ways_infirmary | (no subject)

(no subject)

"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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Even with the drugs blurring his thoughts -- not to mention his eyesight -- Gaeta has to stifle a quick breath when he gets a good look at him. Louis ranks first in his head and heart, always, without question...but gods, does this man run a close second.

Well, he thinks, bleakly amused, at least I didn't say anything out loud this time.

Thinking of Louis stirs up a wholly different ache; Gaeta shuts his eyes again, seeking a new distraction. "What'd it remind you of?"

"I don't remember, I'm afraid," he says lightly, with a ghost of a smile and a slow rub to the back of his neck. "It was a very long time ago."

Ganymede studies Gaeta for a long moment before he speaks up again; the amputation doesn't appear to faze him, though he can't help but feel something for the man who's lost a limb. "It is a very beautiful melody. Where do you know it from?"

Gaeta pauses. Wets his lips as he tries to think.

"I don't know," he says at last, in a thoroughly helpless mumble. "I can't -- I don't know."

"It's all right," Ganymede says, moving further into the room with a patient smile. He's not in any hurry--he never really is, not with all the time in the world at his hands. "I was only curious...few people ever sing songs that remind me of anything from so long ago."

He tucks his hands into his pockets as if he's unsure of how his next request will be taken. "Could you sing it again?"

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..."

"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.

"With my three -- frak," he wheezes, voice thickening with fresh tears. The heart monitor beats faster; his whole face is screwed up in pain. "Frak, frak, gods -- "

Please make it stop, he begs silently, to no one.

Edited 2012-04-02 01:44 (UTC)

And with that the choice is made for him: Ganymede very, very lightly touches his fingertips to the back of Gaeta's hand just to get his attention away from what's paining him. It dimly occurs that he doesn't even know the boy's name.

"What medicine are they giving you?" he asks. He's no doctor, not even close, but he can't leave the man alone in such pain.

The touch doesn't register right away: not until the pain finally eases up, enough for him to feel something besides the agony in his leg. Gaeta swallows on a dry throat.

"Morpha," he says. "Um, morphine."

He waits until Gaeta looks up and gives him a tiny smile that's trying to be calming. "I can try to find one of the doctors to give you something so you won't be in pain."

He doesn't realize he says the next words out of his mouth out loud--mostly thoughts of the gods go unsaid for good reason. "If ever Apollo could make himself useful..."

A long beat's worth of silence.

In an almost fearful whisper: "Do you know Apollo?"

Has he been speaking to another one of the gods without realizing?

The silence is as unnerving to Ganymede as the name probably was to Gaeta. "...I do, yes. Or I have, better put, I have not seen him in quite the while. You know of them?"

He finds so many people do not that it's extraordinary when someone knows the gods.

"I do, sir."

The sir appends itself without Gaeta even having to think about it.

"Yes."

For a second he only blinks before shaking his head. "That is rare here... But please, you shouldn't call me sir, I am nothing close to a god. I know them, and some quite well, but I am not one of their number."

His forehead creases.

Cautious: "So who are you then?"

"My name is Ganymede," he answers, curious at the look on the man's face but glad that the turn of conversation seems to have taken the jolt of pain from his mind. "I lived on Olympus as the gods' cupbearer for nearly two thousand years by my count. And as Zeus' consort," he adds, not sounding particularly thrilled about that part of the job description.

"May I ask yours in return?"

Oh.

It's...not a name he recognizes, but right now, Gaeta can't tell if that's due to the drugs or not. Zeus, though, that he recognizes without question -- and Olympus as well.

(Not to mention the stories of Zeus' reputation and fondness for mortals.)

"Lieutenant Felix Gaeta," he says. Deliberately, he holds back the sir this time.

Those stories, at least most of them, Ganymede can confirm for the Zeus he knows. Amorous does not even begin to cover it. "Felix is a name I know," he says lightly. "And you are military?"

"Yes, s -- yes," he says, in a hasty course correction away from another sir. "I serve in the Colonial Fleet."

...Served, maybe. His throat tenses again as the possibility occurs to him: even if he's just a bridge bunny, the injury might be severe enough to warrant a discharge.

You don't need two working legs to read a DRADIS screen, he tells himself, as firmly as he can, but the morpha washes away the thought before it can stick.

"...Which colony?" comes the question, from someone obviously not familiar with the world Gaeta's from, or really even the word to begin with.

He shakes his head, the movement barely visible.

"Colonies," he repeats. "The Twelve Colonies of Kobol."

It's a moment later that he smiles, but only a little. "You're not from an Earth like mine, are you?"

He huffs a tiny breath. Weeks ago, it may have been laughter.

"No," he says. "I'm not. I'm not from anywhere near Earth."

"Where are you from, then?"

Ganymede feels fairly certain it will bear almost no relation to his home.

"Picon, originally. 'S the twelfth of the twelve."

His fingers tighten infinitesimally on the bedsheets.

"Been living on a battlestar for a while though. A spaceship."