when everybody knew she was frakking the Chief. He’d thought they were totally gone when she'd returned from nuked Caprica with Helo and she wasn't even the one he'd been attracted to anymore. He hadn't realized how much need for her he still carried with him until this moment. I shouldn't be attracted this easily to Helo's wife, he thought.
So he tried retreating into outrage, a move that felt clear and comfortable and morally correct, unlike the confusing desire that was rising within him, far too strongly, far too quickly.
“Are you telling me you convinced the Old Man to assign me to a floating garbage scow with Starbuck?” He didn’t so much say the name as spit it out. “Just so you two could get me into your rack?”
But Sharon was walking towards him with a smile on her lips that Felix was already pre-disposed to find intoxicating. He knew he should be angry, but should seemed like a word he had left behind so very long ago at this point. Back on New Caprica, really.
Before he knew it, her mouth was pressing onto his, her tongue pushing his lips apart, and her hands had wrapped around the back of his head. She was hurtling the two of them backward in tandem. Felix only found out where when he felt his back hit the sheets of their rack. All the while, her tongue never stopped probing, licking, tickling the roof of his mouth. Felix felt his dick growing hard way too fast, felt his muscles going rubbery as Sharon pressed his body ruthlessly into the mattress. His eyes opened wide with astonishment as he felt her fingers yanking with expert precision at his belt buckle and undoing the button to his khakis. Her long hair curtained his face, and through a sliver gap between the long, brown strands, Felix got a gauzy glimpse of nothing but Helo’s taut, naked midriff moving towards him, filling up the gap completely, like a moon eclipsing the sun.
“Ohhh.” He managed to pull his mouth away long enough to catch a few gasping breaths. Sharon finally noticed his erection and turned her attention downward to his crotch, taking him into her mouth in one shocking, overwhelming sensation that quickly had Felix whimpering like an animal. He opened half-lidded eyes just enough to see Helo perched over him, stroking his own dick in his hand, eyes sparkling with approval. Felix smiled weakly back at him. Really, he couldn't believe this was happening.
It felt like the first bit of luck Felix had seen in a very, very long time.
Pre-Mini Gaius Baltar/OFC. NC-17. 643 words. Teen!Gaius losing his virginity on Aerelon.
No one could accuse him of doing things halfway, Gaius figured.
He was a sixteen-year-old farm boy who’d just experienced his first real kiss. If he didn’t frak things up in the next ten minutes or so, he was pretty sure he would also lose his virginity soon, and to a woman so beautiful it made Gaius’ heart feel like it had stopped in amazed gratitude. Her platinum blonde, wavy ringlets tickled his face. Every once in a while, whenever he managed to say something clever enough, she treated him to that throaty, lustful laugh that he craved with almost more desire than for her body. Almost. Her body was gorgeous, and she was slowly revealing it to him, bit by bit, discarding each piece of clothing as if on whim.
No, no one could accuse Gaius of doing things halfway. Not when this gorgeous woman was thirteen years older than him and also his religion teacher at school. And for some reason - one that Gaius didn’t care enough to ask her about in case she changed her mind about the whole virginity thing - she seemed hell bent on sending him to Hades an atheist.
None of this worried him as much as it should have though, for he was quickly becoming high out of his mind on chokeweed.
“Gaius,” her voice filtered through his hazy consciousness and bounced around in his head. She sounded like an angel calling to him across a cavern. Slowly, he lifted his head to find her through all the echoing noise.
“Stay with me, Gaius.” It was an order, but her tone was gentle, patient, and full of amusement at a private joke. “Surely your singularly brilliant mind can handle that, can’t it?”
Probing fingers accompanied the question, sliding under the scratchy canvas of his shirt to his bare chest, trailing up the sides of his torso, faintly brushing against his nipples, but they quickly hardened under even just the hint of her touch. Gaius heard a swift rasping sound in his head and realized that he’d just gasped in pathetically obvious arousal.
He needed a quip to impress her, but words stayed stuck in his throat, silenced by the drug and his growing terror of saying anything that would end the electricity coursing through his body.
This was nothing like kissing Sherry Bennett on the playground. This was nothing like his furtive nocturnal explorations under the sheets while his brothers slept a few feet away.
“You’re all right, Gaius,” she crooned somewhere in the back of his consciousness, as if her voice lived inside his head now. “You know I wouldn’t let anything hurt you, don’t you? Just do what I say and I promise I’ll make it wonderful. Do you believe me?”
Honestly, he didn’t know if he did. He didn’t know anything right now. He was feeling so muzzy-headed. But he nodded mutely as her fingers moved under his shoulders and he felt his shirt coming off.
Please don’t stop, he begged inwardly. Then, when he heard her laughter - the sound of wind chimes tinkling in a breeze - he froze, terrified he’d said those words aloud.
The fingers traced down his sides, and Gaius shuddered with delight at the sensation. and crept onto the waistband of his pants, moments later, undoing his fly.
“Do what I say and everything will be fine, all right?” she reminded him.
“I…” He realized that this was his last chance to stop this, that he should probably stop this, because if they were ever caught, he would be in so much trouble.
Her hand was stroking his cock steadily now, her toothy smile determined and full of desire. Gaius felt himself growing hard and thick between her fingers.
Frak it, he decided as he took another hit off the chokeweed rapidly turning to ash in the tray. I’ll figure it out later.
Season 1 Baltar/Gaeta/Starbuck. PG-13. 818 words. The beginnings of a strip Triad PWP that never happened.
Even ridiculously drunk, he could still count cards without even thinking about it.
But nobody knew this about Felix Gaeta, because he hardly ever won at Triad. He often didn’t even play. He was always too busy paying more attention to the real reason he played Triad in the rec room - the banter.
He loved watching the pilots tease each other, and he didn’t even mind when they teased him. He understood that teasing meant people liked you enough to pay attention to you, keep track of your foibles. It meant you were part of the group.
But that was not why he was watching right now. All the pilots were gone, that is except Starbuck, who was locked in a battle of gambling wills with the last man standing in the Triad game since Skulls had folded his last hand twenty minutes earlier with a resigned grimace.
Starbuck was locked in this battle of wills with the man who was possibly Felix’s favorite person in the world these days - Gaius Baltar.
Drunk as he was, Felix didn’t even care that much that Doctor Baltar was paying much more attention to Kara Thrace than him. It made Felix smile to see the man in his element, happily trashed on ambrosia and in full seduction mode.
It was about to end, though. The cards Felix had seen already since the deck was last shuffled told him that Starbuck was bluffing. She couldn’t possibly have a decent hand. He suspected that the Doctor might know as well, for despite his exaggerated drunken gestures and his less than crisp tones, Felix could see he was moving in for the kill.
He called the bet with slurring triumph in his voice, theatrically fanning his cards down onto the table so Starbuck couldn’t miss her defeat.
“Full colors,” she muttered in dismay. Doctor Baltar grinned at her lingering chagrin and shook his head as he gathered the pool of cubits towards himself like a pirate surrounded by his loot.
“Such a shame, Thrace,” he taunted. “And I was so enjoying playing with you. But what can I do? The cards want to go my way tonight, and you, my dear, are out of cubits.”
Starbuck rolled her eyes. But Felix could tell she was frustrated.
“You know,” Felix interrupted, knowing he’d probably really regret saying this tomorrow, “there is one way you could keep the game going.”
His face went hot with embarrassment at the way the two of them snapped their heads back and suddenly all their attention was on him for a moment, as if they’d just remembered he was there.
“How’s that, Felix?” Baltar looked into his eyes with a mischievous grin that was unnerving. But the ambrosia shots had emboldened him.
“There’s always strip Triad,” he said baldly, willing himself to keep the man’s gaze.
Kara chortled, taking a puff of her cigar and damping it out on the ashtray. “Oh sure, so you can watch?” She let her voice curl into a throaty suggestion as she mock whispered, “But really, Gaeta, which one of us are you hoping to see naked?”
Baltar’s face broke out into a confident, thoroughly drunken grin as his arm came out and he lazily brushed the scruff of Felix’s neck. Felix visibly startled at the touch, and his eyes widened at the soft pleasure he heard in Doctor Baltar’s chuckle.
“Nothing wrong with a little strip Triad,” the man declared, a forgotten hand still lingering on Felix’s neck. Felix saw Starbuck’s eyebrows raise at the familiarity of it. Felix was as surprised as she probably was, but he was really drunk, and so he covered it over with a self-satisfied, uninhibited grin. He let his tongue drag slightly over his lower lip, in a way the compartmentalized part of his brain knew went straight past dirty and right into obscene. His insides fluttered as he saw her notice and nod appreciatively.
“You serious?” she pressed Baltar.
“I’m completely serious,” Baltar replied, voice still slurring, but there was an edge of excitement there.
“Fine,” she agreed, “but only if Felix plays too.”
Baltar’s forefinger raised itself up and started making tiny, absent circles on the back of Felix’s neck. “I agree,” he said expansively, cocking his head endearingly. "Felix?” he beckoned.
When did he suddenly become Felix to them, he wondered.
“Come on, Felix,” Baltar prompted, his half-closed brown eyes no longer capable of subtle nuances under the ambrosia’s influence, but he looked happy. He reminded Felix of a cat lying in the sun. “What do you say?”
He would give almost anything to keep that expression focused on him. Felix closed his eyes with pleasure, relishing the soft contact of Baltar’s fingers, which had moved upward and were now digging slightly into his hair.
“I’d like that, Gaius,” he said, the name a barely audible experiment.
Baltar just chuckled softly again.
Pre-Mini Felix Gaeta, OMC, OFC. G. 875 words. A Felix childhood drabble:
“Felix Gaeta, get your nose out of whatever book you're reading and get down here! You’re going to make us late for Temple!”
Jerome Gaeta tried futilely to make his disapproving frown radiate all the way from the bottom of the stairs into his son’s bedroom.
“I should have taken that lock off his door ages ago,” he complained to his wife, only a few feet away in one of the oversized living room chairs, where she’d been since six or seven this morning. “Why is your son always with his head in the clouds? And on today, of all days!”
Felicia Gaeta’s head remained in furrowed concentration over an open folder overflowing with all different sizes of papers, most of which had even smaller notes to herself tacked onto them. “My son?” A chuckle crept into her voice as she twisted one of her long dark curls in between her fingers. “His head isn’t in the clouds, Jerome; it’s in a book.”
“Same thing,” he muttered. “All I know is once he gets his head in a book, he can’t get it out again. He’s going to make us late. Again.”
Her green eyes finally left her papers and twinkled up at her husband. “He’s just excited about books, Jerome. That’s a good thing. Don’t you want your child to be intelligent?”
“He already is intelligent, Felicia,” he said gruffly. “And that’s not the problem. Of course I approve of him studying and doing well in school, and being well-read. That’s not the problem. When it comes to books, though, he’s got no off-switch. He’s disorganized. He’s scatterbrained…”
“He’s ten years old,” she cut him off, stared at him with arched eyebrows, then dropped her head back down into her work, the pen in her fingers beginning its dance of scratches and swirls, spinning out mathematical calculations along the margins her husband couldn’t even hope to understand.
“He’s eleven,” he corrected her. “Or have you forgotten what day today is?”
She didn’t answer. He had lost her already.
“Felix!” he yelled in frustration up the stairs. “If you make us late for your audience with the Oracle today, I’m canceling your birthday party. You hear me? And I’ll take your presents back to the store.”
The ceiling above them exploded with the sudden scurrying and thumping of barely-eleven-year-old feet. A moment after the lock clicked, Felix’s bespectacled face poked out from behind the bedroom door, quickly followed by the rest of his body in ungainly aftermath. His tie was askew, his shirt unevenly tucked into his trousers. The military surplus satchel Jerome had bought him not long ago to help him organize was sprawled across his body like a lopsided sash.
Jerome sighed.
“You’re a mess, son,” he admonished. “We’ve talked about this. Do you know what kind of disrespect it shows to the Oracle to show up in her Temple looking this way? Especially on your Prophecy Day? It disrespects the Gods.”
Felix looked down at his clothes, apparently for the first time, his expression turning crestfallen.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to.” He made as if to move back into the room. “I can fix it. Just give me a minute.”
“No! Don’t you dare go back into that room!” Jerome thundered, then immediately softened at the startled expression in his son’s eyes. “No, son,” he said more gently. “Just come down here. I’ll help you.”
He straightened his son's tie, folded down his starched collar. “Go to the bathroom and get a comb. Your hair's a rat’s nest,” he told him.
Felix leapt into action and almost ran into the living room doorframe in the process.
“Slowly,” Jerome warned him, a touch of exhaustion in his voice as his son disappeared around the corner.
He shook his head. “We’ve already gotten three notes from his teachers this term.”
“His teachers are well-meaning, but they’re sheep,” Felicia’s voice sauntered back into the conversation. “He thinks circles around his math teacher already, and all they want to do is make sure he does his homework neatly. The minute he turns twelve, we’re enrolling him in Mt. Olympus Academy, where his intelligence won’t be going to waste.”
“They’re trying to instill discipline into him,” Jerome countered. “It won’t matter that he’s the world’s biggest genius if he can’t apply himself and accomplish a task because he’s too scatterbrained.”
Felix shuffled back into the room with the dreaded comb.
“What you reading, Mom?” he asked, wincing as his father pulled his matted curls free.
“Notes I’ve been taking for that Colonial military project,” she said casually.
“What kinda notes?” he pressed, his voice full of curiosity.
“I’m trying to construct a program that will create randomized trajectories for the Viper Mark VII series.”
“Why do you want them to be randomized?”
“Why do you think?” She suddenly became the college math professor she was. “Why might Vipers need to be able to broadcast randomized trajectories?”
He thought about this for a long moment. “For DRADIS decoys?” he asked.
“Yes! Very good, Felix!" She turned to her husband affectionately. "Jerome, I do believe we have a genius on our hands." Her husband smiled back at her.
She opened her arms wide towards her son. "Come over here, genius, and give your mom a hug."
Felix grinned and broke free from the comb, running impulsively into his mother with wide arms, sending her papers flying. She squealed with dismay, but quickly gave in to the mess and hugged him back.
"Mind your feet," was her only concession. "Don't step on your Mom's notes, all right?"
"Okay." He shuffled his feet cooperatively. "It's my birthday today," he reminded, his tone turning serious.
"What, you think I've forgotten?" Felicia held her son's face in her hands. "So what do you want this year?" she asked.
"Can I use the computer in your office?" he asked immediately. He'd been clearly waiting for an opening.
"Hmm..." she said coyly. "For what?"
"I want to try to jump again."
Felicia pursed her lips for exaggerated effect. "You want to jump? What, you want a trampoline for your birthday?"
"Mom!"
She could hold back her laughter for no more than a few seconds. Her hands let go of his face and pulled a tiny portable hard drive out of her pocket. "I don't suppose you mean this copy I made of the FTL plotting software from my office computer yesterday?" she teased, holding the item aloft in front of him. Excited, Felix swiped at it unsuccessfully.
"Wait for it, kiddo," she said in mock warning, then gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. "Happy Birthday, genius." She pressed the hard drive into his small hands.
"Cool!" He hurtled out of her embrace, his feet clearly intent on running back upstairs to try out the program; but his father's eyes stopped him without a word.
Jerome watched with surprise and a growing pride as his son carefully put the tiny drive into his own pocket and turned to his mom with regret in his voice.
"Thanks, Mom. I'll try it later."
He looked down at his tie, which had gone askew again when he'd ran to hug his mother, and did his best to straighten it. It wasn't as neat as Jerome would have made it, and his hair was still matted, but Jerome was more than happy to let that go in exchange for the surprising show of impulse control he'd just witnessed.
"I'm ready, Dad," he said, waving his primer on the Scrolls of Pythia at Jerome. "Can you quiz me in the car?"
"You got it, Son." All of a sudden, Jerome felt like it was his birthday instead.