Lost Fic: See the World II
Title: See the World 2/3
Author: hollycomb
Pairing: Martin Keamy/Captain Gault
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through the most recent episode
Summary: What might be described as a heightened case of cabin fever.
Naomi is gone for three days without any word. The scientists grow restless and pester Minkowski to fix the communications equipment as gossip about sabotage spreads quickly across the ship. Gault expects Keamy to go out of his mind with the waiting, but he's really got to stop expecting Keamy to do things, because his expectations almost never come to pass. Keamy walks about the ship with a look of serene satisfaction on his face, and it takes Gault a few days to realize why. Keamy is glad that Naomi's mission has probably failed, that something awful has almost certainly happened.
Gault feels trapped. He is trapped. There is no way to communicate with anyone outside of the ship, no way to pull up anchor and just leave this disaster behind. Nothing to drink.
He avoids Keamy when he can, which is not often, and even when he's not around, Gault can't get rid of his hateful curiosity. He dreams up every possible origin for such a person: jaded son of a prostitute, trying to make a living. Disturbed heir to some American family's fortune, trying to piss off his father. He can't imagine that someone like him has -- or had -- parents, people who fussed over him or even neglected him. More than anything, he wishes he could stop with all the fucking wondering. It doesn't make any difference, and Keamy would never fess up to coming from somewhere, anyway.
Though he did mention Las Vegas.
The problem is that Gault doesn't have anything else to think about. He's given up on the engines, left them to Jeff and Keamy's mechanic. Even Faraday has poked at them, doing God knows how much more damage.
He takes a walk across the deck around sun up and sun down every day, and otherwise tries to stick to a short course between his stateroom and the communications room, where Minkowski is laboring to repair the equipment. He thinks that if he could just speak to his wife, his son, anybody who is not on this ship, he could get his head back in the right place.
"Any progress?" he calls in to Minkowski for the third night in a row. Minkowski pokes his head out from beneath a split open phone board and frowns at him.
"Man, if people could quit asking me every three seconds, maybe there would be some," he says. He tosses a roll of electrical tape across the room. "Maybe your energy would be better spent figuring out who the hell did this."
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Gault snaps. "Do we have a lie detecting device on board that I'm unaware of? I'm not a fucking investigator. I didn't agree to a mystery cruise."
Minkowski's laugh is loud and unpleasant.
"That's funny," he says. "Mystery cruise. Ha."
Gault turns to leave, grumbling to himself like a defeated old man, and crashes into Keamy as he's coming into the room.
"Well?" Keamy says. Gault scoffs and stutters, feels as if he's just been dropped into the middle of a conversation he doesn't want to have.
"Well what?" He pushes around Keamy and heads quickly down the hall. Keamy of course follows. Gault hates the tremendous sound of his boots clomping along behind him, and hates that it's such a relief to hear something not quiet and guarded.
"He hasn't fixed anything yet?" Keamy asks when they're far enough from the communications room.
"He's working on it."
"I'll bet."
Gault turns to glare at him. He's tired of having ideas put into his head about who is trustworthy and who isn't by Keamy, who he wouldn't trust to clean the toilets without having some ulterior motive. Keamy seems amused by his indignation, and, actually, he should have expected that.
"Straume is up to something," Keamy says.
"Who the hell is Straume?"
"Miles. Miles Straume. That little Asian guy."
"Fine. Okay, the Asian guy. What's he doing?"
Keamy looks up and down the hall.
"We shouldn't have this conversation here."
Gault itches his throat self-consciously. The last thing he needs is to get himself alone in his stateroom again with Keamy. The thought of what he did with him makes his stomach turn, and he can taste the whiskey on the roof of his mouth when he remembers it.
"Meet me at the stern after dinner, then," Gault says. Keamy stares at him for a moment, smiles slow.
"Alright," he says. "Can I lock Straume in one of the bunkers until then?"
"Christ, Keamy, what are you afraid he's going to do? Kill you? Keep an eye on him if you want, but there's no reason to lock him up. We haven't got anything left for him to break."
"I don't think he's the one who's breaking things."
"Well, terrific. Leave him alone until we talk."
"We could talk now." Keamy looks at Gault like he's the one who isn't making any sense.
"I can't deal with you right now," Gault says, and it's true. "I haven't got time. Find me after dinner." He walks off, and feels Keamy's eyes on the back of his neck like a cold breath.
Gault goes back to his stateroom and sits on his bed, puts his hands on his knees. He gets up and bolts the door, sits down again. Knowing he should eat something, he thinks about wanking off instead, as if that will do him any good.
An hour passes, or maybe it doesn't. The clock in Gault's stateroom has stopped working along with everything else on the ship. But it feels like an hour, so Gault gets up, unbolts the door and heads for the deck. He's feeling optimistic on the way there, unperturbed by the prospect of hearing one of Keamy's half-formed theories about why some so and so on board is no good, weightless despite previous events. The air outside is light and breezy, the usual stolid humidity blown away, and the sky is perfectly black, clouded. The wind across the deck reminds him of his back porch at home, standing outside with a beer and listening to the steady sound of the tap running in the kitchen as Vera washes up.
He'd really love a beer right now.
At the back of the boat, he leans onto the railing and waits. Someone is talking, elsewhere on the deck, and someone else is laughing, a little too high pitched. Gault doesn't trust anyone's laughter, lately. He waits, watching the water, until the waiting starts to irritate him.
Keamy never comes. Gault curses him under his breath and scans the deck, which has gone silent now, whoever was out here tucked back into quarters, or someplace else where they shouldn't be. He thinks of Keamy locked up in a bunker with Miles, strong arming him into admitting to a crime he hasn't actually committed. Or maybe he's already stuffed a knife in the poor bloke's stomach and thrown him overboard, as a precaution.
Gault pounds on the door of Keamy's room and gets no answer. One of his men -- the small one, Omar -- walks by and gives him a suspicious look. Gault doesn't bother to make an excuse, just slides around him and heads toward the scientists' rooms. He knocks on every door, not knowing which one belongs to Miles. Charlotte tells him shortly that she's got no idea where Miles is, and Faraday scratches his head, hums with concern.
"Want me to help you look?" he offers.
"No," Gault says. He doesn't want Faraday to witness whatever the hell Keamy's up to, for his own sake. "Thanks," he adds before walking away. He tries two more doors, gets no answer at either of them.
He's about to head for the kitchen and take an inventory of the knives when he sees Frank sitting on the stairs that lead down to the engine room, frowning at a map.
"Have you seen Miles?" Gault asks. "Or Keamy?"
Frank folds up the map before Gault can see what it is. "Not Keamy," he says. "I saw Miles about an hour ago, at dinner."
"An hour ago? Do you know where he went?"
"I sure don't. Do you need him for something?"
"No -- just. He wasn't acting strange, was he?"
Frank grins. "Miles? Sure, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for him."
"What do you mean?"
"He's sort of a strange guy. Is something wrong, Captain?"
"No. Forget it. If you see Miles, tell him I'm looking for him."
"And Keamy?" Frank asks as Gault is walking off.
Gault jerks around. "What about Keamy?"
"You, uh, asked about Keamy, too?"
"Oh. No, I don't want to see Keamy."
That's a lie, and it makes him want to drive his head into a wall, knock himself out before this can get worse. He needs to know where Keamy is at all times, resents the size of the ship and the number of people on board who aren't losing their minds in this particular fashion. The engine room is empty, and so is the communications room. There's no one in the kitchen but Regina, who is holding the refrigerator door open and staring in at the dark, empty shelves.
"It's broken," Gault says, bothered by something he can't put words to: the slump of her posture, or her white-knuckled grip on the handle.
"I know," she says. "But I thought I heard something."
Gault doesn't bother to ask her if she's seen Miles, gets out of the kitchen as quickly as possible.
Back in his stateroom, he sits at his desk and puts his head in his hands. He has the nagging feeling that there are parts of this ship that he doesn't know about, secret passages people are slipping through. He feels like both a guard and a prisoner, slacking on his duty and holed up in his cell.
Someone pounds on the door, and it can only be Keamy, because no one else has the nerve to knock so loud.
"Yeah?" Gault calls, not even turning around. He hears the door open and shut, the slide of the bolt.
"I found something," Keamy says. Gault sighs and turns just in time to see a clear, cylindrical object flying through the air toward his face. He gasps stupidly and fumbles it, but manages to clutch it to his chest before it smashes against the floor. It's a fifth of vodka.
"Where'd you get this?" Gault asks, pretending not to be excited.
"I told you." Keamy is still standing near the door. "I found it."
So he stole it, or maybe confiscated it from one of his men. He'd rather have them sober and Gault drunk.
"What have you done with Miles?" Gault asks. He sets the vodka on the desk, plans on consuming it when Keamy is long gone.
Keamy smirks. "I haven't touched him. Is he missing? I told you he was up to something."
"What exactly is he up to, Keamy?" Gault keeps his tone bewildered and disbelieving, lets him know he's only humoring him.
Keamy walks across the room to Gault's bed, sits on it and leans back as if he's in a shisha bar, puts his hands behind his head. He lets out his breath, tips his legs apart.
"I don't know," he says. "Something. Widmore gave me a briefing on all of the scientists. He didn't want me interfering with them, but he didn't want them fucking with his island, either. He wouldn't tell me anything about Miles."
"And that proves he's out to murder us all. Well done."
"He's got a picture of Linus in his room."
"You went poking through his room?" Gault doesn't know why he's surprised.
"Widmore told me to keep an eye on them."
"Alright, but so what if he's got a photo? We came here to get Linus."
"I came here to get Linus." Keamy sits up. "They've got nothing to do with it. As far as Widmore knows, they don't even know what Linus looks like."
"So you think Miles is going to murder Linus before you get the chance to capture him? Did Linus kill the man's parents, did he vow revenge? Why are you bothering me with this, Keamy?"
"Because," Keamy says. "I want your permission to restrain him."
"Well, you can't have it."
Keamy scoffs. "What would you do to stop me, anyway?"
"I could tell Widmore you've been interfering with his scientists."
"Nobody's telling Widmore anything, or vice versa! Somebody's made sure of that."
Gault rubs his forehead, groans. Keamy is accusing him of letting this sabotage happen, but there was nothing he could do. He should have gathered the whole crew before they left port and told them straight off: For the record, I have a bad feeling about this. Beyond that, it's all been out of his hands. This isn't a military operation. He can't just start locking people up based on pictures found during illegal searches of their rooms.
"Don't worry about it," Keamy says. "I'll take care of it. Have a drink."
Gault does his best to look offended.
"Your interest in getting me drunk is touching, really, but I think you should get the hell out of my room."
Keamy leans back, crosses his arms over his chest.
"Make me."
Gault feels his heart start to race, right in the hollow his throat.
"You sound like a five year old."
"You just told me to get out of your room."
"So?"
"So my brother used to tell me that. When he was five."
Gault feels like he's just discovered a briefcase full of money. So Keamy had a brother at some point. Or, he's lying for the sake of a joke. Gault is willing to go along with it, either way.
"Your brother, huh?"
Keamy sniffs, rejecting this thread of conversation outright.
"Get over here," he says.
Gault doesn't know how to navigate this. When he was very young, he chewed his nails when he was nervous. He longs for the taste of them now, can almost feel his father smack the back of his head, don't even think about biting those nails.
"What do you want me over there for?" he finally manages. It's easily the worst, most permissive response he could have offered.
"You gonna make me say it?" Keamy asks, gleam of his teeth as he pulls his shirt off.
There's a knock on the stateroom door, and Gault jumps out of his chair, saved. He's disappointed, too, his lap not entirely soft as he makes his way to the door. He clears his throat and adjusts his trousers, hears Keamy laughing under his breath behind him.
"Put your clothes on," Gault hisses. Keamy sits with his hands hanging between his knees, doesn't move.
Miles is standing out in the hallway, and he stares at Gault with his usual watery, vacant expression, as if Gault is the one who interrupted him.
"What?" Gault barks, hugging the door close so that Miles won't see Keamy, half undressed on his bed.
"Frank said you wanted to see me." Miles seems slightly agitated, but Gault doesn't expect he'll find out why.
"Oh -- right --"
He hears Keamy coming up behind him, but it's too late to get rid of Miles. Keamy grabs the door and pulls it entirely open, leans behind Gault and regards Miles seriously, as if he's looking for a confession on his face. Miles is almost literally half his size. Gault is embarrassed, then just relieved to be standing on this side of the door.
"Hey," Keamy says to Miles. "Where have you been?"
Miles glares at him. "What the hell do you care?"
Keamy cocks his head, leans forward until Gault can feel the heat of him through his shirt.
"Just curious," Keamy says. He looks Miles up and down, grins like he finds the whole package pretty hilarious. "Widmore told me about you."
"Oh, really? How fascinating. Gault, do you need me or --"
"He told me that of the three scientists, you were the most expendable."
Miles looks at Gault as if expecting him to deny this. Gault doesn't say anything, doesn't look away. He wouldn't be surprised if Miles is up to something, come to it. He never liked the look of him.
"I know what you're planning," Keamy says. "And I've got permission to kill you if you try it. So I really think you should just do your little science experiment and stay the fuck out of my sight. Okay?"
Miles says nothing for a moment. He's backing down the hallway slow, like Keamy is an animal who tracks his prey by sight, and a sudden movement will give him away.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he finally says, and he makes a break for it, walking fast. Keamy watches him go, puts his chest fully against Gault's back.
"Good," Keamy says, as if he's ticked off an item from his to-do list. He wraps one arm around Gault's waist and yanks him back into the room, bolts the door behind them.
"Wait a minute," Gault says, his legs wheeling as Keamy pulls him across the room. He ends up on his back in bed, the wind knocked out of him more by the circumstances than the fall. "I thought you said Widmore didn't tell you anything about Miles?"
"I did say that, didn't I?" Keamy is taking off his belt, his face completely blank. There's no color climbing into his cheeks, nothing to give him away. He's lied to either Gault or Miles, but it doesn't matter much. Gault lets his head drop back onto the bed, shuts his eyes. He should have had that drink.
Keamy leans over Gault like a shadow, the shape of him blocking out reason and reality, a total eclipse. Gault is hard with teenage speed, just from anticipation, and he pushes up against Keamy, tries to pull him down closer. He's immovable, his tongue stroking the hollow of Gault's throat, counting heartbeats.
"God," Gault lets himself say, drawing his hands up Keamy's back, waiting for him to slap them away. Keamy is indifferent, more concerned with getting Gault's clothes off. Gault would rather not be completely naked in the presence of this man, but he lets himself be stripped. This is more about the pace than anything else, just a shade below frantic.
"Have you got anything?" Keamy asks. He sits up on his knees, and Gault gets stuck on looking at him, can't think about the question. Keamy narrows his eyes in annoyance and leans to the table beside the bed, rummages through its top drawer. Gault watches things being flung to the floor: a pack of cards, some scattered peppermints, a Bible that does not belong to him. Keamy comes up with a tube of burn ointment and empties half of it into his hand.
Gault feels resigned like never before, ready to go to his death. Keamy sits back and yanks him up, turns him around and holds onto him from behind.
"Alright?" His mouth is right on Gault's ear, his big hand sliding down to split Gault's ass. When he pushes a slick finger inside of him, Gault bites his lip and stuffs down a scream, tastes blood. He nods rapidly, his face pushed back against Keamy's cheek so that he'll feel the answer to his half-asked question.
He expected this to hurt a lot more, but maybe it doesn't because he's entered some other dimension where this is the only thing he's ever wanted. He bounces a little, balanced on the balls of his feet, but mostly lets Keamy do all the work, his arms crossed over Gault's chest, fingers digging into his shoulders, deep enough to leave marks. If he'd let himself consider it, Gault might have thought him the cheesy type who barks a lot of commands and curses during sex, but Keamy hardly makes a sound, just breathes roughly onto Gault's shoulder, his ear pressed to his neck, listening all the time to what's he's doing to Gault's heart rate.
They tip forward, Gault's face hidden happily in the sheets while Keamy puts his palms flat against the wall behind the bed and drives into him, losing track of all his rhythms and just barely biting down a building grunt in the back of his throat. Gault buries his shouts into the mattress, doesn't even care at this point if passersby know that Keamy is in here fucking him hard, but doesn't want to give Keamy the pleasure of knowing how good it feels.
"Yeah," Gault breathes, vicariously relieved when Keamy comes, the barrel of his body dropping forward. He shudders quick, and drools a little on the back of Gault's neck as he's trying to get his breath. Gault is ready now to be free of him, but when Keamy falls over onto his side he pulls Gault with him, still inside him, aftershocks making them both twitch. Keamy reaches around to finish Gault off, his hand still slick from the ointment, and Gault is shocked by the gesture, then realizes why he bothered as he comes in Keamy's hand. Keamy hums with the sensation, another kind of pulse aching out of Gault.
Gault clings to the bed, his eyes shut. The room, the ship, and the ocean all press in against his eyelids, harshly present no matter how he tries to forget them. Keamy rolls over to face the wall, groans with the exertion of getting comfortable, and then goes silent. Gault's eyes pop open.
"What are you doing?" he asks, leaning up on an elbow and turning to Keamy, who doesn't bother to dignify this with a response.
"You can't sleep in here," Gault says. He sits up until he feels new soreness pulling through him, winces.
"Why not? I like this bed."
It's the only double bed on board, and Gault sits with his mouth hanging open, realizes that getting off was only half of Keamy's plan here. He's also stealing the best quarters on the ship for himself. In the cabin adjacent to the armory, he and his men share a single room with bunk beds.
"What will your men think?" Gault asks. He crawls to the foot of the bed and reaches for the bottle of vodka on his desk.
"Think about what?"
"About what? Are you joking? They'll know you're sleeping in here. The ship's not that big."
"So?"
Gault takes two long drinks of vodka, waits for the burn to clear his head. He needs to get out of this room, to get away from Keamy, but there's nowhere else to go.
"Aren't you afraid they'll lose respect for you? This is not generally seen as something that blokes like you get up to."
Keamy shrugs. "I'm not the one getting fucked."
Gault drinks again, suppresses the urge to grab him by the side and roll him onto the floor. He wouldn't likely survive the attempt.
"And they know that, do they? You have chats with them about it?"
Keamy smirks, and Gault sees only the edge of it, his face turned toward the wall.
"I don't think it's too hard to figure out, Captain."
"Did they create you in a test tube?" Gault rails, brushing off another insult. "Where do you come from that you think it matters who's fucking who? Men like that don't want to follow someone who's -- who's --"
"Shut up!" Keamy finally shouts, looking back over his shoulder to glower at Gault. "I'm trying to sleep! Fuck!"
Gault is left speechless. He swallows more vodka and then screws the cap back on, remembering his resolution not to drink in Keamy's presence. He falls into bed and stares at the ceiling, afraid to put the light out, though there's nothing short of murder that he wouldn't lie back and let Keamy do. He spends most of the night trying to come up with ways to get rid of him. Even if the communications equipment was working, he couldn't exactly tattle to Widmore. He's supposed to be the one in charge here, sort of, but Keamy has accosted the stateroom, taken him as a spoil of war, and all but officially assumed command.
*
Gault feels vaguely ill the following day, but it's not an entirely unpleasant feeling. He walks the deck listless and squint-eyed, without any real agenda, because there is nothing for him or anyone to do. Frank has informed him that he's worried about Regina. Minkowski has bolted himself inside the communications room. Even Kevin Johnson's gait as he walks across the deck with a bucket seems somehow malicious. Gault can only be glad he's not alone in going crazy.
Heading for the kitchen at noon, Gault thinks about good hangovers. He's had some that almost required hospitalization, and others that just cleared him out, left him with the faintest fuzz of a headache and the promise that he'd be cured after a huge meal. Searching the cabinets, he wishes for pancakes with Nutella, tacos, giant slices of pizza, anything hot and unhealthy. He finds a bag of potato chips and starts in on them, standing at the kitchen counter.
"Are you alright?" someone asks, and he turns to see Charlotte walking in behind him. She's looking at him as if he's someone to be pitied. He stuffs another handful of potato chips in his mouth, wishes she would stay out of it.
"I'm fine," he says. "Why do you ask?"
"Nothing." Her face turns red and she hurries out of the kitchen. So the word has already spread. Gault is indifferent to it. He'll save his sense of humiliation for the off chance that he'll ever see civilization again. He wishes the scientists would hurry up and go looking for Naomi already. They're planning on leaving tomorrow if the other helicopter still hasn't returned.
He washes potato chip dust off of his fingers and heads back upstairs, hears a kind of commotion coming from down the hall. He waits to make sure he doesn't hear Keamy's voice before walking ahead to see what's happening. The remainder of the burn ointment was used up this morning. Gault was half asleep and Keamy took his sweet time, heavy on Gault's back, both of them clinging to the edge of the mattress.
"What's going on?" Gault asks when he finds the source of the noise, in the communications room. Minkowski has reopened the door, and has allowed Frank and Brandon inside.
"I got the sat phones working last night," Minkowski says. "We've tried to call Naomi a couple of times, but there's some kind of transmission blocking the signal."
"A transmission from the Island?" Gault asks.
"I would guess so, yeah."
"Do you think it's Linus? Do you think he's done something to her?"
"It's possible."
"Anything's possible," Brandon adds, ridiculously. Gault gives him a look, and he slinks out of the room.
"What do you think, Cap?" Frank asks. "Should I fly the scientists over there?"
"It might not be safe," Gault says. "I don't like the idea of people going over there without any way of communicating with the ship."
"Keamy could go," Minkowski says. He and Frank share a look that makes Gault want to jump over the side of the ship and be done with it. "I mean, he could probably handle himself."
"I'll speak to him," Gault mutters, hurrying out of the room.
He finds Keamy on the deck with his men, studying a small, black book. He's sitting in the sun, the others pacing around him, in the midst of some mock boxing match, the biggest of them demonstrating a headlock on Omar.
"Keamy," Gault calls. Keamy looks up, shuts one eye and tries to make out Gault's form across the bright deck. The other men stop their game and stare. They seem to still be on Keamy's side, for whatever that's worth. Keamy gets up, and shoves the book into his back pocket as he's walking toward Gault. He stands close, crosses his arms like he's daring Gault to do something stupid, and hunches the way he always does when he's speaking to someone, because everyone else is shorter.
"What?"
"They -- Minkowski says there's some sort of transmission coming from the Island." Keamy smells like Gault's bed, and Gault has never been so bothered by anything, tries to refocus his train of thought. "It's disabling our sat phones. He's got them working now, did he tell you?"
"Yes."
"Well. Anyway. He thinks Linus may be doing it, he may have captured Naomi."
"That's not my problem."
"Right, well." Gault narrows his eyes. "We were just thinking you might want to fly to the Island ahead of the scientists. Considering that something -- that it might be dangerous."
Keamy shakes his head. "No. Widmore wanted them there first."
"He didn't want to send them to be killed by Linus, with no way of contacting the ship! What difference does it make?"
"I've got to be the last one on the Island," Keamy says. "Period. Don't argue with me."
Something about that last command strikes Gault silent. It's less ultimatum and more fair warning, or maybe he's projecting. He leaves, though it feels good out here in the sun, and makes a mental note to fish that black book out of Keamy's pocket later, while he's sleeping. He can't be sure, but Keamy seems to sleep very deeply. He'll have to do some tests to figure out if this hypothesis is correct. Pleased to have a chore, a mystery he actually has a chance of solving, he goes back to the kitchen to search out more junk food.
He takes a long nap in the afternoon, guiltily enjoying the feeling that someone else is keeping an eye on things. His dreams won't let him rest fully, and he has visions of a jungle, thoughts about the combat that he never saw in Vietnam. He wakes up worrying that the lack of travesty in his life has made him weak. Two swigs from the vodka bottle, and he's out the door again.
Minkowski still hasn't been able to get through to Naomi, and when Gault walks past the kitchen, he spots Frank and Keamy inside, having some kind of heated conversation. Charlotte is sitting at the table, trying to butt in, but they're mostly ignoring her. Faraday is lingering in the doorway, watching. He's got a pack of cards in his hand, like he showed up for a friendly game and found this instead.
"I'll go by myself, then!" Frank is saying.
"That's ridiculous!" Charlotte shouts.
"We'll stick to the plan," Keamy says. "There's no reason to think anything's even happened."
"Look me in the face and tell me you think Naomi's perfectly fine!" Frank says. Keamy is already looking him in the face, and Gault would have thought Frank smart enough to realize that doesn't mean anything.
"She's perfectly fine."
"For all you care," Charlotte mutters. "Perfectly fine at the bottom of a ditch."
"So are we leaving?" Faraday asks.
"Not all of us, not yet," Frank says, sighing. "As far as I'm concerned, it'd be like walking into an ambush. We'll wait until Minkowski hears --"
"And if he never hears from her?" Charlotte says. "We leave her for dead? It's not like we can turn back, anyway, with the engines broken."
"Wait two more days," Gault says from the doorway, and everyone turns as if surprised to hear him speak. "If Minkowski can't figure out a way around this transmission, Frank, you take the three you're supposed to fly ahead of Keamy. Bring weapons."
"I'm, ah, not especially comfortable, um. Firing a gun?" Faraday says.
"Keamy can give you lessons," Gault says, not daring to aim his smirk in Keamy's direction.
"I can give you lessons, Dan," Charlotte says before Keamy can protest. Faraday smiles sheepishly, thumbs through the deck of cards.
As if he's made some sort of final decree, Gault leaves the kitchen and walks to the engine room. Tonight it's empty, no one even bothering to tinker. He turns to head back for his stateroom, and starts a bit when he sees Miles standing at the other end of the hallway, watching him.
"Everything alright, Straume?" he calls, the question like an accusation.
"Yeah," Miles says. There is plain calculation in his eyes, and Gault is tired of seeing people's treachery clear on their faces, has never been so close to so much open deceit. "Fine."
Miles walks away, and Gault feels the hair on his arms prickle, as if there was some information Miles considered sharing but withheld, something he might have needed to know.
When he gets to his room, he's all the way through the door before he realizes that Keamy has beat him here. He's sitting at Gault's desk and paging through a booklet that Gault is familiar with, the spiral-bound protocol that Widmore gave both of them at their first meeting in Adelaide. There is a machine gun of some type sitting on the desk, and Keamy has his shirt off, has made himself at home.
"What are you doing in here?" Gault asks anyway. He bolts the door, and feels, actually, relieved to not be alone with himself.
"Reading."
"What, you haven't memorized all that by now?" Gault takes the bottle of vodka and has one quick drink before falling onto the bed. He's got to ration it; there's no telling how long they'll be here.
Keamy ignores him and continues studying the protocol. Gault lies back and considers the plans he's devised for driving Keamy away: attempts at physical affection and conversation. If he annoys him enough, he'll return to his men, maybe start screwing some other idiot to pass the hours. But first, Gault wants to find out what's in that black book. And anyway, for the moment, it's not so bad to have some silent company.
He picks up the Bible from the place on floor where Keamy tossed it last night, and remembers as he does that the lubricant they used is gone. This puts him in a minor panic, thinking that Keamy might not even bother with it rather than search out more. Gault racks his brain for something else they might use, and remembers a first aid kit he saw under the bed on his first night in the stateroom. He reaches under the bed until he finds it, pulls it out and unlatches its clasp. As he sifts through it, coming up with liquid soap, antibiotic ointment and another tube of burn ointment, he sees Keamy watching him out of the corner of his eye.
"Here's hoping I don't get burned at some point and actually need this," Gault says, tossing the usable items up onto the bedside table. "Though I suppose the Doc has his own supply."
"Yeah," Keamy says after some silence that might have been awkward if they weren't well past that. "Here." He reaches under the desk and comes up with a tall bottle of something, throws it at Gault. It lands heavy on his stomach, and Gault curses him unenthusiastically as he examines the object: lotion with aloe.
"Stole this from the Doctor, did you?"
"No. From Lewis."
"Who?"
"The redhead."
"Oh. Right. Well. Were you a thief before you were a Marine?"
Keamy looks at him like he's tremendously stupid.
"See something you want, take it," he mutters. He turns back to the protocol. "It's not that hard."
Gault considers this as an invitation, but doesn't want to spoil his chance to examine that black book while Keamy sleeps, so he just rolls onto his side and pretends to doze. There is no sound in the room except for the occasional turn of a page, but Gault is wide awake as if there's a light glaring in his face. After some time passes, he hears Keamy get up and stretch with a groaning sigh. His boots hit the floor, trousers following. Gault stays still, tries to keep his forehead smooth, his eyelids relaxed.
Keamy steps over him, rocking the bed, and falls heavily onto the other side. Gault waits to be rolled over onto his back, the lotion within arm's reach on the floor, but Keamy just punches the bed's single pillow -- stolen from Gault, who sleeps with his head on the mattress -- and curls into his usual position. Insanely, Gault feels insulted, then just relieved, because he's sore as all hell. His relief quickly turns to boredom, and there lies the reason he's gotten himself into this situation in the first place.
Keamy has left the light at the desk on, which seems somehow indicative of everything about him that, on top of his bolder strangeness, is subtlety distorted. Gault waits as long as he can, then gets up and shuts it off. He looks back toward the bed, the room now pitch dark, and waits for his eyes to adjust in the small glow that creeps in under the stateroom door. It would be easier to extract the black book with the lights on, but Gault would also have a greater chance of getting caught. He glances at the desk to make sure Keamy's machine gun is still resting there.
Before he dares to crawl across the floor and go poking around in Keamy's discarded trousers, he goes back to the bed and lies still for awhile, listens to Keamy's breathing. It's deep and steady, without the hint of a snore. As his eyes adjust, he stares at the white spread of Keamy's back, waiting for a muscle twitch or an interruption in the puff and sink of his chest. He's almost lulled to sleep, watching, and he thinks of Vera, who he somehow expects to find out about this and to have already moved out of their house with Sammy, back to live with her parents in Rockhampton. She asked him, once, after watching some insipid romantic movie with her sister, why don't you ever watch me sleep? As if she would know about it, but she was right, he never did.
"Keamy," he tries whispering. He gets no response, then realizes this doesn't mean anything. Keamy ignores him often enough when he's not trying to sleep. "Wake up and I'll suck you off," he whispers, but even that doesn't seem enough to rile him, if he's determined to get some rest.
Gault swallows a tremor of fear, as if he's about to disturb a slumbering animal, and puts a hand flat against Keamy's back. The air seems to leave the room for a moment, and he waits for Keamy to snap around and pin him to the bed, growling some threat. Keamy doesn't move, and his breathing doesn't change. Gault risks moving his thumb slightly, delicate enough to feel the tiny hairs on Keamy's skin. Still, he doesn't flinch.
Satisfied that he's asleep, Gault carefully withdraws his hand, and leaves the bed as quietly as possible. On the floor, he moves in a squat to the place where Keamy left his trousers, a dusty pair of military style khakis, covered in pockets. Gault's unsteady hand goes to the back pocket where he saw Keamy slip the black book earlier, and when he feels the shape of it there, he has a brief fretting moment. This has been, so far, too easy. He looks back to Keamy, who is still facing the wall, still asleep.
Finally he comes to the difficult part: the velcro on the pocket. It takes ten excruciating minutes to pull the flap away without making a ripping static sound, and he keeps his eyes on the bed as he works, looking for any sign of movement. When he gets the pocket open he extracts the book and presses the trousers down to the floor, velcro flap up, so he won't have to go through that process again.
The book is smaller than Gault's hand, and his pulse races as he moves toward the door to try and read its contents in the light from the hallway. He checks Keamy again, afraid he'll hear his heart beating from across the room. Gault wouldn't even be vaguely surprised if he did.
When he finally brings the book down to the floor to read it in the light, he's so struck with disappointment that he almost flings it across the room. It's written in some other language: Russian, maybe? It could be Chinese, French, wouldn't matter. Gault only speaks English.
He checks the pages of the book for notes by Keamy, and only sees a string of numbers scrawled onto the back of the last page: 4 8 15 16 23 42. Like the rest of the book, it doesn't mean anything to Gault.
After putting the book back, and reinstalling Keamy's trousers into their previously crumpled position, he heads for the bed, feeling idiotic for thinking that there was even some small mystery on board this ship that he could solve. He's got one knee on the mattress when Keamy speaks, still facing the wall.
"Going to suck me off now?"
Gault freezes, his throat gone dry. He checks the desk again, and the gun is still there, a good six feet out of Keamy's reach. He only has a moment to be relieved before Keamy has grabbed his shirt and yanked him down to the bed.
"I didn't!" Gault sputters. "I'm not --"
"If you're done snooping through my shit, I'll take you up on your offer, okay?" Keamy doesn't sound particularly angry, though his grip on Gault's shirt communicates a fury that he won't otherwise let himself express. Gault nods, takes his hands from Keamy's arms and reaches for the hem of his underwear. He pulls them down only to Keamy's knees, so they'll cuff him if he changes his mind and decides to kill Gault after all.
"What's that book?" Gault asks when his lips are just nearly on the head of Keamy's cock. He looks up at Keamy with his own sort of threat, one he doesn't expect him to really buy into, and mashes his lips together to stop them from shaking.
"I don't know," Keamy says. He puts a finger against Gault's lips and pushes it into his mouth, moves it so that he'll suck on it. "I found it in the armory. I needed something to write on."
Keamy doesn't come until Gault's jaw is sore, brilliant revenge, and when he does, Gault swallows it all without a second thought, wanting it, hard inside his trousers just from this. He doesn't expect any sort of reciprocation, and Keamy only watches him as he spills lotion into his hand and pulls himself off, staring all the time at his face, never looking once down at his lap. Gault keeps Keamy's gaze when he's done, just waiting, nothing but curiosity for what he'll do next.
"If you touch my stuff again, I'll kill you," Keamy says. He blinks once and then rolls over, goes back to sleep.
Gault thinks of his sister shouting that at him when they were kids. He remembers Keamy mentioning his brother telling him to get out of his room. There is something very childish about all of this.
*
Gault moves forward with his plan to try and get rid of Keamy, though he's actually more amused than annoyed as his room begins to fill with Keamy artifacts: more guns, a second pair of boots, a can of WD-40. Still, he can't go on like this, sinking willingly into the feeling that nothing he does really matters, because this is some kind of purgatory he won't ever escape. He tries to surround himself with people who don't seem to share his sense of dread. This amounts to only Frank and perhaps Charlotte. Keamy, too, remains consistently unperturbed, though borrowing his confidence is really very counterproductive, because he also represents everything that is wrong here.
"What did you do in the Marines?" Gault asks him one night when they're still out of breath, Keamy standing by the desk and chugging water like he's just run a marathon, which is nearly true. Gault is used up and exhausted, huddled self-consciously under a blanket, though it's baking hot in the stateroom.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Never mind why I want to know. I do, alright, and you can either tell me or not, I don't give a stuff either way."
"When someone asks you a question, the only thing that matters is why they want the answer," Keamy says. He puts down the water bottle and walks to the bed, crawls onto his stomach. Gault is suddenly bothered by how close he is, despite the fact that Keamy was inside him five minutes ago. He looks at the ceiling.
"Are you quoting something? Read that in The Art of War, did you?"
"No. It's just common sense."
"Nothing you say makes a damn bit of sense to me, but alright."
Keamy sniffs and grins, looks at his hands. He's propped up on his elbows, and he spends a few minutes peeling sunburned skin from his left arm. After he's successfully strewn dead skin all over Gault's sheets, he leans over and puts his hand on Gault's throat, neither a caress nor a warning. He tips Gault's jaw with his index finger, makes him meet his eyes.
"I was a sniper."
"You're lying." Gault didn't mean to say so out loud, but he's quite pleased with himself for being absolutely certain, and he couldn't help it. Keamy's hand tightens on his throat.
"What makes you think that you can tell when I'm lying?"
"Why would I tell you that?" Gault laughs for no real reason, maybe going light-headed as Keamy's fingers push into the muscles of his neck.
There's a knock on the door, and Keamy removes his hand but otherwise doesn't stir. Gault doesn't bother to get up, either, just tips his head backward as if he'll see who's there.
"What?" he calls, surprised that Keamy didn't try to answer for him.
"Sir," someone says, either Jeff or Brandon, Gault can't tell their voices apart. "We've had a communication from Naomi."
"Well, what did she say?" Gault hadn't realized until now how much he doesn't care, and it startles him. He sits up, pulls the blanket around his waist.
"Nothing. The signal came from her sat phone, but Minkowski is speaking with someone else."
"Someone else? Linus?"
Keamy sits up now, fast.
"No, not Linus. His name is Jack."
"Is he working for Linus?" Keamy shouts, tripping into his trousers as he heads for the door. Gault hurries to put his own on before he can pull it open.
"He's not." It's Jeff, standing in the hallway and looking equal parts terrified and humiliated by the sight of Keamy in the stateroom. "He says he's a survivor of Oceanic flight 815. He's not the only one."
"Shit!" Keamy shoves Jeff out of the way and hurries out into the hall without bothering to put on a shirt. Gault and Jeff stare at each other for a moment.
"Who else knows about this?" Keamy shouts back down the hall.
"Um." Jeff glances at Gault. "Everyone, now."
*
Up on deck, Frank is preparing the helicopter for takeoff. Gault doesn't know quite what is going on, but allows the situation to remain opaque for now. Keamy is in the communications room with Minkowski, keeping a close watch on what he says to the survivors. Faraday and Charlotte are loading their packs into the copter.
"Where's Miles?" Faraday asks.
"Taking his time, I suppose," Charlotte says.
"Have you both got guns?" Gault shouts over the noise from the chopper as it begins to fire up.
"Your -- Keamy wouldn't give us any," Charlotte says bitterly. "I wasn't told to bring a weapon on this lovely voyage, or I would have. Miles has one."
"Here," Gault mutters, having a look round the deck before pulling a hand gun from where he'd tucked it into his trousers, under the back of his shirt. He hands it to Faraday.
"Don't tell Keamy I gave you that."
Faraday does his best to smile, looks queasy. Gault had planned on giving the gun to the girl, but at the moment he's more worried about Faraday.
"Captain!"
Gault turns to see Brandon heading across the deck, Miles following.
"Captain," he says again, out of breath. "Just had a communication from Naomi. She said something about a -- tree branch -- she's injured -- but then she gave the code."
"Her sister?"
"Yeah, that. They've captured her. She's under some kind of duress."
"Might it be Linus' people, then? Just saying they're from Oceanic 815?"
"Anything's possible," Brandon says, and Gault gets a sense of deja vu beyond just having heard him say so before.
"Are you sure you want to go?" he says to Faraday, who is lingering on the deck, Charlotte and Miles already in the helicopter with Frank.
"I think I have to," Faraday says, and as Gault watches him climb in, he's fairly sure Faraday isn't referring to his responsibility to Widmore.
He stands back and watches the chopper leave, Brandon beside him with his arms crossed. With the scientists gone, the ship immediately seems too quiet, an eerie hopelessness thickening.
"Great," Brandon says. "Hurry up and wait. How long are they going to be gone? Another seven days?"
"I told them to be back in three," Keamy says from behind them, and they both turn to see him standing with his fists curled at his sides, staring at the helicopter as it flies farther from the ship.
"I think Naomi's dead," he adds before walking away.
*
Gault spends the evening in his stateroom, lying in his bed and reading the Bible. He's never really even looked at it before. His parents were not religious, but his grandparents did drag him to church a time or two as a kid. He remembers flipping through the books of gospel lyrics that sat on the pews, but never this book. He fully expects Keamy to pummel him to death when he comes back and finds one of his guns missing, and he searches the tissue-thin pages for some appropriate final sentiment, though actually he feels pretty peaceful already.
"Want to hear a relevant quote?" he asks when Keamy comes in, much later than usual, or at least it seems so. Keamy only gives him a flick of a glance before he walks to the desk, screws the cap off the vodka and takes a long drink.
"Never been drunk in your life, eh?" Gault says with a laugh, familiar enough with this kind of desperate gulping, which is not for beginners.
"I didn't say I never drink." Keamy wipes his mouth. "I just don't let it make me stupid."
"Oh, well, you ought to sometime, it's a real enjoyable experience, at least at first. So do you want to hear this quote?"
"I'd rather have some peace and fucking quiet."
"You've come to the wrong room, then. Listen. 'My righteousness draws near speedily,'" he reads. "'My salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations. The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm.'"
"What are you talking about?" Keamy snaps, as if this is something Gault just said, his original take on the situation. Gault laughs and drops the Bible onto the bedside table.
"I don't know, maybe I'm cracking up like Regina and Faraday. Did you see him before he got on the helicopter? I think he expects to end up like Naomi."
"He'd better not," Keamy says. "I don't need any more delays."
"What if there are survivors?" Gault asks. He's been thinking about it, about what Vera would say if he came back not only with Ben Linus in chains, but with forty sad sacks who'd been stranded on an island for months. "Would we bring them back with us?"
"No."
"Why not? It might not be the most comfortable ride, but --"
"I said no!" Keamy shouts. "What the fuck do you care, anyway?"
He sits heavily at the desk, and puts his head in his hands for a moment, sucks his breath in and straightens. Gault watches whatever panic that was rising in face sink down again and disappear.
"What's the matter with you?" Gault asks.
Keamy glares at him. "What's the matter with you?"
"A lot, turns out. Come over here."
"Why?"
"Goddammit, Keamy, why do you think? Fine, stay there, it's good to be in this bed without you fucking crowding me for once."
Keamy drinks again, then puts the cap on and tosses Gault the bottle. He touches the protocol that is still sitting on the desk, watches the reflection of the lamp on its clear plastic cover. Gault holds the bottle but doesn't drink, though he's very tempted to drain it.
"Why did you leave the Marines?" he asks. He doesn't expect an answer.
"Because," Keamy says. "I wanted to see the world."
Gault feels stabbed. He told his mother the same thing when he joined the Royal Navy. Australia had just gotten involved in Vietnam, and she was horrified that he'd be killed in a jungle without a proper burial. She had dreams about it, she said, saw his restless soul wandering forever past mango trees and grass huts. Gault was more interested in seeing what a jungle really looked like than staying home and not dying in one.
"So did you?" he asks Keamy.
"I guess." Keamy seems restless. He walks to the bed and tips his chin back, looks down his nose at Gault. "One of my guns is missing," he says.
"What are you worried about? Think I've got it under the pillow here, ready to kill you?"
"You did something with it."
"Alright, I did. I guess you're going to kill me now, then. Go ahead and do it, if it'll get that thoughtful look off your face."
Gault feels untouchable in a claustrophobic way, like a death row inmate shoveling in his last meal. When Keamy leans down to the bed, he grabs his shirt and yanks him close, breathes into his face. Keamy just stares at him as if he's a platypus, something grotesquely extraordinary.
"What's your first name?" Gault asks. Widmore said it in Adelaide, but that was three thousand years ago. Keamy gives up his footing on the floor and falls completely onto Gault, crushing him into the mattress.
"Why do you want to know?"
Gault scoffs.
"Why did you want to see the world?" he asks. Keamy frowns, and Gault gets the impression that he's never before had someone talk to him like they've got nothing to lose.
Keamy doesn't answer, except to flip Gault onto his stomach urgently, as if he can't stand the sight of his face for another minute. He puts his mouth on the back of Gault's neck, and neatly bites his way down to Gault's shoulder, making him jitter against the mattress. His hands trail down Gault's body, drawing him easily to his knees. Keamy bends up behind him like a wave, and Gault shudders hard, waiting to be struck by it.
"That wasn't relevant, by the way," Keamy says.
"What?"
Keamy reaches around to rip the front of Gault's trousers open, and he slides his shorts down along with them.
"After that, declares the Lord," he says. "I will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the people in this city who survive the plague, sword, and famine, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to their enemies who seek their lives. He will put them to the sword, he will show them no mercy or pity or compassion."
Gault lets out his breath, hadn't realized he was holding it until his lungs started to burn. Keamy turns him over onto his back, presses hard on his chest with one hand that seems to span the width of him.
"That," he says. "Was relevant. You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand."
"I thought you said you weren't religious." Gault stares up at him, too bewildered to worry about Keamy tilting him back, pulling his legs up.
"You know what?" Keamy narrows his eyes like a disappointed teacher. "You don't pay enough attention to what people don't say. I said I'm not religious. I didn't say I never was."
"So you -- were?"
"No. Always sounded like a lot of bullshit to me."
"Then why --"
"Had to memorize it. Fuck, do you ever stop talking?"
Facing the ceiling, Gault doesn't have anyplace to bury the screams that Keamy brings out of him, and he doesn't mind, really, likes the idea of irritating him by not shutting up even now, pleads out his name like it's the only word that's ever been worth saying. Keamy holds his wrists together while he fucks him, thumbs digging in, again making him one pulsing pressure point. He looks like living marble, his eyes half shut, mouth slick and swollen, muscles moving evenly under his skin, he doesn't even break a sweat.
When Keamy wipes himself clean on the sheets and rolls over, Gault feels torn in half, misses his wife so much he could weep. He wants someone to wrap around and put his face against. Vera would rub his back, scratch her fingers through his hair. Keamy is through with him, and Gault doesn't want those things from him, anyway. Regret pokes into him like a sprout finally pushing through soil.
"I thought you knew my first name," Keamy says. Gault jumps, thought he had already fallen asleep. "It's Martin."
"After that Protestant bloke?" He should be dreaming up ten life stories for Keamy based on this new information, but he's so tired. He listlessly envisions horrifyingly devout parents, an orphanage run by nuns.
"No," Keamy says. "After the saint."
*
Part III
//
Author: hollycomb
Pairing: Martin Keamy/Captain Gault
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through the most recent episode
Summary: What might be described as a heightened case of cabin fever.
Naomi is gone for three days without any word. The scientists grow restless and pester Minkowski to fix the communications equipment as gossip about sabotage spreads quickly across the ship. Gault expects Keamy to go out of his mind with the waiting, but he's really got to stop expecting Keamy to do things, because his expectations almost never come to pass. Keamy walks about the ship with a look of serene satisfaction on his face, and it takes Gault a few days to realize why. Keamy is glad that Naomi's mission has probably failed, that something awful has almost certainly happened.
Gault feels trapped. He is trapped. There is no way to communicate with anyone outside of the ship, no way to pull up anchor and just leave this disaster behind. Nothing to drink.
He avoids Keamy when he can, which is not often, and even when he's not around, Gault can't get rid of his hateful curiosity. He dreams up every possible origin for such a person: jaded son of a prostitute, trying to make a living. Disturbed heir to some American family's fortune, trying to piss off his father. He can't imagine that someone like him has -- or had -- parents, people who fussed over him or even neglected him. More than anything, he wishes he could stop with all the fucking wondering. It doesn't make any difference, and Keamy would never fess up to coming from somewhere, anyway.
Though he did mention Las Vegas.
The problem is that Gault doesn't have anything else to think about. He's given up on the engines, left them to Jeff and Keamy's mechanic. Even Faraday has poked at them, doing God knows how much more damage.
He takes a walk across the deck around sun up and sun down every day, and otherwise tries to stick to a short course between his stateroom and the communications room, where Minkowski is laboring to repair the equipment. He thinks that if he could just speak to his wife, his son, anybody who is not on this ship, he could get his head back in the right place.
"Any progress?" he calls in to Minkowski for the third night in a row. Minkowski pokes his head out from beneath a split open phone board and frowns at him.
"Man, if people could quit asking me every three seconds, maybe there would be some," he says. He tosses a roll of electrical tape across the room. "Maybe your energy would be better spent figuring out who the hell did this."
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Gault snaps. "Do we have a lie detecting device on board that I'm unaware of? I'm not a fucking investigator. I didn't agree to a mystery cruise."
Minkowski's laugh is loud and unpleasant.
"That's funny," he says. "Mystery cruise. Ha."
Gault turns to leave, grumbling to himself like a defeated old man, and crashes into Keamy as he's coming into the room.
"Well?" Keamy says. Gault scoffs and stutters, feels as if he's just been dropped into the middle of a conversation he doesn't want to have.
"Well what?" He pushes around Keamy and heads quickly down the hall. Keamy of course follows. Gault hates the tremendous sound of his boots clomping along behind him, and hates that it's such a relief to hear something not quiet and guarded.
"He hasn't fixed anything yet?" Keamy asks when they're far enough from the communications room.
"He's working on it."
"I'll bet."
Gault turns to glare at him. He's tired of having ideas put into his head about who is trustworthy and who isn't by Keamy, who he wouldn't trust to clean the toilets without having some ulterior motive. Keamy seems amused by his indignation, and, actually, he should have expected that.
"Straume is up to something," Keamy says.
"Who the hell is Straume?"
"Miles. Miles Straume. That little Asian guy."
"Fine. Okay, the Asian guy. What's he doing?"
Keamy looks up and down the hall.
"We shouldn't have this conversation here."
Gault itches his throat self-consciously. The last thing he needs is to get himself alone in his stateroom again with Keamy. The thought of what he did with him makes his stomach turn, and he can taste the whiskey on the roof of his mouth when he remembers it.
"Meet me at the stern after dinner, then," Gault says. Keamy stares at him for a moment, smiles slow.
"Alright," he says. "Can I lock Straume in one of the bunkers until then?"
"Christ, Keamy, what are you afraid he's going to do? Kill you? Keep an eye on him if you want, but there's no reason to lock him up. We haven't got anything left for him to break."
"I don't think he's the one who's breaking things."
"Well, terrific. Leave him alone until we talk."
"We could talk now." Keamy looks at Gault like he's the one who isn't making any sense.
"I can't deal with you right now," Gault says, and it's true. "I haven't got time. Find me after dinner." He walks off, and feels Keamy's eyes on the back of his neck like a cold breath.
Gault goes back to his stateroom and sits on his bed, puts his hands on his knees. He gets up and bolts the door, sits down again. Knowing he should eat something, he thinks about wanking off instead, as if that will do him any good.
An hour passes, or maybe it doesn't. The clock in Gault's stateroom has stopped working along with everything else on the ship. But it feels like an hour, so Gault gets up, unbolts the door and heads for the deck. He's feeling optimistic on the way there, unperturbed by the prospect of hearing one of Keamy's half-formed theories about why some so and so on board is no good, weightless despite previous events. The air outside is light and breezy, the usual stolid humidity blown away, and the sky is perfectly black, clouded. The wind across the deck reminds him of his back porch at home, standing outside with a beer and listening to the steady sound of the tap running in the kitchen as Vera washes up.
He'd really love a beer right now.
At the back of the boat, he leans onto the railing and waits. Someone is talking, elsewhere on the deck, and someone else is laughing, a little too high pitched. Gault doesn't trust anyone's laughter, lately. He waits, watching the water, until the waiting starts to irritate him.
Keamy never comes. Gault curses him under his breath and scans the deck, which has gone silent now, whoever was out here tucked back into quarters, or someplace else where they shouldn't be. He thinks of Keamy locked up in a bunker with Miles, strong arming him into admitting to a crime he hasn't actually committed. Or maybe he's already stuffed a knife in the poor bloke's stomach and thrown him overboard, as a precaution.
Gault pounds on the door of Keamy's room and gets no answer. One of his men -- the small one, Omar -- walks by and gives him a suspicious look. Gault doesn't bother to make an excuse, just slides around him and heads toward the scientists' rooms. He knocks on every door, not knowing which one belongs to Miles. Charlotte tells him shortly that she's got no idea where Miles is, and Faraday scratches his head, hums with concern.
"Want me to help you look?" he offers.
"No," Gault says. He doesn't want Faraday to witness whatever the hell Keamy's up to, for his own sake. "Thanks," he adds before walking away. He tries two more doors, gets no answer at either of them.
He's about to head for the kitchen and take an inventory of the knives when he sees Frank sitting on the stairs that lead down to the engine room, frowning at a map.
"Have you seen Miles?" Gault asks. "Or Keamy?"
Frank folds up the map before Gault can see what it is. "Not Keamy," he says. "I saw Miles about an hour ago, at dinner."
"An hour ago? Do you know where he went?"
"I sure don't. Do you need him for something?"
"No -- just. He wasn't acting strange, was he?"
Frank grins. "Miles? Sure, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for him."
"What do you mean?"
"He's sort of a strange guy. Is something wrong, Captain?"
"No. Forget it. If you see Miles, tell him I'm looking for him."
"And Keamy?" Frank asks as Gault is walking off.
Gault jerks around. "What about Keamy?"
"You, uh, asked about Keamy, too?"
"Oh. No, I don't want to see Keamy."
That's a lie, and it makes him want to drive his head into a wall, knock himself out before this can get worse. He needs to know where Keamy is at all times, resents the size of the ship and the number of people on board who aren't losing their minds in this particular fashion. The engine room is empty, and so is the communications room. There's no one in the kitchen but Regina, who is holding the refrigerator door open and staring in at the dark, empty shelves.
"It's broken," Gault says, bothered by something he can't put words to: the slump of her posture, or her white-knuckled grip on the handle.
"I know," she says. "But I thought I heard something."
Gault doesn't bother to ask her if she's seen Miles, gets out of the kitchen as quickly as possible.
Back in his stateroom, he sits at his desk and puts his head in his hands. He has the nagging feeling that there are parts of this ship that he doesn't know about, secret passages people are slipping through. He feels like both a guard and a prisoner, slacking on his duty and holed up in his cell.
Someone pounds on the door, and it can only be Keamy, because no one else has the nerve to knock so loud.
"Yeah?" Gault calls, not even turning around. He hears the door open and shut, the slide of the bolt.
"I found something," Keamy says. Gault sighs and turns just in time to see a clear, cylindrical object flying through the air toward his face. He gasps stupidly and fumbles it, but manages to clutch it to his chest before it smashes against the floor. It's a fifth of vodka.
"Where'd you get this?" Gault asks, pretending not to be excited.
"I told you." Keamy is still standing near the door. "I found it."
So he stole it, or maybe confiscated it from one of his men. He'd rather have them sober and Gault drunk.
"What have you done with Miles?" Gault asks. He sets the vodka on the desk, plans on consuming it when Keamy is long gone.
Keamy smirks. "I haven't touched him. Is he missing? I told you he was up to something."
"What exactly is he up to, Keamy?" Gault keeps his tone bewildered and disbelieving, lets him know he's only humoring him.
Keamy walks across the room to Gault's bed, sits on it and leans back as if he's in a shisha bar, puts his hands behind his head. He lets out his breath, tips his legs apart.
"I don't know," he says. "Something. Widmore gave me a briefing on all of the scientists. He didn't want me interfering with them, but he didn't want them fucking with his island, either. He wouldn't tell me anything about Miles."
"And that proves he's out to murder us all. Well done."
"He's got a picture of Linus in his room."
"You went poking through his room?" Gault doesn't know why he's surprised.
"Widmore told me to keep an eye on them."
"Alright, but so what if he's got a photo? We came here to get Linus."
"I came here to get Linus." Keamy sits up. "They've got nothing to do with it. As far as Widmore knows, they don't even know what Linus looks like."
"So you think Miles is going to murder Linus before you get the chance to capture him? Did Linus kill the man's parents, did he vow revenge? Why are you bothering me with this, Keamy?"
"Because," Keamy says. "I want your permission to restrain him."
"Well, you can't have it."
Keamy scoffs. "What would you do to stop me, anyway?"
"I could tell Widmore you've been interfering with his scientists."
"Nobody's telling Widmore anything, or vice versa! Somebody's made sure of that."
Gault rubs his forehead, groans. Keamy is accusing him of letting this sabotage happen, but there was nothing he could do. He should have gathered the whole crew before they left port and told them straight off: For the record, I have a bad feeling about this. Beyond that, it's all been out of his hands. This isn't a military operation. He can't just start locking people up based on pictures found during illegal searches of their rooms.
"Don't worry about it," Keamy says. "I'll take care of it. Have a drink."
Gault does his best to look offended.
"Your interest in getting me drunk is touching, really, but I think you should get the hell out of my room."
Keamy leans back, crosses his arms over his chest.
"Make me."
Gault feels his heart start to race, right in the hollow his throat.
"You sound like a five year old."
"You just told me to get out of your room."
"So?"
"So my brother used to tell me that. When he was five."
Gault feels like he's just discovered a briefcase full of money. So Keamy had a brother at some point. Or, he's lying for the sake of a joke. Gault is willing to go along with it, either way.
"Your brother, huh?"
Keamy sniffs, rejecting this thread of conversation outright.
"Get over here," he says.
Gault doesn't know how to navigate this. When he was very young, he chewed his nails when he was nervous. He longs for the taste of them now, can almost feel his father smack the back of his head, don't even think about biting those nails.
"What do you want me over there for?" he finally manages. It's easily the worst, most permissive response he could have offered.
"You gonna make me say it?" Keamy asks, gleam of his teeth as he pulls his shirt off.
There's a knock on the stateroom door, and Gault jumps out of his chair, saved. He's disappointed, too, his lap not entirely soft as he makes his way to the door. He clears his throat and adjusts his trousers, hears Keamy laughing under his breath behind him.
"Put your clothes on," Gault hisses. Keamy sits with his hands hanging between his knees, doesn't move.
Miles is standing out in the hallway, and he stares at Gault with his usual watery, vacant expression, as if Gault is the one who interrupted him.
"What?" Gault barks, hugging the door close so that Miles won't see Keamy, half undressed on his bed.
"Frank said you wanted to see me." Miles seems slightly agitated, but Gault doesn't expect he'll find out why.
"Oh -- right --"
He hears Keamy coming up behind him, but it's too late to get rid of Miles. Keamy grabs the door and pulls it entirely open, leans behind Gault and regards Miles seriously, as if he's looking for a confession on his face. Miles is almost literally half his size. Gault is embarrassed, then just relieved to be standing on this side of the door.
"Hey," Keamy says to Miles. "Where have you been?"
Miles glares at him. "What the hell do you care?"
Keamy cocks his head, leans forward until Gault can feel the heat of him through his shirt.
"Just curious," Keamy says. He looks Miles up and down, grins like he finds the whole package pretty hilarious. "Widmore told me about you."
"Oh, really? How fascinating. Gault, do you need me or --"
"He told me that of the three scientists, you were the most expendable."
Miles looks at Gault as if expecting him to deny this. Gault doesn't say anything, doesn't look away. He wouldn't be surprised if Miles is up to something, come to it. He never liked the look of him.
"I know what you're planning," Keamy says. "And I've got permission to kill you if you try it. So I really think you should just do your little science experiment and stay the fuck out of my sight. Okay?"
Miles says nothing for a moment. He's backing down the hallway slow, like Keamy is an animal who tracks his prey by sight, and a sudden movement will give him away.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he finally says, and he makes a break for it, walking fast. Keamy watches him go, puts his chest fully against Gault's back.
"Good," Keamy says, as if he's ticked off an item from his to-do list. He wraps one arm around Gault's waist and yanks him back into the room, bolts the door behind them.
"Wait a minute," Gault says, his legs wheeling as Keamy pulls him across the room. He ends up on his back in bed, the wind knocked out of him more by the circumstances than the fall. "I thought you said Widmore didn't tell you anything about Miles?"
"I did say that, didn't I?" Keamy is taking off his belt, his face completely blank. There's no color climbing into his cheeks, nothing to give him away. He's lied to either Gault or Miles, but it doesn't matter much. Gault lets his head drop back onto the bed, shuts his eyes. He should have had that drink.
Keamy leans over Gault like a shadow, the shape of him blocking out reason and reality, a total eclipse. Gault is hard with teenage speed, just from anticipation, and he pushes up against Keamy, tries to pull him down closer. He's immovable, his tongue stroking the hollow of Gault's throat, counting heartbeats.
"God," Gault lets himself say, drawing his hands up Keamy's back, waiting for him to slap them away. Keamy is indifferent, more concerned with getting Gault's clothes off. Gault would rather not be completely naked in the presence of this man, but he lets himself be stripped. This is more about the pace than anything else, just a shade below frantic.
"Have you got anything?" Keamy asks. He sits up on his knees, and Gault gets stuck on looking at him, can't think about the question. Keamy narrows his eyes in annoyance and leans to the table beside the bed, rummages through its top drawer. Gault watches things being flung to the floor: a pack of cards, some scattered peppermints, a Bible that does not belong to him. Keamy comes up with a tube of burn ointment and empties half of it into his hand.
Gault feels resigned like never before, ready to go to his death. Keamy sits back and yanks him up, turns him around and holds onto him from behind.
"Alright?" His mouth is right on Gault's ear, his big hand sliding down to split Gault's ass. When he pushes a slick finger inside of him, Gault bites his lip and stuffs down a scream, tastes blood. He nods rapidly, his face pushed back against Keamy's cheek so that he'll feel the answer to his half-asked question.
He expected this to hurt a lot more, but maybe it doesn't because he's entered some other dimension where this is the only thing he's ever wanted. He bounces a little, balanced on the balls of his feet, but mostly lets Keamy do all the work, his arms crossed over Gault's chest, fingers digging into his shoulders, deep enough to leave marks. If he'd let himself consider it, Gault might have thought him the cheesy type who barks a lot of commands and curses during sex, but Keamy hardly makes a sound, just breathes roughly onto Gault's shoulder, his ear pressed to his neck, listening all the time to what's he's doing to Gault's heart rate.
They tip forward, Gault's face hidden happily in the sheets while Keamy puts his palms flat against the wall behind the bed and drives into him, losing track of all his rhythms and just barely biting down a building grunt in the back of his throat. Gault buries his shouts into the mattress, doesn't even care at this point if passersby know that Keamy is in here fucking him hard, but doesn't want to give Keamy the pleasure of knowing how good it feels.
"Yeah," Gault breathes, vicariously relieved when Keamy comes, the barrel of his body dropping forward. He shudders quick, and drools a little on the back of Gault's neck as he's trying to get his breath. Gault is ready now to be free of him, but when Keamy falls over onto his side he pulls Gault with him, still inside him, aftershocks making them both twitch. Keamy reaches around to finish Gault off, his hand still slick from the ointment, and Gault is shocked by the gesture, then realizes why he bothered as he comes in Keamy's hand. Keamy hums with the sensation, another kind of pulse aching out of Gault.
Gault clings to the bed, his eyes shut. The room, the ship, and the ocean all press in against his eyelids, harshly present no matter how he tries to forget them. Keamy rolls over to face the wall, groans with the exertion of getting comfortable, and then goes silent. Gault's eyes pop open.
"What are you doing?" he asks, leaning up on an elbow and turning to Keamy, who doesn't bother to dignify this with a response.
"You can't sleep in here," Gault says. He sits up until he feels new soreness pulling through him, winces.
"Why not? I like this bed."
It's the only double bed on board, and Gault sits with his mouth hanging open, realizes that getting off was only half of Keamy's plan here. He's also stealing the best quarters on the ship for himself. In the cabin adjacent to the armory, he and his men share a single room with bunk beds.
"What will your men think?" Gault asks. He crawls to the foot of the bed and reaches for the bottle of vodka on his desk.
"Think about what?"
"About what? Are you joking? They'll know you're sleeping in here. The ship's not that big."
"So?"
Gault takes two long drinks of vodka, waits for the burn to clear his head. He needs to get out of this room, to get away from Keamy, but there's nowhere else to go.
"Aren't you afraid they'll lose respect for you? This is not generally seen as something that blokes like you get up to."
Keamy shrugs. "I'm not the one getting fucked."
Gault drinks again, suppresses the urge to grab him by the side and roll him onto the floor. He wouldn't likely survive the attempt.
"And they know that, do they? You have chats with them about it?"
Keamy smirks, and Gault sees only the edge of it, his face turned toward the wall.
"I don't think it's too hard to figure out, Captain."
"Did they create you in a test tube?" Gault rails, brushing off another insult. "Where do you come from that you think it matters who's fucking who? Men like that don't want to follow someone who's -- who's --"
"Shut up!" Keamy finally shouts, looking back over his shoulder to glower at Gault. "I'm trying to sleep! Fuck!"
Gault is left speechless. He swallows more vodka and then screws the cap back on, remembering his resolution not to drink in Keamy's presence. He falls into bed and stares at the ceiling, afraid to put the light out, though there's nothing short of murder that he wouldn't lie back and let Keamy do. He spends most of the night trying to come up with ways to get rid of him. Even if the communications equipment was working, he couldn't exactly tattle to Widmore. He's supposed to be the one in charge here, sort of, but Keamy has accosted the stateroom, taken him as a spoil of war, and all but officially assumed command.
*
Gault feels vaguely ill the following day, but it's not an entirely unpleasant feeling. He walks the deck listless and squint-eyed, without any real agenda, because there is nothing for him or anyone to do. Frank has informed him that he's worried about Regina. Minkowski has bolted himself inside the communications room. Even Kevin Johnson's gait as he walks across the deck with a bucket seems somehow malicious. Gault can only be glad he's not alone in going crazy.
Heading for the kitchen at noon, Gault thinks about good hangovers. He's had some that almost required hospitalization, and others that just cleared him out, left him with the faintest fuzz of a headache and the promise that he'd be cured after a huge meal. Searching the cabinets, he wishes for pancakes with Nutella, tacos, giant slices of pizza, anything hot and unhealthy. He finds a bag of potato chips and starts in on them, standing at the kitchen counter.
"Are you alright?" someone asks, and he turns to see Charlotte walking in behind him. She's looking at him as if he's someone to be pitied. He stuffs another handful of potato chips in his mouth, wishes she would stay out of it.
"I'm fine," he says. "Why do you ask?"
"Nothing." Her face turns red and she hurries out of the kitchen. So the word has already spread. Gault is indifferent to it. He'll save his sense of humiliation for the off chance that he'll ever see civilization again. He wishes the scientists would hurry up and go looking for Naomi already. They're planning on leaving tomorrow if the other helicopter still hasn't returned.
He washes potato chip dust off of his fingers and heads back upstairs, hears a kind of commotion coming from down the hall. He waits to make sure he doesn't hear Keamy's voice before walking ahead to see what's happening. The remainder of the burn ointment was used up this morning. Gault was half asleep and Keamy took his sweet time, heavy on Gault's back, both of them clinging to the edge of the mattress.
"What's going on?" Gault asks when he finds the source of the noise, in the communications room. Minkowski has reopened the door, and has allowed Frank and Brandon inside.
"I got the sat phones working last night," Minkowski says. "We've tried to call Naomi a couple of times, but there's some kind of transmission blocking the signal."
"A transmission from the Island?" Gault asks.
"I would guess so, yeah."
"Do you think it's Linus? Do you think he's done something to her?"
"It's possible."
"Anything's possible," Brandon adds, ridiculously. Gault gives him a look, and he slinks out of the room.
"What do you think, Cap?" Frank asks. "Should I fly the scientists over there?"
"It might not be safe," Gault says. "I don't like the idea of people going over there without any way of communicating with the ship."
"Keamy could go," Minkowski says. He and Frank share a look that makes Gault want to jump over the side of the ship and be done with it. "I mean, he could probably handle himself."
"I'll speak to him," Gault mutters, hurrying out of the room.
He finds Keamy on the deck with his men, studying a small, black book. He's sitting in the sun, the others pacing around him, in the midst of some mock boxing match, the biggest of them demonstrating a headlock on Omar.
"Keamy," Gault calls. Keamy looks up, shuts one eye and tries to make out Gault's form across the bright deck. The other men stop their game and stare. They seem to still be on Keamy's side, for whatever that's worth. Keamy gets up, and shoves the book into his back pocket as he's walking toward Gault. He stands close, crosses his arms like he's daring Gault to do something stupid, and hunches the way he always does when he's speaking to someone, because everyone else is shorter.
"What?"
"They -- Minkowski says there's some sort of transmission coming from the Island." Keamy smells like Gault's bed, and Gault has never been so bothered by anything, tries to refocus his train of thought. "It's disabling our sat phones. He's got them working now, did he tell you?"
"Yes."
"Well. Anyway. He thinks Linus may be doing it, he may have captured Naomi."
"That's not my problem."
"Right, well." Gault narrows his eyes. "We were just thinking you might want to fly to the Island ahead of the scientists. Considering that something -- that it might be dangerous."
Keamy shakes his head. "No. Widmore wanted them there first."
"He didn't want to send them to be killed by Linus, with no way of contacting the ship! What difference does it make?"
"I've got to be the last one on the Island," Keamy says. "Period. Don't argue with me."
Something about that last command strikes Gault silent. It's less ultimatum and more fair warning, or maybe he's projecting. He leaves, though it feels good out here in the sun, and makes a mental note to fish that black book out of Keamy's pocket later, while he's sleeping. He can't be sure, but Keamy seems to sleep very deeply. He'll have to do some tests to figure out if this hypothesis is correct. Pleased to have a chore, a mystery he actually has a chance of solving, he goes back to the kitchen to search out more junk food.
He takes a long nap in the afternoon, guiltily enjoying the feeling that someone else is keeping an eye on things. His dreams won't let him rest fully, and he has visions of a jungle, thoughts about the combat that he never saw in Vietnam. He wakes up worrying that the lack of travesty in his life has made him weak. Two swigs from the vodka bottle, and he's out the door again.
Minkowski still hasn't been able to get through to Naomi, and when Gault walks past the kitchen, he spots Frank and Keamy inside, having some kind of heated conversation. Charlotte is sitting at the table, trying to butt in, but they're mostly ignoring her. Faraday is lingering in the doorway, watching. He's got a pack of cards in his hand, like he showed up for a friendly game and found this instead.
"I'll go by myself, then!" Frank is saying.
"That's ridiculous!" Charlotte shouts.
"We'll stick to the plan," Keamy says. "There's no reason to think anything's even happened."
"Look me in the face and tell me you think Naomi's perfectly fine!" Frank says. Keamy is already looking him in the face, and Gault would have thought Frank smart enough to realize that doesn't mean anything.
"She's perfectly fine."
"For all you care," Charlotte mutters. "Perfectly fine at the bottom of a ditch."
"So are we leaving?" Faraday asks.
"Not all of us, not yet," Frank says, sighing. "As far as I'm concerned, it'd be like walking into an ambush. We'll wait until Minkowski hears --"
"And if he never hears from her?" Charlotte says. "We leave her for dead? It's not like we can turn back, anyway, with the engines broken."
"Wait two more days," Gault says from the doorway, and everyone turns as if surprised to hear him speak. "If Minkowski can't figure out a way around this transmission, Frank, you take the three you're supposed to fly ahead of Keamy. Bring weapons."
"I'm, ah, not especially comfortable, um. Firing a gun?" Faraday says.
"Keamy can give you lessons," Gault says, not daring to aim his smirk in Keamy's direction.
"I can give you lessons, Dan," Charlotte says before Keamy can protest. Faraday smiles sheepishly, thumbs through the deck of cards.
As if he's made some sort of final decree, Gault leaves the kitchen and walks to the engine room. Tonight it's empty, no one even bothering to tinker. He turns to head back for his stateroom, and starts a bit when he sees Miles standing at the other end of the hallway, watching him.
"Everything alright, Straume?" he calls, the question like an accusation.
"Yeah," Miles says. There is plain calculation in his eyes, and Gault is tired of seeing people's treachery clear on their faces, has never been so close to so much open deceit. "Fine."
Miles walks away, and Gault feels the hair on his arms prickle, as if there was some information Miles considered sharing but withheld, something he might have needed to know.
When he gets to his room, he's all the way through the door before he realizes that Keamy has beat him here. He's sitting at Gault's desk and paging through a booklet that Gault is familiar with, the spiral-bound protocol that Widmore gave both of them at their first meeting in Adelaide. There is a machine gun of some type sitting on the desk, and Keamy has his shirt off, has made himself at home.
"What are you doing in here?" Gault asks anyway. He bolts the door, and feels, actually, relieved to not be alone with himself.
"Reading."
"What, you haven't memorized all that by now?" Gault takes the bottle of vodka and has one quick drink before falling onto the bed. He's got to ration it; there's no telling how long they'll be here.
Keamy ignores him and continues studying the protocol. Gault lies back and considers the plans he's devised for driving Keamy away: attempts at physical affection and conversation. If he annoys him enough, he'll return to his men, maybe start screwing some other idiot to pass the hours. But first, Gault wants to find out what's in that black book. And anyway, for the moment, it's not so bad to have some silent company.
He picks up the Bible from the place on floor where Keamy tossed it last night, and remembers as he does that the lubricant they used is gone. This puts him in a minor panic, thinking that Keamy might not even bother with it rather than search out more. Gault racks his brain for something else they might use, and remembers a first aid kit he saw under the bed on his first night in the stateroom. He reaches under the bed until he finds it, pulls it out and unlatches its clasp. As he sifts through it, coming up with liquid soap, antibiotic ointment and another tube of burn ointment, he sees Keamy watching him out of the corner of his eye.
"Here's hoping I don't get burned at some point and actually need this," Gault says, tossing the usable items up onto the bedside table. "Though I suppose the Doc has his own supply."
"Yeah," Keamy says after some silence that might have been awkward if they weren't well past that. "Here." He reaches under the desk and comes up with a tall bottle of something, throws it at Gault. It lands heavy on his stomach, and Gault curses him unenthusiastically as he examines the object: lotion with aloe.
"Stole this from the Doctor, did you?"
"No. From Lewis."
"Who?"
"The redhead."
"Oh. Right. Well. Were you a thief before you were a Marine?"
Keamy looks at him like he's tremendously stupid.
"See something you want, take it," he mutters. He turns back to the protocol. "It's not that hard."
Gault considers this as an invitation, but doesn't want to spoil his chance to examine that black book while Keamy sleeps, so he just rolls onto his side and pretends to doze. There is no sound in the room except for the occasional turn of a page, but Gault is wide awake as if there's a light glaring in his face. After some time passes, he hears Keamy get up and stretch with a groaning sigh. His boots hit the floor, trousers following. Gault stays still, tries to keep his forehead smooth, his eyelids relaxed.
Keamy steps over him, rocking the bed, and falls heavily onto the other side. Gault waits to be rolled over onto his back, the lotion within arm's reach on the floor, but Keamy just punches the bed's single pillow -- stolen from Gault, who sleeps with his head on the mattress -- and curls into his usual position. Insanely, Gault feels insulted, then just relieved, because he's sore as all hell. His relief quickly turns to boredom, and there lies the reason he's gotten himself into this situation in the first place.
Keamy has left the light at the desk on, which seems somehow indicative of everything about him that, on top of his bolder strangeness, is subtlety distorted. Gault waits as long as he can, then gets up and shuts it off. He looks back toward the bed, the room now pitch dark, and waits for his eyes to adjust in the small glow that creeps in under the stateroom door. It would be easier to extract the black book with the lights on, but Gault would also have a greater chance of getting caught. He glances at the desk to make sure Keamy's machine gun is still resting there.
Before he dares to crawl across the floor and go poking around in Keamy's discarded trousers, he goes back to the bed and lies still for awhile, listens to Keamy's breathing. It's deep and steady, without the hint of a snore. As his eyes adjust, he stares at the white spread of Keamy's back, waiting for a muscle twitch or an interruption in the puff and sink of his chest. He's almost lulled to sleep, watching, and he thinks of Vera, who he somehow expects to find out about this and to have already moved out of their house with Sammy, back to live with her parents in Rockhampton. She asked him, once, after watching some insipid romantic movie with her sister, why don't you ever watch me sleep? As if she would know about it, but she was right, he never did.
"Keamy," he tries whispering. He gets no response, then realizes this doesn't mean anything. Keamy ignores him often enough when he's not trying to sleep. "Wake up and I'll suck you off," he whispers, but even that doesn't seem enough to rile him, if he's determined to get some rest.
Gault swallows a tremor of fear, as if he's about to disturb a slumbering animal, and puts a hand flat against Keamy's back. The air seems to leave the room for a moment, and he waits for Keamy to snap around and pin him to the bed, growling some threat. Keamy doesn't move, and his breathing doesn't change. Gault risks moving his thumb slightly, delicate enough to feel the tiny hairs on Keamy's skin. Still, he doesn't flinch.
Satisfied that he's asleep, Gault carefully withdraws his hand, and leaves the bed as quietly as possible. On the floor, he moves in a squat to the place where Keamy left his trousers, a dusty pair of military style khakis, covered in pockets. Gault's unsteady hand goes to the back pocket where he saw Keamy slip the black book earlier, and when he feels the shape of it there, he has a brief fretting moment. This has been, so far, too easy. He looks back to Keamy, who is still facing the wall, still asleep.
Finally he comes to the difficult part: the velcro on the pocket. It takes ten excruciating minutes to pull the flap away without making a ripping static sound, and he keeps his eyes on the bed as he works, looking for any sign of movement. When he gets the pocket open he extracts the book and presses the trousers down to the floor, velcro flap up, so he won't have to go through that process again.
The book is smaller than Gault's hand, and his pulse races as he moves toward the door to try and read its contents in the light from the hallway. He checks Keamy again, afraid he'll hear his heart beating from across the room. Gault wouldn't even be vaguely surprised if he did.
When he finally brings the book down to the floor to read it in the light, he's so struck with disappointment that he almost flings it across the room. It's written in some other language: Russian, maybe? It could be Chinese, French, wouldn't matter. Gault only speaks English.
He checks the pages of the book for notes by Keamy, and only sees a string of numbers scrawled onto the back of the last page: 4 8 15 16 23 42. Like the rest of the book, it doesn't mean anything to Gault.
After putting the book back, and reinstalling Keamy's trousers into their previously crumpled position, he heads for the bed, feeling idiotic for thinking that there was even some small mystery on board this ship that he could solve. He's got one knee on the mattress when Keamy speaks, still facing the wall.
"Going to suck me off now?"
Gault freezes, his throat gone dry. He checks the desk again, and the gun is still there, a good six feet out of Keamy's reach. He only has a moment to be relieved before Keamy has grabbed his shirt and yanked him down to the bed.
"I didn't!" Gault sputters. "I'm not --"
"If you're done snooping through my shit, I'll take you up on your offer, okay?" Keamy doesn't sound particularly angry, though his grip on Gault's shirt communicates a fury that he won't otherwise let himself express. Gault nods, takes his hands from Keamy's arms and reaches for the hem of his underwear. He pulls them down only to Keamy's knees, so they'll cuff him if he changes his mind and decides to kill Gault after all.
"What's that book?" Gault asks when his lips are just nearly on the head of Keamy's cock. He looks up at Keamy with his own sort of threat, one he doesn't expect him to really buy into, and mashes his lips together to stop them from shaking.
"I don't know," Keamy says. He puts a finger against Gault's lips and pushes it into his mouth, moves it so that he'll suck on it. "I found it in the armory. I needed something to write on."
Keamy doesn't come until Gault's jaw is sore, brilliant revenge, and when he does, Gault swallows it all without a second thought, wanting it, hard inside his trousers just from this. He doesn't expect any sort of reciprocation, and Keamy only watches him as he spills lotion into his hand and pulls himself off, staring all the time at his face, never looking once down at his lap. Gault keeps Keamy's gaze when he's done, just waiting, nothing but curiosity for what he'll do next.
"If you touch my stuff again, I'll kill you," Keamy says. He blinks once and then rolls over, goes back to sleep.
Gault thinks of his sister shouting that at him when they were kids. He remembers Keamy mentioning his brother telling him to get out of his room. There is something very childish about all of this.
*
Gault moves forward with his plan to try and get rid of Keamy, though he's actually more amused than annoyed as his room begins to fill with Keamy artifacts: more guns, a second pair of boots, a can of WD-40. Still, he can't go on like this, sinking willingly into the feeling that nothing he does really matters, because this is some kind of purgatory he won't ever escape. He tries to surround himself with people who don't seem to share his sense of dread. This amounts to only Frank and perhaps Charlotte. Keamy, too, remains consistently unperturbed, though borrowing his confidence is really very counterproductive, because he also represents everything that is wrong here.
"What did you do in the Marines?" Gault asks him one night when they're still out of breath, Keamy standing by the desk and chugging water like he's just run a marathon, which is nearly true. Gault is used up and exhausted, huddled self-consciously under a blanket, though it's baking hot in the stateroom.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Never mind why I want to know. I do, alright, and you can either tell me or not, I don't give a stuff either way."
"When someone asks you a question, the only thing that matters is why they want the answer," Keamy says. He puts down the water bottle and walks to the bed, crawls onto his stomach. Gault is suddenly bothered by how close he is, despite the fact that Keamy was inside him five minutes ago. He looks at the ceiling.
"Are you quoting something? Read that in The Art of War, did you?"
"No. It's just common sense."
"Nothing you say makes a damn bit of sense to me, but alright."
Keamy sniffs and grins, looks at his hands. He's propped up on his elbows, and he spends a few minutes peeling sunburned skin from his left arm. After he's successfully strewn dead skin all over Gault's sheets, he leans over and puts his hand on Gault's throat, neither a caress nor a warning. He tips Gault's jaw with his index finger, makes him meet his eyes.
"I was a sniper."
"You're lying." Gault didn't mean to say so out loud, but he's quite pleased with himself for being absolutely certain, and he couldn't help it. Keamy's hand tightens on his throat.
"What makes you think that you can tell when I'm lying?"
"Why would I tell you that?" Gault laughs for no real reason, maybe going light-headed as Keamy's fingers push into the muscles of his neck.
There's a knock on the door, and Keamy removes his hand but otherwise doesn't stir. Gault doesn't bother to get up, either, just tips his head backward as if he'll see who's there.
"What?" he calls, surprised that Keamy didn't try to answer for him.
"Sir," someone says, either Jeff or Brandon, Gault can't tell their voices apart. "We've had a communication from Naomi."
"Well, what did she say?" Gault hadn't realized until now how much he doesn't care, and it startles him. He sits up, pulls the blanket around his waist.
"Nothing. The signal came from her sat phone, but Minkowski is speaking with someone else."
"Someone else? Linus?"
Keamy sits up now, fast.
"No, not Linus. His name is Jack."
"Is he working for Linus?" Keamy shouts, tripping into his trousers as he heads for the door. Gault hurries to put his own on before he can pull it open.
"He's not." It's Jeff, standing in the hallway and looking equal parts terrified and humiliated by the sight of Keamy in the stateroom. "He says he's a survivor of Oceanic flight 815. He's not the only one."
"Shit!" Keamy shoves Jeff out of the way and hurries out into the hall without bothering to put on a shirt. Gault and Jeff stare at each other for a moment.
"Who else knows about this?" Keamy shouts back down the hall.
"Um." Jeff glances at Gault. "Everyone, now."
*
Up on deck, Frank is preparing the helicopter for takeoff. Gault doesn't know quite what is going on, but allows the situation to remain opaque for now. Keamy is in the communications room with Minkowski, keeping a close watch on what he says to the survivors. Faraday and Charlotte are loading their packs into the copter.
"Where's Miles?" Faraday asks.
"Taking his time, I suppose," Charlotte says.
"Have you both got guns?" Gault shouts over the noise from the chopper as it begins to fire up.
"Your -- Keamy wouldn't give us any," Charlotte says bitterly. "I wasn't told to bring a weapon on this lovely voyage, or I would have. Miles has one."
"Here," Gault mutters, having a look round the deck before pulling a hand gun from where he'd tucked it into his trousers, under the back of his shirt. He hands it to Faraday.
"Don't tell Keamy I gave you that."
Faraday does his best to smile, looks queasy. Gault had planned on giving the gun to the girl, but at the moment he's more worried about Faraday.
"Captain!"
Gault turns to see Brandon heading across the deck, Miles following.
"Captain," he says again, out of breath. "Just had a communication from Naomi. She said something about a -- tree branch -- she's injured -- but then she gave the code."
"Her sister?"
"Yeah, that. They've captured her. She's under some kind of duress."
"Might it be Linus' people, then? Just saying they're from Oceanic 815?"
"Anything's possible," Brandon says, and Gault gets a sense of deja vu beyond just having heard him say so before.
"Are you sure you want to go?" he says to Faraday, who is lingering on the deck, Charlotte and Miles already in the helicopter with Frank.
"I think I have to," Faraday says, and as Gault watches him climb in, he's fairly sure Faraday isn't referring to his responsibility to Widmore.
He stands back and watches the chopper leave, Brandon beside him with his arms crossed. With the scientists gone, the ship immediately seems too quiet, an eerie hopelessness thickening.
"Great," Brandon says. "Hurry up and wait. How long are they going to be gone? Another seven days?"
"I told them to be back in three," Keamy says from behind them, and they both turn to see him standing with his fists curled at his sides, staring at the helicopter as it flies farther from the ship.
"I think Naomi's dead," he adds before walking away.
*
Gault spends the evening in his stateroom, lying in his bed and reading the Bible. He's never really even looked at it before. His parents were not religious, but his grandparents did drag him to church a time or two as a kid. He remembers flipping through the books of gospel lyrics that sat on the pews, but never this book. He fully expects Keamy to pummel him to death when he comes back and finds one of his guns missing, and he searches the tissue-thin pages for some appropriate final sentiment, though actually he feels pretty peaceful already.
"Want to hear a relevant quote?" he asks when Keamy comes in, much later than usual, or at least it seems so. Keamy only gives him a flick of a glance before he walks to the desk, screws the cap off the vodka and takes a long drink.
"Never been drunk in your life, eh?" Gault says with a laugh, familiar enough with this kind of desperate gulping, which is not for beginners.
"I didn't say I never drink." Keamy wipes his mouth. "I just don't let it make me stupid."
"Oh, well, you ought to sometime, it's a real enjoyable experience, at least at first. So do you want to hear this quote?"
"I'd rather have some peace and fucking quiet."
"You've come to the wrong room, then. Listen. 'My righteousness draws near speedily,'" he reads. "'My salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations. The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm.'"
"What are you talking about?" Keamy snaps, as if this is something Gault just said, his original take on the situation. Gault laughs and drops the Bible onto the bedside table.
"I don't know, maybe I'm cracking up like Regina and Faraday. Did you see him before he got on the helicopter? I think he expects to end up like Naomi."
"He'd better not," Keamy says. "I don't need any more delays."
"What if there are survivors?" Gault asks. He's been thinking about it, about what Vera would say if he came back not only with Ben Linus in chains, but with forty sad sacks who'd been stranded on an island for months. "Would we bring them back with us?"
"No."
"Why not? It might not be the most comfortable ride, but --"
"I said no!" Keamy shouts. "What the fuck do you care, anyway?"
He sits heavily at the desk, and puts his head in his hands for a moment, sucks his breath in and straightens. Gault watches whatever panic that was rising in face sink down again and disappear.
"What's the matter with you?" Gault asks.
Keamy glares at him. "What's the matter with you?"
"A lot, turns out. Come over here."
"Why?"
"Goddammit, Keamy, why do you think? Fine, stay there, it's good to be in this bed without you fucking crowding me for once."
Keamy drinks again, then puts the cap on and tosses Gault the bottle. He touches the protocol that is still sitting on the desk, watches the reflection of the lamp on its clear plastic cover. Gault holds the bottle but doesn't drink, though he's very tempted to drain it.
"Why did you leave the Marines?" he asks. He doesn't expect an answer.
"Because," Keamy says. "I wanted to see the world."
Gault feels stabbed. He told his mother the same thing when he joined the Royal Navy. Australia had just gotten involved in Vietnam, and she was horrified that he'd be killed in a jungle without a proper burial. She had dreams about it, she said, saw his restless soul wandering forever past mango trees and grass huts. Gault was more interested in seeing what a jungle really looked like than staying home and not dying in one.
"So did you?" he asks Keamy.
"I guess." Keamy seems restless. He walks to the bed and tips his chin back, looks down his nose at Gault. "One of my guns is missing," he says.
"What are you worried about? Think I've got it under the pillow here, ready to kill you?"
"You did something with it."
"Alright, I did. I guess you're going to kill me now, then. Go ahead and do it, if it'll get that thoughtful look off your face."
Gault feels untouchable in a claustrophobic way, like a death row inmate shoveling in his last meal. When Keamy leans down to the bed, he grabs his shirt and yanks him close, breathes into his face. Keamy just stares at him as if he's a platypus, something grotesquely extraordinary.
"What's your first name?" Gault asks. Widmore said it in Adelaide, but that was three thousand years ago. Keamy gives up his footing on the floor and falls completely onto Gault, crushing him into the mattress.
"Why do you want to know?"
Gault scoffs.
"Why did you want to see the world?" he asks. Keamy frowns, and Gault gets the impression that he's never before had someone talk to him like they've got nothing to lose.
Keamy doesn't answer, except to flip Gault onto his stomach urgently, as if he can't stand the sight of his face for another minute. He puts his mouth on the back of Gault's neck, and neatly bites his way down to Gault's shoulder, making him jitter against the mattress. His hands trail down Gault's body, drawing him easily to his knees. Keamy bends up behind him like a wave, and Gault shudders hard, waiting to be struck by it.
"That wasn't relevant, by the way," Keamy says.
"What?"
Keamy reaches around to rip the front of Gault's trousers open, and he slides his shorts down along with them.
"After that, declares the Lord," he says. "I will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the people in this city who survive the plague, sword, and famine, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to their enemies who seek their lives. He will put them to the sword, he will show them no mercy or pity or compassion."
Gault lets out his breath, hadn't realized he was holding it until his lungs started to burn. Keamy turns him over onto his back, presses hard on his chest with one hand that seems to span the width of him.
"That," he says. "Was relevant. You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand."
"I thought you said you weren't religious." Gault stares up at him, too bewildered to worry about Keamy tilting him back, pulling his legs up.
"You know what?" Keamy narrows his eyes like a disappointed teacher. "You don't pay enough attention to what people don't say. I said I'm not religious. I didn't say I never was."
"So you -- were?"
"No. Always sounded like a lot of bullshit to me."
"Then why --"
"Had to memorize it. Fuck, do you ever stop talking?"
Facing the ceiling, Gault doesn't have anyplace to bury the screams that Keamy brings out of him, and he doesn't mind, really, likes the idea of irritating him by not shutting up even now, pleads out his name like it's the only word that's ever been worth saying. Keamy holds his wrists together while he fucks him, thumbs digging in, again making him one pulsing pressure point. He looks like living marble, his eyes half shut, mouth slick and swollen, muscles moving evenly under his skin, he doesn't even break a sweat.
When Keamy wipes himself clean on the sheets and rolls over, Gault feels torn in half, misses his wife so much he could weep. He wants someone to wrap around and put his face against. Vera would rub his back, scratch her fingers through his hair. Keamy is through with him, and Gault doesn't want those things from him, anyway. Regret pokes into him like a sprout finally pushing through soil.
"I thought you knew my first name," Keamy says. Gault jumps, thought he had already fallen asleep. "It's Martin."
"After that Protestant bloke?" He should be dreaming up ten life stories for Keamy based on this new information, but he's so tired. He listlessly envisions horrifyingly devout parents, an orphanage run by nuns.
"No," Keamy says. "After the saint."
*
Part III
//