ways_infirmary | (no subject)

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"Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
With my three wishes clutched in her hand..."

Simon finally hooked him up to a morpha -- morphine, whatever it's called here -- drip once the nerve block wore off and the supposedly unidentifiable opioid had left his system. Gaeta's half-drowsing, eyes closed in a vain attempt to sleep outright; the pain's still too great, though, and the exhaustion more prominent.

And if he sleeps, that means he can't do the only thing that's worked so far.

"The first that she be spared the pain
That comes from a dark and laughing rain..."

The words are a little roughened with hoarseness, a touch slurred by morpha -- but his voice still rings clear through the infirmary.

[ooc: for continuity's sake, all threads now take place before Boyd's and Simon's.]

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Yeah, this is...this is definitely better. The tension that's knotted him up for days has begun to slacken; Gaeta's limbs almost feel too loose, but like the gently rolling waves of the room, it's not a bad feeling.

He watches the smoke curl up, dissipating above his bed. "Where're you from?" he asks.

Gaeta hesitates.

His first instinct is to refuse, without even an apology to damper it. He's not singing to frakking perform for anybody. He's singing because it's the only thing that makes it stop.

The phantom pain takes the decision out of his hands.

As his breath hitches, and his eyes tighten at the corners, he starts up the cycle anew: "Alone she sleeps, in the shirt of man..."

"Felix. Hey, man. For whatever happened? I'm so frakking sorry. I... I know it probably doesn't count for much of anything, but..."

But it's all he has to offer. He already feels guilty as frak, and he didn't even do anything. Not that he knows of, and he has a really hard time imagining himself in any situation where he'd... except they've been going after toasters with a vengeance, but that's different.

He doesn't want to know.

"Is there anything -- anything -- I can do for you?" Can someone even make something right if it hasn't happened yet? Or if it has, and he couldn't possibly have even done it? Felix says he shot him in the frakking leg. What can he possibly offer that'll make up for... for...

Oh, gods.

"I don't know where he is, I don't even know if he knows -- "

His voice twists up and away.

"Harlan." The two syllables are calm and reflective. "Harlan County. How about you?"

It's a beginning gambit; if the other man doesn't take it, Boyd won't press.

Demeter doesn't say anything, just holds him, stroking his hair and back.

If she could make Louis appear she would, but she's not sure she can do that.

Gaeta's eyes well up, and he has to shut them again.

"You knew," he says, bleak and hoarse.

"I -- what?"

Of all the reactions he might have expected, that wasn't one of them.

"River Junction, on Picon." A bit dreamily, he tips the joint up so he can get a better look at the smoke. "Galactica now."

Boyd's eyes are on the place where the rail meets the bed.

"Name sounds pretty," he says. "River Junction. If there's truth in the name."

There's an earnestness to Anders' apology, and writ large across his face, that Gaeta never expected to hear or see.

(Not just from him, but...from anyone, really, as of late.)

It softens another inch of the anger. Gaeta isn't at all aware, though, of how much wariness has risen up to replace it, like a kid waiting for the schoolyard bully to punch him again. "You still offering that water?" he ventures at last.

Edited 2012-04-01 03:31 (UTC)

Gaeta shivers, presses his face against her shoulder -- it makes the cannula pinch a little, but he could not give less of a good godsdamn -- and remains completely silent.

"This is what you were talking about, right?"

He swallows, wrests his eyes back open.

"When you told me not to go?"

"I'm sorry, m--" he murmurs quickly, realizing how that came out and unable to stop the tiniest slip of a titular obeisance. He hadn't meant to ask that way, not to someone who is obviously singing for himself, and clearly in pain. He ducks his head and steps back.

But the immortal young man says nothing else when the song begins again, unsure of whether to turn his back to leave, or to stay. Either seems to be the wrong choice.

"I didn't --"

(-- I might have warned Felix Gaeta about his future. I didn't tell him what was coming, just tipped him off that maybe he shouldn't go on the)

"Oh god. The other me."

Slapped with the hostility in his tone, she goes wide-eyed in surprise.

(This isn't happening, the back of her mind protests.)

Not advancing or retreating, she searches his face. "What's that mean?"

"It was." Soft. "I know I'm biased -- "

Another tiny chuckle punctuates that.

"But it was frakking gorgeous there." Gaeta dusts off a few more ashes, takes another pull. He's getting close to the halfway point. "Lots of trees, lots of flowers, and yeah, three big rivers that..."

He gestures, aimlessly, in something that might be an outline of said rivers.

She continues stroking his back and begins to sing an old lullaby in Greek. As long as he needs her, she will be here.

Gaeta blinks; the morpha's only half responsible for the blank stare now.

"Frak," he mutters finally, and presses an unsteady hand against his forehead, trapping a few damp curls in place. "You're -- Prime, yeah. Andrew Prime."

Taking his hand away, he waves it vaguely in Andrew's direction.

"Should've known that. Your hair's different. Sorry."

Boyd nods.

"Sounds a little like Harlan. We got mountains, though. Cumberland River flows out of them, down into Tennessee."

Next they'll be talking about the weather. Boyd doesn't mind. It's not the stupidest conversation he's ever had with someone that's high.

"He ... he left me a message. When he went back to his world." Low. "Told me a few things he did while he was here, and he said he warned you about ... something about a guy named Demetrius?"

The...

"Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure." He twists the cap off, hands the bottle over, careful not to be rough with it or... or spill any of it. "Can I help you sit up a little, or... or find a straw or anything?" He knows they have them at the bar.

Right now, he'd get Felix anything he wanted, and he doesn't even know the guy.

"Shhhhhh," whispers River, barely as loud as a breath, when the song doesn't pick back up.

"Gonna be okay."

Closer, now. A few more steps and she'll be at his bed, or at the empty one next to it; it's not yet clear which she's aiming for.

"That's sweet of you." Aphrodite takes a few steps nearer.

Her smile is still in place, small and secretive at the edges of her mouth; but she almost wants to sigh.

Mortals don't sing enough anymore, just to themselves. (That Gaeta's extenuating circumstances may be less than pleasant, and the song a means of coping rather than a refreshing diversion, only dimly occurs to her.)

"Very gentlemanly," she concludes.

"Sounds beautiful."

The dreaminess has started carrying over to Gaeta's voice, nudging aside the worst of the strain. He can picture the scene with surprising vividness, given the sparse language.

"Gods, I'd love to see mountains again." He rubs his thumb over the side of the joint, feeling out the texture. "What part of Earth's Tennessee in? -- It is Earth, right?"

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