Helo ShagAthon 2008
Hidden Bruises
By rebelliousrose
Written for poisontaster in the Second Helo ShagAthon.
Prompt; Helo/Gaeta, domination and dirty talk. Hidden bruises.
Rated R. (Or maybe X, but I’ll go with R because no porn words were used.)
Massive love and kisses and thanks to my super-patient beta, mamaboolj
Side note- Last time we did the Helo ShagAthon, no one had problems slashing Helo. Now no one can seem to do it without Sharon. Kudos to the BSG writers and actors for creating this enduring couple. PS- I don't own these characters, but I do love them, so please don't sue.
Felix Gaeta is crying in his arms, and the best thing Helo can think to do is leave him to it. Gaeta’s black curls are matted and he stinks of the sweat that has soaked through his shirt and jacket and strangely, of tylium as well. Helo has no idea what’s going on, except that finally, inevitably, another friend has broken, is broken.
Gaeta didn’t come to him, didn’t seek Helo out. He wouldn’t. He’s too contained, too much in his own head, and he and Helo aren’t that kind of close. Dualla, maybe, since they’ve giggled together for years, but not Helo. But he’s here, and he’s on his knees, weeping messily into the shoulder of the XO’s duty uniform.
He hadn’t expected to run into the former Officer of the Watch, either. One of the damage control boards had popped an indicator of repeated pressure loss in the old launch bay, the one that was a gift shop, and since he’d been stuck in CIC since that morning, rewiring, repairing, supervising, and generally coaxing things to work again in the gallant old ship, he decided to take a walk. Now that he’s thinking about it, Gaeta was supposed to be up there, doing something to the comms, and he’d been absent. Gaeta was never absent, just like he never spelled anything wrong.
Helo shifts so his back is against the wall, and slides down with a thump, stretching out his legs and cradling Gaeta’s shaking body. He’s crying so hard that his whole body is convulsing, and in spite of the force of his sobs, he’s quiet, as if he’s afraid someone will hear him. He probably is. Helo’s seen how Gaeta’s treated by the people who came up from New Cap. Tigh’s meanness is the least of it; people won’t talk to him, or look at him, and Helo suspects by the way Gaeta is wincing when he moves that other things are happening as well. He tries to defend the other man as best he can, but he’s in a weird no-man’s land himself right now- half an XO and half a toaster-lover. The people who stayed, the Galacticans, he calls them in his head, seem to be just fine about him, and some of the New Cap people, who know him, or Sharon, or what Sharon did for them, are fine too, but the others; just say that Helo’s not altogether sorry that Duck blew himself up.
Gaeta’s quieter now, and his shaking is lessening. Helo shifts him slightly to go for his bandana, and the movement makes the smaller man clutch at him hard enough to strain the shoulder seams of his uniform. Whatever happened to Gaeta to unhinge him like this is obviously really bad, and Helo gives up on the idea of mopping Gaeta’s face. His uniform is shot anyway, since tears and snot have soaked through the neck and shoulder, so he settles himself more comfortably and uses the hand that’s free to stroke Gaeta’s head.
The petting seems to calm the other man, and Helo continues, feeling black curls twining around his fingers with each stroke. He rubs Gaeta’s hair between his thumb and forefinger. Curly hair has become almost a foreign texture to him, since Sharon’s is thick and straight. He debates saying something to the ex-Lieutenant, but decides against it. Helo’s always been one to wait people out, let them unburden themselves in their own time. Made him a good ECO, that ability to patiently sort through information and put things together.
Gaeta hiccups suddenly, a small, resentful sound, and Helo laughs, unable to help it. Nothing’s funny here, but that little noise is all too human, and Gaeta’s probably going to be mortified when all this emotion is done with.
His hands are loosening on Helo’s jacket, and his breathing is slowing down. Helo rests his cheek tenderly on top of the younger man’s head and rubs his back. This is what comforting his small cousins had been like, on Caprica, before the Cylons blew the frak out of the universe. Gaeta’s still burrowing into Helo’s body like he wants to crawl inside his skin, but he’s stopped the hysterical weeping, and Helo ventures speech.
“Okay, Felix?” Gaeta’s first name feels wrong on Helo’s tongue, sort of like when someone calls him Karl, but at the same time necessary. This is a question he’s asking the private Gaeta, not the public one.
Gaeta quite literally goes rigid against him, almost like he’s forgotten Helo’s even there, that Helo’s anything more than a shoulder and a pair of arms to hide in. Slowly, his head shakes no against Helo’s neck, and then a rusty version of his gentle voice confirms it. “No.”
Helo kisses the top of Gaeta’s head, unsurprised by how that feels like the right thing to do. He strokes slow, soothing circles on the back of Gaeta’s civilian jacket, which he now notices is filthy on one side, like Gaeta fell- or was thrown to the floor. He hasn’t seen the other man’s face yet, since when he came on him Gaeta had been on his knees, huddled against the wall, shaking like his bones were rattling. He’s still shaking a little, residual shudders, and Helo sits up more. The cold wall and the floor are killing his leg, but he doesn’t want to seem like he’s pushing Gaeta away.
Across the…gift shop…is a grouping of couches, probably there to allow weary teachers a rest while their classes go crazy buying official Fleet souvenirs. They’re standard ugly furniture-from-a-box, but at least they aren’t icy metal. In one move, Helo dumps Gaeta off his lap, lumbers to his feet, picks the other man up, surprised at the weight of him, and carries him over to the couch, resettling Gaeta in his lap and pulling him back against his shoulder. With a sigh, Helo relaxes back into the couch, resting his leg along the seat.
Gaeta’s gone all stiff again, and he’s probably horrified that Helo just picked him up and carried him, not at all something that happens to the formal ex-Officer of the Watch, ever, but he’s still willing to allow himself to be held and comforted. In fact, he seems to be damned desperate for it, and Helo’s content to be here for as long as it takes him to pull himself together, to become cool, collected Felix Gaeta again.
Helo can feel the other man’s eyelashes against his throat as Gaeta blinks, and it tickles. A lot. Helo reaches in between them and removes Gaeta from his neck. He’s a wreck. Red eyes, salt streaks down his cheeks, and a bruise on his lower jaw. Helo catches his face, and Gaeta flinches. He turns his face into the light. “What happened to you?”
Gaeta drops his face into the curve of Helo’s hand. His lips are abraded, too, and the area around them is red, like some of the skin has been ripped away. His lashes lie matted against his cheeks, still wet, and as he shakes his head they brush against Helo’s palm like butterfly wings. His lips rest in Helo’s palm, and without thinking, Helo runs his thumb across Gaeta’s bruised mouth. There’s a little bit of something there- tape residue?
“Tell me, Felix. Who hurt you?”
The laugh he receives in return is bitter. “No one. Everyone. What was it like when you decided to die for Gaius Baltar?”
Whatever Helo’s expecting, it’s not this, and he thinks for a minute, because the question seems important. “I decided to die for someone I loved, for everyone I loved. Except I didn’t decide to die. I just decided that someone else needed to live.”
“Love.” Gaeta’s voice trembles. He shakes his head, and then suddenly his mouth is on Helo’s, kissing him hard. Helo opens his mouth to say something, what he’s not sure, because he’s got Felix Gaeta’s tongue in his mouth and Felix Gaeta’s hands all over his chest, and even though he’s confused as hell, he’s sure that Gaeta needs something right now, and if this is what he needs, Helo’s willing to provide it.
He relaxes deliberately under Gaeta, softening his mouth and sliding his hand up to curve around Gaeta’s neck, holding him closer and deepening the kiss, gentling it. Gaeta’s mouth trembles under Helo’s for a moment, and then he goes almost boneless, leaning into Helo and wrapping his other arm around Helo’s neck. Kissing him is a strange feeling. There’s no familiarity, like with Sharon, no instinctive awareness of how things should fit together, or a habit of how things have been before. The other man’s mouth is sweeter than he expected; trust Felix Gaeta to have excellent dental hygiene in the middle of an apocalypse. Helo’s being very careful of the smaller man’s bruised mouth as he kisses him back. Gaeta’s being less careful, though, and Helo’s afraid he’ll do himself some real damage. “Easy, Felix,” he murmurs against his lips.
He runs his hands over Gaeta’s back. Kissing a man is more or less like kissing a woman, except the smell is different, and some of the textures. He’s willing to do this, but since he got back to Galactica from Caprica’s grime, he’s gotten a lot more fastidious, and Gaeta’s a mess. There’s a restroom sign across the gift shop, and Helo debates for a moment, then stands up, taking Gaeta with him, keeping their mouths joined. He locks one powerful arm around Gaeta’s waist, lifting his feet off the floor, and starts walking toward the head, dangling Gaeta against his body. Gaeta tears his mouth away and starts to speak, but Helo stops him. “You smell, Felix.”
Gaeta turns bright red, dusky skin glowing like a beacon. “I’m sorry. I never would have…”
“Head’s right over here. You want to walk?”
Helo’s still moving, and as Gaeta shakes his head in the negative, Helo sweeps up the rest of him, folding Gaeta’s legs over his arm. He’s had a lot of practice with this, wrangling a drunk Starbuck, but she never curled into him as trustingly as Gaeta is, never tried to help by lifting herself with one arm while the other played with the cropped hair at his nape and her mouth pressed small, tentative kisses under his ear.
He bangs Felix’s foot into the doorframe and swears apologetically. The light doesn’t work, so Helo performs an awkward shuffle to prop the door open, juggling the younger man as best he can. He kicks a forgotten janitor’s bucket against the door and drops Gaeta off next to the shower, reaching around him to turn on the water and start it heating. He hopes it will heat- eternal civilian showers haven’t left a whole lot of surplus.
“I’ll be right back,” he reassures Gaeta, who is reaching for him as he steps away. “I’ll be back, Felix. It’s all right.” Ineffectual words, since he’s afraid that what happened to Gaeta is something worse than just a beating- he’s taken those himself for being who and what he is, what he chose, and he knows there are far worse things than physical pain. That kind of pain heals. Other kinds ache long after the cause is gone.
He hopes the crash as he forces the lock on the gift shop hasn’t frightened Gaeta worse than he already is. It’s pretty handy that the gift shop stocked Fleet-issue tanks and sweats with all the other crap, because he has something to put Gaeta back into after he cleans him up. The sizes seem to be geared more toward school kids, but eventually Helo realizes that the adult sizes are at the bottom of the pile, and grabs some tanks and pants, and then a set of tanks for himself. He’s pretty wet, too, down the chest.
Gaeta hasn’t moved. He’s still standing where Helo left him, staring into the mirror where his reflection looms in the dim light. His face is remote, like he’s gone somewhere inside himself. Helo’s seen that before, with both Starbuck and Sharon, and he knows how hard it is to get someone back if you let them spiral down that way.
He reaches around behind Gaeta and pulls him against his body, unbuttoning the other man’s olive drab shirt, and tugging it off like he would a child’s, one arm at a time. Gaeta’s t-shirt is soaked through on the back and underarms, and the smell is the rank sweat of fear. Helo’s seen Gaeta in the officers’ showers hundreds of times, but he seems more naked right now, fully clothed. Something catches his eye, and he picks up one of Gaeta’s wrists, then both of them. The abrasions are familiar, the raw red lines of someone who fought the flex cuffs as hard as he could. He’d had them on Caprica, when the Cylons captured him, ankles and wrists.
The shower’s finally heating up, and steam is beginning to pour out the open door. Helo digs into his uniform and comes up with a couple of glow sticks, also courtesy of the Galactica gift shop, and snaps them into illumination, kicking the door shut. Gaeta flinches as Helo chucks a pink light stick into the shower and two white ones into the sink. Helo adjusts the temperature in the shower and pulls off Gaeta’s t-shirt for him, since he’s showing no inclination to do it for himself.
“Frak, Felix!” Helo’s louder than he intended to be and he has to catch Gaeta as the other man cowers inadvertently. There’s a huge bruise on his stomach and another one on his ribs, and both his arms are marked with black and blue finger grips. His back has fading marks as well, faint and yellow in the clear white glow. “You have to tell me what happened to you.”
Gaeta bows his head. “Someone decided I needed to die for someone they loved.”
Helo cups his cheek and brings Gaeta’s eyes up to his. “What are you telling me, Felix?”
Gaeta laces his fingers through Helo’s. “I don’t want to talk about it, Helo. Not ever.” He closes his eyes, long lashes shadows on his stark cheekbones and laughs bitterly. “We call the Cylons inhuman.”
“Felix, you…”
“All I could think was that we’re all alone. That I’m all alone. We’re all we have, so what do we do when all we can do isn’t enough?”
Helo’s still not entirely sure what’s happened to Felix, but he does the best he can. “You aren’t alone. I’m here.”
“That’s going to make it harder later, Helo, not easier.”
Talking doesn’t seem to be helping, so Helo goes back to taking off Gaeta’s clothes, finding more deep bruising along Gaeta’s hip and on his outer thigh. He pushes the other man into the shower and adjusts the height of the showerhead for him as Gaeta tiredly leans his head against the wall. Helo removes his own clothes quickly; it’s cold in the converted hangar. Hot water is cascading down around them as Helo crams into the shower behind him and takes Gaeta into his arms again. Gaeta’s head rests against his collarbone just below where Sharon’s would, and Helo’s struck again by how strange this doesn’t feel. It’s not about sex, or desire, it’s about offering comfort and support in a world that’s been ripped in two, shaken around, and reassembled with pieces sticking out every which way. His shoulders are blocking the spray enough that Gaeta doesn’t have to add drowning to the miseries befalling him, and Helo makes a long arm out of the shower and scoops a bar of soap off the back of the sink. Soap’s pretty much a luxury aboard Galactica, after a year on the run, and Helo makes a note to mention to a few people that the contents of the gift shop might be worth exploring. It smells nice, an astringent, girly smell, and Helo sniffs appreciatively as he lathers his hands and sinks them into Gaeta’s hair. The other man’s curls are slicked back against his skull as Helo scrubs, poking out of the suds in random spikes, and Helo steps out of the way of the spray, letting it hit Gaeta in the face and rinse his hair.
Gaeta splutters a little bit and then turns into the stream, letting the water cascade down his body. Helo uses the time to soap up a little, and he’s about to wash his chest when Gaeta’s hand takes the soap from him. “Let me?” Gaeta’s voice is tentative, his swollen eyes questioning.
Helo nods and turns around so Gaeta can get to his back. The other man’s hands feel pretty blissful on his body, half massage, half lathering, and Helo lets out a deep sigh. Gaeta nudges his shoulder with one soapy hand, and Helo turns around so he can get the front. He’s looking down at the top of Gaeta’s head as Felix seriously washes his chest for him, and the look on Gaeta’s face is endearing. He’s so serious about everything he does, from cards to reports to washing someone. It’s as though someone will take his flight wings away if he misses an inch of dirt, and Helo gives in to impulse and sets his lips against the younger man’s temple.
Gaeta’s hands go still and he turns his face up to Helo, searching his eyes for something. He goes up on his toes and very gently presses his mouth against Helo’s, not so much a kiss as a question, and Helo answers by wrapping one arm around Gaeta’s waist and threading the other into his hair, opening his mouth to let the other man in. He didn’t realize before what a pleasure kissing Felix Gaeta was, and he lets himself enjoy it, lets Gaeta catch his lower lip between his teeth and worry it gently, lets Gaeta’s hands run over his skull in smooth, caressing sweeps.
The water’s steaming around them both, and the soap’s gone somewhere, but Helo’s enjoying the kissing too much to hunt for it, no matter how sorry he’ll be for the waste later. He’s still not entirely sure what this is, just that Gaeta seems to need this kind of tenderness specifically, and it’s not anything that Helo can’t or won’t give, or hasn’t offered to others before.
His hand hits the bad spot along Gaeta’s ribs, and the other man flinches and sucks in some water, and Helo steadies him while he coughs. Reaching up, he angles the showerhead toward the wall enough that the full spray isn’t hitting either of them any more, but the heat and warmth are still present. Gaeta’s rid of the water, and he pulls Helo’s head back down with enthusiasm, one of his hands sliding low on Helo’s back and caressing the lean muscle there. Helo responds to the invitation by pressing close, rubbing against Gaeta as the kisses grow faster and more intense, with a purpose now, lazy pleasure abandoned for something more urgent.
Gaeta’s hand is on him firmly, and Helo loses his balance and slams into the shower wall. The other man’s hand is sure and deft, and Helo suddenly becomes aware that a man’s touch and a woman’s touch are very different things- a man knows where and how hard, and a woman will always have to guess, and ask. Gaeta’s head is down, and his mouth is playing over Helo’s chest, finding sensitive spots and teasing them with his tongue. Half of his brain wants this so very badly, and the other half that hasn’t been turned into goo by the hand wrapped around him realizes that this isn’t about him, or shouldn’t be about him.
He stretches out his arms and manages to hold Gaeta far enough away that he can think. Felix’s eyes fly to his and Helo realizes that he thinks he’s overstepped, done something wrong, and Helo fixes it the best way he can, covering Gaeta with his own body and pressing him into the wall as his own hands roam over Gaeta’s slick, soft skin. He’s never really been interested in men, but he’s under the impression he must have drunkenly experimented in flight school one night, because something about the muscular feel of Gaeta seems like it might be familiar. He lets his hands roam over Gaeta’s hipbones and thighs, finding the other man’s mouth with his and possessing it hungrily.
He wants this now, for both Felix and himself, and he drops to his knees, raking his teeth over the flesh of Gaeta’s stomach and closing his hand around the other man, stroking him with a twist of his wrist, the same twist that he himself likes. Gaeta’s hands clutch at Helo’s head, but his short hair gives nothing to hold, and Gaeta’s hands flutter like birds seeking a purchase on icy branches as he arches into Helo.
It’s so sudden when it happens that Helo’s surprised. Gaeta’s shoulders slam into the wall and his whole body bows taut with the force of his release, legs shaking and hands fisting into his own flesh. For a long moment he’s propped against the wall of the shower, chest heaving, and then he slides down the wall into Helo’s waiting arms. Helo cradles him against his chest, feeling Gaeta’s heart beating hard against his own, and somehow contorts them both into a sitting position, trying to fit his long legs into the shower and eventually giving up and letting his feet sprawl out onto the cold floor outside.
Gaeta’s cuddled confidingly against Helo and Helo’s content to just sit and hold him. Gaeta needs to be held, needs to feel valued, and safe, and loved. The same things everyone needs, and wants, and has so much trouble finding. Helo’s lucky. He’s found all those things, and that gives him the ability to share them when he needs to. He’ll hold Gaeta now, and someday Gaeta will hold someone else. When it comes right down to it, the only thing they all have is each other. Nothing else matters.
Helo closes his eyes and leans back against the wall, Gaeta’s head nestled into the curve of Helo’s shoulder. There’s nothing more important than this right now. Nothing at all.