Fic: Two Wrongs
It just won't STOP!
So...this started with
Were it Not That I Have Bad Dreams (which was supposed to be a one-shot),
then continued in
Someone Else's Life (which was supposed to be a one-shot)...are we seeing
a pattern here? I wasn't even a Gaeta/Dualla 'shipper before this!
This shouldn't have happened.
Fandom: BSG
Pairing: Gaeta/Dualla
Word Count: 1442
Rating: I think the euphemism is "Adult Themes". Mention of sexing and some
language.
I.
For the first time in days without number, Felix doesn’t
dream.
Awareness comes slowly, different from the normal lurch to consciousness.
He feels slow, as if wrapped in a thick layer of cotton batting, like when
his aunts—Petra, Alma, and Angelie—would come over to sew quilts
with his mother.
Still later, he remembers that what he’s wrapped in, what’s wrapped
around him is Dee.
How unexpected. How completely unforeseen.
He thinks she’s finally dropped off to sleep; her breath is even and
slow against the back of his neck, her arm lax where it curves over his chest.
He doesn’t want to move. Moving means waking, waking means thinking,
and he’s not ready for either yet.
Soon enough he’ll have to. Soon enough—he darts a look at his
chrono—duty will require.
But right now, he’s comfortable, and though aching with tiredness,
he feels less like he’s scrabbling on the crumbling and ragged edge.
Lords of Kobol, he actually got more than fifteen minutes of sleep.
But more than that, he doesn’t want to wake her. Doesn’t want
to shatter this moment. He looks down at her hand, splayed gently over his
heart, chocolate against golden.
Neither one of them is sentimental. They are creatures of duty. His feeling
for her is based first in competence. She’s good at what she does—he
struggles to keep his mind out of the gutter here. She understands the spider’s
web of communiqués intellectually and instinctually, plucking the
strings that keep them all connected. He understands that. Good at his
job is what he lives to be.
Maybe it’s stupid. But it’s not until this moment, looking at
nothing more than her hand and arm, he realizes her loveliness extends to
her body, too.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. He’s perfectly well aware Petty
Officer Dualla is a good-looking woman. He’s not blinded or gelded,
for frak’s sake. But he doesn’t think about it. Doesn’t
let himself. Because he’s his duty first, and she’s a
fellow crewman.
It’s a little different when you’ve been sheathed inside that
person. That wasn’t duty; not by a long shot.
And that’s where things get complicated.
Felix doesn’t like complicated. Complicated gets people killed—look
at Sharon and the Chief. Okay, yes , Sharon was a Cylon, but what
the Chief felt for her was purely human. And their assignation not only
put their lives at risk, they’d resulted in the deaths of plenty others.
Good people, who deserved better. That was complicated.
This shouldn’t have happened, he thinks, and wonders which bothers
him more. That it did, or that it shouldn’t.
“And where the hell were you, last shift?” Kara asks, with no
preamble, setting her tray down at Dee’s table and throwing a leg over
to straddle the opposite chair. “I turned around and you were gone.
Did you take Roslin’s words to heart and sneak off to go make babies
for the next generation?”
She knows Kara means it as a joke. She knows that. Her blush reflex,
however, seems to take the jibe very seriously, damn it.
Kara’s mouth drops open on a mouthful of rubbery eggs, and her eyes
widen. “Sweet Lords of Kobol!” she says, an imp of glee lighting
her eyes. “You did! Dee! Damn! Who was it? I know it wasn’t
Billy, because he left with Roslin. You slut!”
“Kara,” Dee pleads softly. She wonders if her whole face is
going to ignite, and if it does, does that mean she can die in peace.
But Kara, as usual, is immune to pleas. She hops up on her chair with the
bounciness of a kid, holding her arms up in the air. “Can I have everybody’s
attention?” Kara’s got her flight instructor’s voice on;
the one that carries for miles. Dee buries her face in her hands, which
at least, are cold. “Hey! This is important! Can we have
a round of applause for our own little Dee, who finally saddled up and got
some!”
Oh gods.
Get your head up, girl. Her grandmother’s voice is the one
she hears most at times like this, scratchy with cigarettes and softly drawling.
Never let them see you all flummoxed.
Dee’s stomach is sour, but she drags her head up and smiles, nods
and waves through the assorted applause, catcalls, cheers and whistles.
And there are a lot. Towards the back of the mess, she thinks she even sees
money changing hands. Not much about life in the Fleet fazes her, but when
did her sex life—or lack thereof—become so interesting?
Um. Maybe about the time you frakked Felix Gaeta? an internal voice
opines. At the same moment, she feels the sense-memory of him buried inside
her to the hilt and the furnace behind her skin adds another several degrees,
with a whole body shiver as a chaser.
It shouldn’t have happened.
That, at least, is crystal clear amid the confused tangle of the rest of
her feelings. The ones she, as yet, has no desire to untangle.
The ones like Why?, and, Have you completely lost your mind?
, and—worst, oh, worst--I want to do that again. A lot, if possible
.
It shouldn’t have happened. She doesn’t think about her
fellow crewman that way. Even Billy--oh gods, Billy --skirts
the edge of uncomfortability, only the tacit stamp of approval from the Commander
and President Roslin making it remotely acceptable. She didn’t think
either one of them would be nearly so forgiving if they found out…
If she and Felix…
Don’t, Dee (Ana?). Just…don’t.
The moment interest has died down enough to make exit unremarkable, Dee gets
up and dumps her dishes into the recycler. She wasn’t that hungry
anyway.
“Hey! Dee! Dualla! Hey!”
Dee stops and Kara jogs to catch up with her, holding her tags down with
one hand. There’s pink under Kara’s fair skin, and Dee’s
not sure if it’s exertion—unlikely—or embarrassment, which
seems equally unlikely. There’s not much that can put Starbuck to
shame.
“Hey,” Kara’s voice is lower. “If I stepped over
a line in there…” Her eyes search Dee’s, but Dee’s
had too much experience to go round wearing her heart in her face, unlike
Helo, or Lee…or Kara herself. “Frak. Look, I’m
sorry, I just…”
Dee shakes her head. She’s not mad. There’s no point in getting
mad with Kara; she’s always going to be tactless and brash, and thinking
otherwise just leads to a whole mess of bad feelings. Dee’s learned
that, even if Lee hasn’t. Besides, Kara never means any harm. “It’s
fine,” she says, and something goes out of Kara’s shoulders.
“I’m fine.”
“Is it about Billy?” Kara asks. Her head tilts to one side like
an inquisitive little bird. “Because frankly, Dee, if he hasn’t
closed the deal yet…”
“No.” Dee reaches out and touches the bulkhead, struggling for
the words to explain this to Kara, who’s practically made screwing
up and casual sex a dual specialty. Will Kara understand the sick feeling
of disappointment in herself? Her fear that she’ll see that same disappointment
reflected in Felix—Lieutenant Gaeta’s—eyes when she enters
the CIC? Kara’s not nearly so blithe as she would seem, but this seems
out of her league. “No,” Dee answers finally. “It’s
not about Billy.”
That’s a whole other problem, thank you kindly.
“Well, you sure don’t look like a woman that’s spent her
off-shift having great sex, Dee, that’s all I’m saying.”
A little of the grin returns to Kara’s face, and completely against
her will, Dee finds a smile in return. “Because it was, wasn’t
it? Great sex?”
”Kara!” Dee pushes her, laughing and blushing at the
same time.
“Oh, come on, Dee! You won’t tell me who…you can
at least tell me that. Was it good? No, scratch that. Was it great?”
Another flashback. Another shiver that racks her from head to foot in mini-orgasm.
Frak , she thinks, even though she’s not much for cussing.
When she opens her eyes, Kara’s grin is wider, knowing. Dee rolls
her eyes. “Yeah,” she says, knowing what the other woman wants
to hear. And because it's true. Then she sobers, again thinking of this
first horrible entry back into the CIC. She’ll do it, and with aplomb,
because that’s who she is, but she’d be lying if she didn’t
admit that part of her just wants to crawl under her blankets and cry. “But
it was a mistake.”
Kara shrugs with the nonchalance of a woman who’s made lots. “So
don’t do it again.”
“Oh, trust me,” Dee says fervently. “I won’t.”
It’s a resolution that will last all of twenty-six hours.
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