I.

Fic: Cracking

I'm BACK! Hopelessly far behind with more email and LJ to catch up on than the human brain can handle, but back. The good news is that my meetings were exactly as boring as I thought, and thus, I did manage to get a whole lot of writing done.

I'm not kidding when I say this story's taken on a life of it's own; according to "the PLAN", this was supposed to be a light, sort of humorous, vaguely porny bit. That's not what happened, though. Oh, so NOT what happened.

Fandom: BSG
Pairing: Gaeta/Dualla, Gaeta/Shelley Godfrey (yeah, you read that right)
Rating: Adult. Non-con, angst, language.
Word Count: 2462
Summary: Memory can be just as unreliable as a tampered vid.
Previous installments can be found here.

I.

“Mr. Gaeta,” Tigh rounds on him, nearly the moment he steps into the CIC, and Felix is hard-pressed to hold back the what the frak now? that crowds to the tip of his tongue.

It’s the smug satisfaction in the old bastard’s voice that does it. Tigh never sounds that happy unless he’s lowering the boom on someone.

Or maybe he’s just too tired to feel rational. Hard to tell, really.

“Sir?”

“Did you think you were exempt from the rules, Mr. Gaeta?” Tigh sidles closer, though his voice doesn’t drop any lower. If anything, it goes up another octave, cutting across everything else. “Think that you’re above such petty concerns as following orders?”

Oh, frak me, what? He throws a fast and frantic look at Dee, who looks as poleaxed as him. No help there.

Tigh gets closer still, way too close, if you ask Felix, stepping into his line of vision. That piggy self-satisfied gleam in his eyes shines a little brighter, like he’s been waiting for this. “Well?”

“S..sir? No, sir, of course I don’t.” He straightens his shoulders and spine and wonders if Tigh is really going to out him and Dee right here in front of the whole CIC. He wouldn’t put it past him. How did he find out? Does the Commander know?

“Orders, Mr. Gaeta. Yours were to report for mandatory fertility testing at 0700. Major Cottle is expecting you.”

Oh. That. His face flames hot as Nickerson and Echolls snicker in the background. Still, he feels almost weak kneed that it wasn’t about him and Dee after all. “I’m sorry, sir; I must have forgotten.”

“Well, don’t just stand there gawping, Lieutenant, go! I wouldn’t keep Cottle waiting too long if you know what’s good for you. He might just decide it’s time for your prostate exam as well.”

Again Felix’s teeth shut hard on a reply as Tigh chuckles at his own witticism. It could have been worse, he thinks, and sneaks a glance at Dee as he walks out the door.

Dee gives him a half-smile, and winks.


II.

The first thing he does is take off his uniform. He takes the time to fold the trousers carefully along the crease and hang the jacket. He brushes nonexistent lint from the sleeves, and scratches at a bit of grit on the cuff of the pants.

Bad enough he has to do this; he can’t contemplate returning to the CIC crumpled and stained like he’s just had a back-alley frak. But eventually, he can’t fuss with the folds or hang any longer and he realizes he’s nervous. Which is just stupid. They’re only asking him to do what men have been doing in bathrooms—and elsewhere—for time immemorial. So. O-kay…this should be simple. Right? Just take yourself in hand and do what men have been doing in bathrooms for time out of mind. No big deal. It was practically a career when he was a teen.

Masturbation on command, however, is proving to be an entirely different matter.

Everyone in the CIC knows why he’s down her. What he’s doing.

Doc Cottle—just on the other side of the door—knows what he’s doing.

No. Gods, don’t think about that, or you’ll never get this done.

It’s cold. He wonders if Cottle thinks that’s supposed to be conducive? What’s he thinking—Cottle doesn’t give a frak, of course he doesn’t.

Felix throws himself down in the single chair and leafs idly through the skin mag Cottle left. It’s been debauched; pages are crinkled and worn, some torn out entirely. The pictures left are mostly of a leggy blonde. She looks vaguely familiar, if a little thin for his tastes. She’s unselfconscious in her nudity, neither shy nor pouting nor predatory. Merely profoundly naked.

In any case, it’s not having the desired response.

Again he’s conscious of being cold—colder than the room’s chill can account for—and his stomach’s as sour as spoilt milk. The magazine’s paper rattles in his trembling fingers. It gets worse as he watches, and the book tumbles from his hands to fall open.

From the page, the model regards him from beneath loose blonde curls…

…like cornsilk.

He vomits in the sink. It reeks of copper and it's flecked through with blood. Because the gods have a sense of humor, he’s got a raging hard on. Still something about that twined feeling of revulsion and desire is familiar, a key that unlocks a puzzle that’s been in the back of his mind for months now.

Swallowing thickly against the heaving of his stomach, Felix cranes to look again at the face staring impassively from the page. There’s something about her, something that reminds him—impossibly—of Shelley Godfrey.


III.

Shelley Godfrey, the Woman Who Wasn’t There. There’s an old rhyme, isn’t there? Yesterday upon the stair/ I saw a woman who wasn’t there/ She wasn’t there again today/ I wish that woman’d stay away…

“Mr. Gaeta, could you please escort Ms. Godfrey to the guest quarters?”

“Quarters?” Godfrey looks startled.

Tigh regards her with the faintest of surprise. Completely fake, of course, the XO’s enjoying this. “You bring pretty serious accusations against a respected advisor of the President. If your accusations are correct, you yourself could be in serious danger, Ms. Godfrey. If they are not…” Tigh spreads his hands. “Of course we’ll do what we can to make your stay with us comfortable.”

Godfrey’s lips split into a thin, taut smile. “Of course.” Her eyes go past Tigh to him and her smile warms. “Thank you.”

“Ma’am.” He gestures politely to the door.

“And what is your title…” Godfrey tilts her head as she studies his uniform. “Captain?”

“Lieutenant,” he corrects. “It’s this way.” Belatedly, he remembers her question. “I’m the Officer of the Watch.” It seems prideful to add the ‘Senior’ to it, and although he is proud, the last think he wants this woman to think is he’s trying to impress her. Quite the contrary. He doubts she’d know the difference, anyway.

“So that makes you…what? Third in command?”

He’s surprised, though he does his best to hide it. “I suppose it does.”

“Hmm.” Godfrey gives him a brilliant smile, then looks around. “Galactica is quite the maze, isn’t it?”

“That she is.” The observation doesn’t bother him. Galactica wasn’t his first choice of assignments out of the acad, but the past two years of service under Adama have given him a perverse pride in her every antiquated system and kink. He spent his first month aboard learning to find his way around without looking; he can walk her corridors in his sleep. “You get used to it. Here’s your room.”

He undogs the hatch for her and lets her precede him. As a Battlestar, Galactica hasn’t had many guests, but the few it has had have been his responsibility, so he knows the spiel by heart as he demonstrates the few amenities of the spartan little room, ending with the comm.

“If you dial up to the CIC,” he shows her the code list, “we can arrange for someone to escort you wherever you might need to go.”

(flicker)

He turns from the comm and finds Godfrey just behind him, too close. His eyes dart to the hatch, and finds it suddenly and inexplicably closed. He straightens and tugs his uniform jacket straight, retreating behind it. This, unfortunately, is not a first, either.

(flicker)

Here, now, in this moment of recollection, Felix is aware of a crack in his memory; a fracture of two edges that don’t quite align. Or maybe—as he thinks more closely about these strange and claustrophobic couple of days—like a tampered vid; surface layers that don’t code properly all the way through, bleeding into ghosts and doubled images.

He remembers clearly the intensity of her expression, even though he’s hard pressed to name what emotion it’s supposed to express.

He remembers the feelings of airlessness, of being trapped, of nervousness, and being angry with himself, because for all her height, Shelley Godfrey couldn’t weigh a buck ten soaking wet.

He remembers taking a step away from her nonetheless, uneasy by her nearness, and saying, “Well, unless there’s anything else you need…” the age old close to his orientation speech…

(flickerflickerflicker)


IV.

Godfrey’s hand pistons out, pins him to the bulkhead and knocks all the air out of his lungs. His head connects with the metal hard enough for the room to swim sickly, and he fights to stay conscious.

(…unless there’s anything else you need…?)

(Actually, yes…Lieutenant, was it?)

(Yes ma’am.)

(Commander Adama tells me you’ve worked rather closely with Dr. Baltar…)

…he wants to scream, but there’s no air in his lungs to do it. Her strength is terrifying, inhuman. The steady, mechanical pressure of her palm against his sternum gives his lungs no room to reinflate, only worsened as he flops and struggles.

Uselessly.

Uselessly.

I. Can’t. Breathe…

There’s no expression on Godfrey’s face. None at all. She claws at his belt.

(Ma’am?)

(I guess I just can’t understand how a man like that, a man who would comprehensively betray his own race, hides his treachery so well that no one even suspects…)

Beating on her hands, clawing her wrists and forearms has no effect other than the tightening of those expressionless lips. Black edges his vision, creeps like ink and gathering shadow to tangle his limbs and his brain.

Don’t…

(…don’t think it’s fair to condemn Dr. Baltar ahead of the evidence…)

(Fair? Twelve planets, billions of human souls wiped out in a matter of hours, and you want to talk about ‘fair’?)

(We don’t know that was Dr. Baltar’s fault…)

…his own fault. They’d said it; anyone can be a Cylon. Anyone. He should’ve been more vigilant. He should have been more careful.

…oh Gods, don’t…

One handed, she drops his pants and short with brutal, impersonal efficiency, leaving him naked and vulnerable.

He can’t move. Can’t breathe. Her hand is punching a hole right through him…

…no, please, don’t; Lords of Kobol, don’t let her…

…O Gods, breathe, I want to breathe, I can’t breathe…

He’s flaccid when her mouth engulfs him, but anoxia, friction and sucking, wet, sliding heat have their effect regardless of what his sinking brain wants.

(…wants to be true. Gaius Baltar’s never thought of anyone but himself.)

(With all due respect, ma’am, it would seem you’re the one who’s working from what she wants to be true.)

(You worship the ground he walks on, don’t you?)

(Dr. Baltar is an exceptional mind…)

(Has he tried to have you yet? I wouldn’t put it past him; it would appeal to his megalomania, a little hero-worship…)

Consciousness is slips like wind through his fingers. The darkness covers everything in shrouds of lightlessness except for the gleam of lamplight on the flaxen luster of her hair. Similarly, there’s only emptiness and numbness inside him, save for the tightening ache in his groin. He’s so hard, Gods save him, but he’d cut off his own dick with a rusty bandsaw if it mean he could keep it from that filthy, inhuman mouth…

…please, Lords, make it stop, make it stop, make it STOP…

O Gods, he’s going to come…

…right in that thing’s mouth…

…let me pass out, let me die, O Gods, make me a stone… Lords of Kobol, keepers of all your children, protect me, hold me in the palm of…your…ah…hand…

…no…

It’s not an explosion.

Rather, it’s the dark obverse, a black hole that devours everything. It’s an emptying, a theft of life and essence and self. The ring of black finally closes, cruel as the Cylon’s lips as she rises and swipes her tongue over his mouth, filthy with his own taste and smell.

Grateful the darkness has come for him at last, Felix surrenders.

(I’m not sure what you mean, ma’am, and I resent the implication.)

(Do you, now?)

(I’ll leave you to your rest. I’m sure you’ve had a trying day.)

(Haven’t we all, Lieutenant Gaeta?)


V.

Felix shivers a little and straightens his jacket. The whole interview with Godfrey’s given him a sour taste in his mouth. What a horrible woman; he’s amazed Commander Adama’s given her the time of day, let alone given any credence to her absurd claims.

Though, in the interests of justice, he supposed Adama has no choice but to investigate any claims, no matter how preposterous. That just means he’ll have to work that much harder to disprove the vid.

With all the hysteria going on, it’s unsurprising, he guesses, but he doesn’t see any reason Dr. Baltar should be ruined because of it.

Frak. He runs a hand over his body, frowning. His stomach hurts .

He should get to it; Adama and Tigh, not to mention Dr. Baltar, are all waiting on the results, but instead, he goes down to the showers, plagued by a vague sense of dirtiness. Besides, it will wake him up. He scrubs in the hottest water he can stand, until his skin is nearly as sore as the bruise he discovers on his sternum.

It’s funny; when you look at it at the right angle—and how the frak did he get that without noticing?—the bruise almost looks like a hand.


VI.

Felix throws up again; thick ropy chunks that stink of more blood than bile. His diaphragm twists and hitches, hurting like something’s torn.

O Gods, O Lords of Kobol… He slides boneless to the floor, no strength left in his legs. What did she do to me? What did that Cylon toaster bitch do to me?

Other pieces now; hidden broken pieces that tumble into place, making a picture more hideous than he can contemplate.

Arranging for a flitter, a one-man short-range vessel, to dock at one of the unused port side docking stations.

Erasing the records of the ship, it’s docking and lift-off sequences from all of Galactica’s logs.

Purging Godfrey’s image from the security tapes between the corridor she ‘disappears’ from to the flitter.

Leaving her glasses on the strategy board.

Handing Sharon the gun.

Handing. Sharon. The. Gun.

Oh, Gods.

His stomach boils and lurches, but there’s nothing left to come up. Felix hasn’t cried since he was a boy, but his eyes burn now, and his eyelashes are wet as he rests his forehead against the cold metal cabinet front.

”Lieutenant Gaeta to the CIC.” Dee’s voice chimes out over the comm. At nearly the same time, the lighting flickers. Barely an eyeblink, but noticeable. “Lieutenant Gaeta please report to the CIC.”

Cottle pounds on the door.

“Yeah!” Felix shouts back irritably, not moving. “I’m coming.”

“I sincerely hope not,” Cottle replies.


Notes: You know, I'm a little worried about how mean I've been to Tigh in all of this. I hope no one gets the impression I don't like him. He's a bastard, and *I'd* want to kill him, if we ever met in RL, but I love his character. Really.

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