Scar Tissue

[falafel_musings]

Summary: A missing scenes fic exploring the darker side of Gaeta and his new relationship with Hoshi. Set between the beginning of S4 and the end of the webisode series 'The Face of the Enemy'.
Characters: Gaeta/Hoshi with appearences from Dee, Racetrack, Cottle, Tigh and Helo.
Rating: NC-17 (dark themes, drug abuse and sexual content)
Disclaimer: I do not frakking own BSG.
Spoilers: Up to Webisode 8.
Dedication: forlls_mutant andingrid_m.
Author's Note: Includes a short segment called Scars originally written for the bsg slashathon. 

Scar Tissue

 

Felix sat watching the flickery TV set in the corner of Joe's bar. The news reporter kept switching between stories. There was the one about Gaius Baltar’s shocking acquittal and the other one about Captain Thrace’s miraculous return. Felix wasn’t sure which of the two news items made him feel worse.

 

It was a good thing this guy kept buying him drinks.

 

Hoshi. That was the guy’s name. The communications officer from the Pegasus. His first name was Louis or Lucas; something like that. Felix really should have known his name by now. They had been working together in the CIC for months. Well, whoever he was, he was returning from the bar with fresh drinks in his hands and setting them down on Felix’s table. He couldn’t argue with that.

 

“There you go…” said the Hoshi guy, smiling pleasantly. “One tall glass of ambrosia with a whisky chaser. Don’t drink it so fast this time.”

 

Felix smiled back at him, reaching for the glass whilst leaning a little too heavily against the guy’s arm. Hoshi raised a hand, brushing the curls away from his ears, still beaming at Felix like he was an adorable puppy.

 

“Really, I’m not drunk,” Felix slurred. “But I need to tell you something...”

 

Hoshi perked up an eyebrow, seeming intrigued.

 

“Oh yeah…what’s that?” he asked, smirking in amusement.

 

Felix tapped his nose, lowering his voice to a whisper.

 

“I lied in court,” he admitted clumsily.

 

Hoshi’s smile faded. He swallowed, waiting for an explanation. Felix realised that at some point he had taken the guy’s hand. Their fingers were jumbled together.

 

“I had to…” Felix murmured. “I knew they were going to let Baltar walk, but I had to try and stop it. I know it was perjury, but I was trying to do the right thing. Sometimes the right thing and the truth aren’t the same. I mean…I was the one who told the truth about who won the election. Look where that got us…”

 

Hoshi nodded solemnly. “Dee was talking about the exact same thing. She was saying the system is broken and it needs to be taken apart.”

 

Felix glanced over his shoulder. Dee was sitting at the bar with Racetrack. Both girls were watching their table, sniggering and elbowing each other, like they were waiting for Hoshi make his move. He rolled his eyes.

 

“Baltar’s a traitor…” Felix continued, turning back to Hoshi. “I might not have been there when he signed the death list, but I know he’s guilty. He didn’t care about any of the people on that list. He never cared about me…”

 

Hoshi blinked. “About you, Felix?”

 

Felix shook his head, trying to settle his emotions.

 

“No, I mean…his people,” he amended. “Gaius didn’t care about all those people he swore to protect. He only cares about himself.”

 

Hoshi nodded again. “I understand. I won’t tell anyone.”

 

Felix snorted again, looking back to where Dee and Racetrack were seated at the bar. The girls were still staring at them expectantly. Felix smirked, deciding to give them what they wanted. He downed his chaser.    

 

“Hey listen…could you please do me a favour?” he began.

 

“Sure,” said Hoshi. “You name it.”

     

“Take me back to your rack and frak my brains out.”

 

Hoshi’s eyes widened. His cheeks turned a ravishing shade of pink. It took the guy a moment to regain his composure, smoothing over his embarrassment with a smile. He ran his fingers through Felix’s curls again, settling his hand on his nape. Felix teetered forwards in his chair and pressed a kiss to his lips. He could hear the girls sniggering from across the barroom. Felix was also struggling not to laugh. He didn’t want to mess this up, even if it was only a one night thing.

 

Felix seriously needed to get laid tonight. Helo had picked him to serve as navigation officer on the classified Demetrius mission. He didn’t want to go, but those were his orders. He was to report to the hanger deck at 0300 hours so their ship could jump away before the fleet woke up to find them gone.

 

Felix would have to leave Hoshi in a similar way, slipping out from his bunk while he was still sleeping. He wouldn’t tell Hoshi he was leaving. Why complicate matters? He could always explain when he came home.  

 

 

~*~

 

 

At first, it was just Felix alone in his bed, singing to distract himself from the pain.

 

There was Cottle too of course and the nurses who came by to change his bandages and dose him up with morpha. There were also the silhouettes of mystery visitors who lingered behind his curtains, not daring to come forwards into the light. He wondered who these people were, though he didn’t wish to see them. Felix sang loud and clear, building his song like an ivory tower around himself.

 

For those first few days it was just him alone. It was just his voice, his cold sweats and the sharp ceaseless tingling of his phantom leg.

 

Then one morning Felix woke from a fitful sleep to find that somebody was holding his hand. He tried to sit up, wincing with the effort.   

 

“Shhh…just lay still…” said the man at his beside.

 

He grimaced and nodded, doing as the kind voice advised him. 

 

“It’s me, Felix,” the voice whispered. “It’s Louis.”

 

Felix frowned, trying to remember if he knew a Louis. He blinked his eyes and realised his visitor was Lt. Hoshi; the guy he had been thinking of as my last frak in two lousy months. He had been certain his first name was Lucas.

 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” Hoshi continued. “It’s been crazy up in the CIC. Ever since that cylon baseship arrived and then jumped away again with the President and half of our pilots onboard…well, it’s just been chaos.”

 

Felix could only manage a groan in response. Hoshi squeezed his hand.

 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he added hastily. “I’m just going to sit here. Sing if you want to. You have the most beautiful voice, Felix.”

 

Felix snorted at the compliment. Then he flushed.

 

After that morning, Hoshi came to sit by his bedside and hold his hand whenever he had a break from his duties. Felix liked the softness and warmth of his palm. It was soothing…like morpha, like ambrosia…Felix could already feel himself becoming a user. Hoshi insisted that he wanted to be there for him. He told Felix he should call him Louis. He told him to ask if there was anything he needed. When Cottle released him from sickbay Louis was there to take him up to his room.

 

Yes, Felix’s injury had afforded him some new quarters. No longer would he have to share a dormitory with the other junior officers. Felix had a big roomy space with a double bed, a wardrobe, his own table and chair. A technician had fitted a seat and railings to his shower unit so that he could sit down to wash. Louis had brought up his clothes, his possessions and tried to make the room homely for Felix. He was more like his nurse than his boyfriend. He helped Felix to dress, he cooked him food, he fussed over him and he held on tightly to his hand.

 

Felix was thankful for his help, but he was embarrassed by the attention and scared by the vulnerability of his new body. He often felt relieved when Louis returned to the CIC. When he was alone in his quarters Felix had nothing to do but practice walking on his crutches. Occasionally he would lift his head and catch his reflection in the mirror or the window. His skin was pale as a desert moon. His hair was turning grey at the edges. Lines and shadows had darkened his eyes.

 

He looked old and sickly, haggard and frail.  

 

Felix didn’t want to believe it. He was twenty-seven.

 

 

~*~

 

 

Felix sat in his chair, gulping from the whisky bottle that sat on his desk. The liquor burned on his tongue. It tasted of rusty metal and foul dreams. He gazed out of his window into the cold black void; into the permanent night. Beneath its foreboding curtain lay the planet of ash, the garden of scars. Their murdered promise land. The shuttles had yet to return from the planet’s surface, but their messages had already reached those who had stayed behind on Galactica.

 

Earth was dead. Their last hope in the universe was gone.  

Louis was kneeling before the chair, his lips sliding over Felix’s cock, taking him deep into his throat. Felix hummed in dull satisfaction, his tired eyes fluttering open and closed. The heat in his loins was as comforting as the whisky. His clammy skin stuck to the back of the chair. He was naked apart from his vest. The ugly stump of his leg was exposed; a twist of scar tissue that looked like a clenched fist. Somehow Louis was ignoring it. His hands stroked up Felix’s inner thighs, cupping his balls in his palms. Felix moaned, his head lolling back. Louis had hung up his uniform on the door of his wardrobe. Felix imagined it bursting into flames.

His cock twitched against Louis's tongue. Felix was close to climaxing now, but he was reluctant to withdraw from the warming folds of that mouth. Felix liked that it was Louis on his knees and not him. It certainly made a change. He liked that there was one person on this ship who was lonelier, more malleable and more desperate to please than he was. Felix placed his hand flat on Louis's head, petting him lazily, while slugging another mouthful from the whisky bottle.

Felix imagined himself as Gaius Baltar. He imagined himself as Colonel Tigh. He hated them all and he loathed himself. It infuriated him that he had followed those leaders to this end. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he were blind. Louis's mouth was still there; licking his wounds, soothing the burn...

Felix felt himself exploding in the darkness. His mind boiled away like a dying star. His torso twisted and shuddered in the chair. His leg sang. He felt like his whole body might as well be a scar; tingling with the phantom pain of all that he had lost. Felix started to laugh and whimper before Louis’s mouth rose up and covered his lips – sealing his hurt inside, bandaging it with love.

A kiss to halt his heart’s own apocalypse.

 

 

~*~

 

 

The ships returned from Earth and at first, nothing really changed.

 

Felix imagined that the fleet were in shock. For so long they had journeyed. They had fought their way through the stars. They had always been promised that Earth would be their reward. But all they ever had were their routines. So they kept on doing their jobs. They kept on following orders. What else was there to do? They were all still struggling with the sad futility of this quest.

 

Yes, everything stayed the same…except that now they were living without hope and they were living with the cylons. Sixes, Sharons and Leobens roamed the fleet, the very same models that had held humanity in a state of oppression on New Caprica. There were the new cylons too; the sleeper models who had been with them all along. There was Colonel Tigh and Chief Tyrol, the cylons who had tried to airlock Felix for being a traitor and a collaborator. There was Samuel Anders, the cylon who had shot a hole through Felix’s leg, crippling him for an attempt at mutiny. They were all cylons, they were all free and they were all forgiven.

 

And that was just…fine. Except that now Felix wasn’t sleeping. He was stumbling in the corridors. He kept dropping his pills. His crewmates looked at him with a pitying concern. They didn’t trust his calculations anymore.     

 

In the end, they sent Felix for a week’s recovery on the Zephyr.

 

Then the Raptor jumped to the wrong location.

 

Then the passengers on that Raptor began to die one by one.

 

Then Felix Gaeta opened his eyes and he saw the world for what it was really like. And what he saw was a sea of corruption, swelling all around him, drowning human souls in its tide. Pretty soon it would swallow them all. Unless he did something to stop it. Unless he found a way to put things right...

 

Yes. It was time for a reckoning.

 

      

~*~

 

 

Louis carried Felix out of the Raptor in his arms. He was smiling; triumphant, like a storybook hero. Felix was bloody, nauseous and dizzied by the sudden rush of air. He rested his head under Louis’s chin. He clung to him like a security blanket. He had never felt so grateful for this man’s love.

 

Felix had someone now. And there was part of him that just wanted to stay with that someone and be comforted. He never wanted to leave the Galactica again. It seemed like every time he returned from an excursion there was a stretcher, a drip and an oxygen mask waiting for him in the hanger deck.   

 

For a moment, Felix almost forgot his anger.

 

Then he woke up to find himself in the sickbay again and Cottle was trying to push another frakking cannula into his nose. Felix struggled, pushing their hands away and demanding to speak with the Admiral. Cottle gave him a stern look before threatening him with restraints and sedatives. Felix came close to losing his temper before Louis squeezed his hand and begged him to calm down.

 

Once the doctors had checked him over and washed the blood off him, Felix repeated his demands. He wasn’t going to let them brush this aside. Louis wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and followed at his heels as Felix marched up to the conference room. Even with his metal leg and his walking cane Felix’s gait was now bold and determined. He stepped into the room where Tigh and Helo sat waiting, a few sheets of paperwork spread out before them on the desk.

 

“Where’s the Admiral?” asked Felix. “I asked to speak with the Admiral!”  

 

“Pipe down, son,” Tigh said wearily. “The Old Man’s in meetings with the Quorum on Colonial One. He’s got his hands full. Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

 

“I’m not telling you anything…” Felix snapped at the Colonel. 

 

Louis pressed his shoulder, pushing him down into a chair.  “I’m sorry, sirs. He’s still really shook up. He’s on a lot of medication…”

 

Tigh waved his hand, dismissing these apologies.

 

“I haven’t time for trauma or hysterics,” he muttered. “There’s enough of it on the civilian ships. Carry on, Mr Agathon. I have to get back to the CIC.”

 

Once Tigh had left the room, Felix grasped his cane and stood up again.

 

“It was a cylon!” he blurted. “An Eight! She killed them all.”

 

“Whoa…hold on there,” said Helo, fumbling for a pen and the form he needed to fill out. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, Mr Gaeta?” 

 

“She murdered them. The cylon murdered them. I need to speak to the Admiral. We need to call off the alliance. We can’t trust them!”

 

“Slow down,” Helo soothed. “I just need you to tell me what happened on the Raptor. This incident doesn’t have to mean the end of the alliance.”

 

Felix shook his head in disbelief. “But she killed them!” he repeated. His voice was cracking now, verging on tears, but he still had to speak. “They killed our friends on New Caprica. They killed our families back on the colonies. We can’t trust them. We can’t ever trust the cylons! This…this isn’t right!”

 

Helo sighed. “Felix, could you please just tell me what happened?”

 

Felix snorted a laugh, his lips twisting with resentment.

 

“Of course, there’s no point in trying to explain it to you…” he laughed bitterly, still shaking his head. “You’re married to one of them.”

 

Helo flushed with indignation. Felix had never insulted him over this. He had never called his friend a ‘toaster lover’. Not until this moment. 

 

“Mr Hoshi…” said Helo, ignoring his remark and turning his attention to the man who stood nervously by Felix’s side. “I want you to escort Mr Gaeta back to his quarters and see that he gets some rest. This interview can be postponed until he has made a full recovery. That’ll be all for now.”

 

Felix stood staring at Helo, realising with sadness that he couldn’t trust him either. Louis took him by the arm, steering him out of the conference room. Felix released a sigh. He decided that it would be better to wait after all. Not because he needed to recover…because he needed time to plan.  

 

 

~*~

 

 

Felix watched Louis through the shadows, his chest rising and falling where he lay on the mattress they shared. Felix had given up on sleeping himself. There was a new itch in his phantom leg. It wouldn’t let him rest.

 

“Um…Felix?” said Louis, raising his head. “What are you doing out of bed?”

 

Louis’s voice was tired and husky. He propped himself up on his elbows and snapped on their bedside lamp. Felix winced as its light stung his eyes. Ten minutes ago he had slipped off the mattress, crawled across the floor, opened Hoshi’s locker and taken out the bottle of Leonis wine they had been saving for a special occasion. Felix had lifted this wine onto the table, clambered up into a chair and proceeded to glug down half the bottle. But his leg still wouldn’t stop itching. 

 

“Are you drinking?!” Louis exclaimed. “Baby, you took your painkillers before you went to bed. You really shouldn’t be drinking…”

 

Louis got to his feet, confused and flustering.

 

“Are you going to get me some more morpha?” Felix asked curtly.

 

“No! Cottle said you shouldn’t be taking any more of that stuff. Do you have any idea how much trouble me and Ishay are in? No more.”

 

Felix snorted. “Frak off and let me drink then.”

 

Louis seized him by the wrist, stretching out his left arm.

 

“Felix, will you look at what you’ve been doing to yourself!” he yelled, pointing to the purple bruise that was spreading from the needle mark in his skin.

 

Felix shrugged a shoulder, laughing off his concern.

 

“Oh Louis…you’re kind of sexy when you get angry.”

 

“Felix, this isn’t a joke!” Louis wailed, close to tears now. “I’m trying to help you. I used to feel so connected to you. That’s how I saved you when you were missing! But now it…it feels like you’re slipping away from me again…like you’re still lost in that dark empty void and I don’t know how to reach you...”

 

Felix shrugged again. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

 

A hand cracked against his jaw. Felix blinked and spluttered. It took him a moment to realise that Louis had actually slapped him. Felix tasted warm blood on the inside his mouth. He shook his head, laughing some more.

 

“Why don’t you hit me a bit harder, Louis?” he suggested. “If you knock me out then at least I won’t have to listen to your whining…”

 

Louis shook his head, the tears spilling over his cheeks now. He snatched the bottle from the tabletop. Felix lurched forward in his chair, trying to jump up and grab it back. He couldn’t, of course. His false leg and his crutch were both sitting propped against the bedside on the other side of the room.

 

Felix shook his head, slumping back in his seat. “Frak me, Louis…don’t you think it’s a little low to be stealing from a cripple?”

 

Louis hung his head, too upset to talk back.

 

“I…I love you…” he said.

 

These words were enough to shut Felix up. He pressed a hand to his face and pinched his temples. This conversation felt so painfully familiar. Felix was sure he had shared this exact same fight with Gaius little more than a year ago. Except now he was on the other side of it, looking back at Louis like he was a mirror reflection of his former self.  

 

“I’m sorry for you…” Felix returned.

 

It wasn’t the answer Louis wanted to hear, but it was the best he could offer him. There was no response. Louis simply placed the wine back in his locker, securing it with a pad lock, before he coiled an arm around Felix’s waist and helped him back into their bed. Felix was surprised when Louis pulled him against his chest, cradling him in his arms, letting his tears spill onto Felix’s brow. Louis was still there for him. He would forgive him. He would take care of him.   

 

But Felix still couldn’t sleep. The itching still hadn’t stopped.

 
Felix knew he was drowning now. He had fallen deep into that sea. His soul was writhing in the darkest places of the ocean. It was so dark that Felix couldn't tell which way was up and which was down. He didn't know which way to swim to find air...daylight...salvation. He was lost. 

Felix knew that he couldn’t love Louis in return. Everything he had ever loved was broken and betrayed. He would rather keep Louis safe from what was to come. But Felix still hoped that it would turn out right this time.

 

He hoped there would come a time for love. 

 

 

THE END