Fic: "With Crime Comes Punishment"

[trovia]

Title: with crime comes punishment
Characters: Hot Dog & Helo, talk of Gaeta, Baltar, Sharon
Pairings: Hot Dog/Gaeta
Wordcount: ~2500 words
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Rating: Teen.
Spoilers: for "How to live and love..." but not for canon
Beta: ebuchala, thank you very much!
Summary: "Mind telling me what the hell you were thinking? Couldn’t you have

Comments

[daybreak777]

Wow, this was wonderful! I wasn't sure because I hadn't read the original and I'm not sure about Hotdog, really. I don't like him much in canon. But I like anyone who cares about Felix and Brendan cares so much here! Aww! Another thing I really, really liked about this story was your use of the English vernacular. Here are a few of my favorites:

"Promotions were a bitch."
Hee! Poor Helo. :-)

"If Baltar had had anything to do with making Felix be like this, he deserved to lose a hell of a lot more than just a couple of teeth."
How tough and pilot-like! This isn't the same Hotdog that got knocked by Starbuck, huh?

Here is another very apt line about Felix:

He was all hard edges and meaningful silences, like a book that made sense only as long as you ignored that you didn’t know most words
This tells me a lot about Felix and Felix and Brendan's relationship.

I keep trying, that’s what I do. I just make frakking effort . . . Either it’s important to you or it’s not. If it is, you should just frakking go and act on it instead of

[trovia]

Wow, that was one of the greatest reviews ever. Thank you! :) My use of the English vernacular, huh? I didn't even know that term. You're making me feel proud of myself. Again.

You don't like Hot Dog? Really? I like him a lot. I think both my two Gaeta/Hot Dog fics are amongst the best I've written in English, too. He's very versatile.

How tough and pilot-like! This isn't the same Hotdog that got knocked by Starbuck, huh?

*snickers* The very same. It's just really hard to make him mad enough to fight for real. I don't know if he'd punched Baltar if Baltar wasn't such a wimp, anyway. Brendan knows his limits. I guess you'd need to know the other story for context to recognize canon!Hot Dog. But I promise he's there. If you don't take into account S4.5, anyway. :)

You have quite the penchant for unrequited love situations. :-)You know, I hadn't even looked at it from that angle. But you're right. I totally have a fic kink for unrequited love. Heh. It's such a unique emotional situation, because when a character is troubled, I

[daybreak777]

I like your Hotdog here. But on the show? I liked that he followed Kara in AoC. He manages to survive until the end. But I see him as a little brother sometimes. He gets funny lines like, "This ought to be different" and "How many dead chicks are there?" And he got beat up by Starbuck. And had some itchy thing. ;-)

But! You are a skillful enough writer to make me like your Hotdog despite my issues with canon Hotdog. And your Hotdog is Brendan. Who loves Felix. Yay!

I definitly do have to check out your Hotdog fic to see how canon!Hotdog transforms into a man in love with Felix. I'll catch up, you know I will.

You're making me feel proud of myself. Again.
You are a great writer, Trovia. And getting better and better. I'm glad I get to read your stories. :-D

[trovia]

Thanks very much! Those lines made me snicker when I wrote them, so I'm glad you pointed them out.

I'm much in love with the pairing, and it has a lot to do with the fact that I couldn't picture it at all on first sight, either. :)

[eaocon]

This is very good - I loved the original story, esp the non-canon direction it went.

[trovia]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked the fics.

Your icon makes me smile.

[safenthecity]

Awwww. Brendan is so sweet here. Punching Baltar in the face was one of my favorite parts of How To Live And Love, so to see this little fallout for Brendan was nice. I like the fact that Zarek put on a public show of outrage, but since it was Baltar, he didn't really care. That little tidbit made me grin. Very, very nice.

[trovia]

Thanks muchly! Hee, Zarek. Life really didn't improve one bit for Baltar when Roslin died. That poor bastard probably doesn't even know what/who hit him, or why. :D

[safenthecity]

LOL. If anything, his life got worse. Zarek fought Baltar's right to a trial harder than Roslin. ;)

(Did you get the e-mail I just sent, by the way, about the Cavil thing?)

[millari]

What unexpected fun to go back into the Brendan/Felix 'verse again! I'd always wondered about the details of Brendan punching Baltar and what the consequences had been.

How interesting too to see that old fic from Brendan's point of view! He'd seemed so solid and confident in the fic, which I guess was a front he was presenting for Felix. It was so intriguing to find out that Brendan actually had a lot of doubts and worry about Felix caring about him. I'm reminded again so pleasantly how touching his loyalty to Felix was.

I loved how insightful Helo was and how he saw right through Brendan's deed. And I was impressed at how you had me one moment sympathizing with Helo when he was talking about how Gaeta never shares himself easily and how frustrating he's found that, then a minute later, you had me seeing it from Brendan's point of view - that Helo just wasn't trying hard enough, that none of Felix's friends had been trying hard enough.

It made him nervous not to know what Felix was thinking about the incident, but it was a good

[trovia]

Thank you for that very lovely comment. :)

Brendan, I think, is very solid and confident and patient, but he also knows he doesn't have all the answers, and he's anxious about that. Finding out that Felix wasn't just planning on killing himself, but also lying about it through his teeth, showed Brendan that all isn't what it seems with Felix, and that it's easy to misread him. It also scared him shitless. He didn't just take the pills away because he was trying to prevent the suicide; it was also an expression of helplessness. It's a gesture that wouldn't work for everybody (if I were Felix, it would make me furious). But Brendan and Felix are meant for each other, and so it was exactly what Felix needed. :) Incidentally, I think one reason that Brendan fell for Felix was that he tried so hard to figure Felix out, so he looked real close, and he found all kinds of things he liked. But the first thing he noticed was that Felix is very attractive. ;)

I myself often fall into the trap of writing pairings between characters that may