Fic: Old Wounds
Title: Old Wounds
Author: kappamaki33
Characters/Pairings: Gaeta, Hoshi, Narcho; Gaeta/Hoshi/Narcho (established relationship)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: One bullet, three lives: how Felix being shot while on the Demetrius affected the relationship of Felix Gaeta, Louis Hoshi, and Noel Allison.
Notes: For my long, long overdue Never Will I Ever meme, for lls_mutant’s prompt of Gaeta/Hoshi/Narcho. Apparently, I’m on a bit of a writing roll today!
Old Wounds
It’s amazing when you think about it, how much damage something as tiny as a bullet can do. The bullet that shattered Felix Gaeta’s leg on the Demetrius changed a lot of lives, but it ripped open the most delicate of old wounds for three people.
~~**~~**~~
Louis didn’t know whether he was thankful or not when he heard Noel’s voice on the other end of the line.
“What the frak is going on up there? Dragon just came from the deck, saying something about a baseship-”
“Lieutenant Allison,” Louis cut in with his most professional voice. “I need three Raptors in the air in five minutes to dock with the Demetrius and the purportedly captured enemy ship accompanying it. Two-”
“Finally,” Noel threw off Louis’s measured, controlled delivery enough that he couldn’t get his mouth to cooperate with him again. Noel continued, “You’d better get off shift soon, because it’s been far too long since I’ve gotten laid. Felix will agree with me that we are not going to wait around for you. This celibacy as fairness while Felix is off on his own idea of yours was stupid, anyway.”
“Lieutenant Allison,” Louis finally said, his voice wavering. “Two Raptors are to take Colonel Tigh and as many marines as will fit over to the baseship to secure it. One Raptor is to take an emergency medical team to the Demetrius.”
Noel didn’t say anything, but Louis heard a shaky intake of breath on the other end.
He whispered, “Noel, it’s Felix.”
“Frak. Frak!” Not for the first time, Louis envied his lover’s job giving him the right and ability to react to bad news the way he felt like reacting. He heard Noel bang the receiver down hard, but he must have missed the cradle, because he heard a chair being kicked across the room and a string of curses fading as Noel ran out of range of the phone.
Louis clicked off the channel and went back to work, fielding calls from confused and frightened ships’ captains, coordinating the Raptor out on CAP to intercept a shuttle that had almost been obliterated when the baseship jumped in nearly on top of it, and only catching snatches of Helo’s harried conversation with Adama on the secure channel when he could. Only one time did he overhear them saying anything about Felix.
“Sir, it may have just been the fever and the morpha talking,” Helo said, voice crackling, “But he said some strange things, and...I think you might want to have Cottle put him on suicide watch.”
Then Louis had received a hail from the Thera Sita, clicked the dial to their frequency, and patiently explained for the eleventh time that the baseship was under Colonial control and there was a temporary cessation of all Fleet traffic, all while he calculated the soonest he could possibly get down to the infirmary. By the time he gave the speech the thirteenth time, to the Gemenon Traveler, he realized with sinking dismay that it would be hours before he’d even have a five-minute break to step into the head and scream at the gods.
Oddly, all Louis could think about was when he and Noel had fooled around in the head two days before. They hadn’t gotten very far, and Louis was really the only one who had pushed for the celibacy pact they’d made when Felix left on the Demetrius, but he’d still broken his promise. And now Felix could be dying, and one of the last things he’d said to him was a lie...
“Shut up, shut up,” Louis whispered to himself. He was being childish. Felix would have laughed at how much this was bothering him, most likely adding a sly smile and a “Could’ve told you you couldn’t keep your hands off him for two months.” Then Noel would preen, and the two of them would roll their eyes at him, a not-uncommon occurrence.
In the beginning, the idea of being with two heroes, a Viper pilot and a resistance spy, had definitely had its appeal. They’d made Louis feel so safe, a rare commodity these days. He’d never felt strange or out-of-place as the one invited into an established couple. But there were moments when he’d try to say something important, meaningful, and Noel and Felix would exchange glances with each other that made him feel like he was a child, with two seasoned warriors communicating silently and patronizingly over his head.
When Felix had told them he was going on a secret mission to find Earth, no matter how much Felix protested that it was Starbuck-led and therefore crazy and pointless, a tiny part of Louis had burned at the thought. The mission would likely result in Felix coming home an even bigger hero. He’d come home with new war stories that Noel would understand almost instinctively, in a way that the guy who’d never gone to work outside the CIC and was little more than Adama’s secretary most days could never share.
Now, Felix might be dying, and Louis felt like a fool for his guilt and pettiness about naïve promises and war stories and feelings of being the kid barely tolerated at the adult table. Those things might nettle him, but he’d never admitted the true heart of his anxiety before.
As he stood in the relative safety of the CIC, fiddling with dials and quelling the fears of chattering civilian pilots while Noel raced off to save Felix, he couldn’t ignore the truth anymore. He couldn’t protect them. They could risk their lives for him, but Louis had to stay behind, to send them out into unknown danger and do nothing but wait and call out to them in the darkness.
Louis’s headset beeped with an incoming call. He opened a channel and took a deep breath.
“Galactica, this is Narcho. We’ve got Gaeta onboard. It’ll take us two minutes to uncouple from the Demetrius. Can you clear us for an emergency landing, over?”
“Narcho, this is Galactica. You are clear for landing whenever you get here.” It wasn’t strictly relevant to the job, but Louis couldn’t keep from asking. “How is he?”
The pause on the other end was probably only a couple seconds, but it felt like it stretched on and on. “He’s alive. I’ll get him home. Don’t worry. I’ll get him home.”
Louis squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Copy that. Godspeed.”
At least he could call them home. It wasn’t much, but having someone to wait for, having people you loved who could come home to you…it was a hell of a lot more than most people had these days.
~~**~~**~~
Felix hadn’t thought his leg could hurt any more than it had when Starbuck poured the bloodstopper on the wound before sticking him with the needle of morpha. He really hated being proven wrong. Every jostle of the makeshift litter Helo and Athena carried him in made him groan or scream. Then they waited for what seemed like a long time just outside the docking bay, and the pain wasn’t any better even now that he was still.
There was a lot of commotion when the Raptor finally docked and Helo and Athena handed him off to the medics. Even though he was at the center of it, he felt oddly detached from it all. Several voices, lots of medical jargon he didn’t understand, more needles in his arm, more movement. He couldn’t focus until the Raptor hatch hissed shut and he heard a voice going through the pre-flight check faster than he’d ever heard anyone do it before.
“Noel?”
Noel finished the check before he turned around. Seeing Noel so pale and tight-jawed hit home how bad Felix must look, more than anything else had.
“You hang in there, you hear me? You’re going to be okay,” Noel ordered more than reassured. “Louis will frakking kill me if I don’t get you back okay.”
“Yes, sir.” Felix tried to bring his hand up in a mock-salute, but a medic grabbed his arm and did something to his drip line. “I will do my best to avoid dying so Louis doesn’t muss your very pretty face. That’d be a real tragedy.”
Noel half-laughed and muttered, “Good to see you didn’t get shot in the sarcasm.”
Felix thought he heard Louis’s voice, then figured he must have been hallucinating. His limbs felt very heavy; there must’ve been some really good pain meds in the IV. He stared past the medics bending over him and looked at the Raptor’s ceiling. All the voices faded into the background, until all that was left was the steady thrum of the Raptor’s engines.
In those feverish, pain-drenched hours on the Demetrius, the only thing Felix could think of was how badly he wanted to go home. Now, with Galactica just a few minutes away, he was suddenly afraid. Knowing your leg is going to be gone and actually having it gone were two very different things. There would be more pain, therapy, a seemingly endless number of modifications and concessions for his new disability…he shuddered. At least it would likely finally rate him, Louis, and Noel the private quarters they’d been after for so long, he thought ruefully.
Louis and Noel. Felix hadn’t even thought about how this would change things among them. Deep down, he knew it was ridiculous to think they might abandon him, especially for something like this. Their pity could be even worse, though. He almost wished he were going back home to face this all by himself.
Felix cast his mind back, desperate to find something like relief in his memories. He’d gotten together with Noel on New Caprica, after Gaius broke his heart the first time, but before the Cylons came and Gaius broke his heart again in a new way. It had started out as Noel offering Felix a place to crash after Felix moved out of Colonial One, then moved quickly into frakking for comfort or convenience or because nights on New Caprica were cold and quiet, Felix didn’t really know. In a few months, it settled into something where Noel felt comfortable putting a hand on Felix’s shoulder or his ass at the bar-tent, even on busy nights, and he’d tug on Felix’s hand to get his attention when they walked through the marketplace.
Felix was the one who broached the idea of adding Louis to…whatever it was they had. He swore afterwards to both Noel and Louis that he had no idea what possessed him to suggest it. The truth was, he saw it as easing a way out for Noel. Felix expected this relationship to fly apart at the seams, like usual for him. He anticipated that, one day, he’d come home from work and find Noel in his (their) bed with someone else. The only thing he wasn’t sure about was whether Noel would attempt to apologize for cheating and make a scene, or whether it wouldn’t be cheating at all, just Noel moving on and quietly asking Felix to find somewhere else to stay.
He’d half-heartedly thought maybe Noel would find the suggestion too weird and use it as an excuse to break things off. That wasn’t what happened.
“Okay,” Noel said with a shrug at the suggestion. “If you want him, sure. The logistics of him being on Pegasus will complicate things a little.”
“That’s it?” Felix asked, incredulous. “Logistics is the only thing you’re worried about?”
“You know I’m from Canceron,” he said. “I only had two parents, but most of my cousins had six, eight. Honestly, I’m more worried about how you’ll handle it, what with the whole Virgonese monogamy obsession in your background. But like I said, if you want him, sure.”
“Do you even know Louis?” Felix pressed.
Noel smirked. “Yeah. Nice guy, bad haircut, gives an excellent blow job. What?”
Felix tried to school his face. “I…I didn’t know you’d been with him before.”
“With him? That’s debatable,” Noel said. The smirk came back. “Don’t tell me there weren’t ‘thank the Gods we survived the apocalypse’ orgies on Galactica, too.”
Felix felt so far out of his depth he couldn’t look at Noel anymore. Then he felt a warm hand on his back as Noel sat down next to him, pressing against him from shoulder to thigh.
“I was kidding about the orgies,” Noel said softly. “There were no orgies. I got around a little more than usual, but that’s only to be expected. I can happily forget you ever brought up adding your friend to us, if you want me to.”
But Felix didn’t want that, and they didn’t forget it. They approached Louis, and he entered into their routine much more easily than Felix had imagined. Noel had been right; the distance between the planet and Pegasus was their only real issue. For the three months before the Cylons arrived and separated them all-Louis in the Fleet, Noel a prisoner at a work camp, and Felix a spy in the administration-things had gone well. Given the amount of baggage they individually and collectively accumulated during the occupation, things even went remarkably well afterwards, when they were all back on Galactica.
It felt good, loving and being loved by both of them. It should have felt easy, too-comfortable. But it didn’t. Another thing Felix would never admit to Noel or Louis: he’d picked Louis because he liked him and wanted him, yes, but also because Louis was quiet, a little shy, a lot nerdy-much better suited to Felix than to Noel. A part of him hoped that, whenever Noel inevitably started to roam, Louis would want to stay with him.
The ease Noel and Louis had with each other shocked Felix so badly that he feared he’d found Noel a replacement for himself instead. They talked and laughed over drinks and dinners, traded Pegasus stories, and frakked passionately and without reservation. And then Felix fell in love with Louis, too, and Felix’s brilliant plan to save himself some heartache turned into something so lovely that he knew his heart would shatter when it ended, no matter which one of them walked away first.
The easiest way of all for you would be if you were the first one to die, some quiet but insistent part of Felix’s mind whispered.
Felix felt a small jolt when the Raptor touched down in the flight pod. The noise and commotion around him hadn’t ever stopped, but it felt like someone was turning the volume back up on reality. He almost didn’t want the Raptor hatch to open and let the future in. The next weeks and probably months were going to be hell. And every day from this day forward, he was going to look down at the place where his leg should have been and carry that reminder of how fragile the human body is, how a few ounces of lead could take away everything, even a life.
The world was an utterly terrifying place, and Felix had so much to lose. It was hard to believe it now, but he knew that, in some way, he was lucky. Having two people left to cling to, to fear losing with your whole being, was a hell of a lot more than most people had these days.
~~*~~**~~
Noel looked up when the curtain jangled open. Louis marched into the cubicle as fast as one could move without running. “They finally let me out of CIC-” Louis stopped dead in his tracks when he looked down at Felix in the hospital bed, something like confusion and maybe a little fear involuntarily creeping into his expression. Noel couldn’t tell whether it was because of the leg or because of how pained Felix’s face looked even as he slept. “How is he?”
“Stable,” Noel said, eyes returning to Felix.
Louis pulled a chair up next to the opposite side of the bed and took Felix’s other hand. “Gods, his hands are cold,” he murmured.
Noel watched as Louis scanned Felix’s face. He could almost see the thoughts racing through Louis’s frustratingly orderly bridge bunny brain, making plans and coming up with solutions to possible problems they might encounter weeks down the line. Noel knew that sort of thing comforted Louis, but he couldn’t fathom how he could focus on anything at all in a situation like this. Noel’s own mind just kept spinning, fears flying past so quickly he couldn’t grab on to any one long enough to deal with it.
There was no way he was going to be able to read Louis’s odd thoughts on a day like this. It was impossible enough trying to figure out what was going on in Felix’s head when he was awake, especially with him already starting to pull away a little more each time he woke from his fitful sleep.
Louis motioned for Noel to hand him the washcloth on the table next to the bed. He dabbed at the sweat on Felix’s forehead and temples gently enough that he didn’t wake up.
“You can take over for a while, then,” Noel said without moving to leave or letting go of Felix’s hand. “I’ve got some things to do. Like give Anders a black eye.”
Louis smiled grimly. “I already took care of that.”
“Well, he’s got two eyes, doesn’t he?”
Louis snorted and shook his head.
They sat in silence for a long time, Louis occasionally straightening the sheets or rearranging a stray curl on Felix’s forehead. Louis’s nervous energy was starting to grate on Noel, like it always did. He tried to ignore it, picking up the clipboard at the foot of Felix’s bed and reading notations that he didn’t understand until the words blurred before his eyes.
“Why does this shit always happen to him?” Louis muttered.
Noel didn’t look up. “You’d rather it happened to me?” he joked lamely.
“No, because Viper pilots don’t get bumps and bruises-they either come back without a scratch, or they don’t come back at all.” He sighed and stroked Felix’s knuckles with his thumb. “I’d rather it happened to me.”
“How does somebody get wounded in CIC?”
“I don’t know. Exploding console? That’s what always happened on the space adventure wireless show I listened to when I was a kid.”
“A wireless show?” Noel scoffed.
“The Adventures of Captain Tyro and the Star Chasers,” Felix murmured.
Louis started, and Noel set aside the clipboard. “Felix, do you know who I am?” Louis said quietly, already cupping Felix’s cheek with his free hand. Felix nodded. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. But we’re both here now.”
Felix blinked several times, as if the world refused to come into focus. “The wireless show. Was I right? Tyro and the Star Chasers?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Isn’t it, Noel?”
Noel shrugged. “Like I’d know. You two are the geeks. I’m a Viper jock.” He’d watched it every Saturday morning until he was eleven.
Felix gave him a sidelong glance, and Louis looked at him equally dubiously.
“All right, so maybe I do vaguely remember it.”
Louis smirked. “I bet you were a member of the fan club.”
“Hey, the Star Cadet miniature glider plane alone was worth more than the dues.”
All three of them chuckled. Felix started coughing after a few moments and tried to sit up.
Louis leaned in. “Don’t move, baby. Do you need something? More ice chips?”
Then Felix started gagging again, and Noel handed the bucket at his feet over to Louis seconds before Felix bent over and dry heaved into it. Louis shot a worried glance at Noel as Felix’s retching echoed off the sides of the bucket. Noel just shrugged, hoping it’d convey that this was nothing new.
Finally the gagging stopped, and after Louis raised a cup of water to Felix’s lips and Felix washed the taste from his mouth, he flopped back onto the bed, body shaking. Whatever odd closeness that little moment with the stupid wireless show had created, the spell was broken. Noel couldn’t shake the feeling that, even though they were holding hands, they were three people sitting alone in the same room.
Felix groaned. “Noel, I told them I only wanted a local for a reason. Why the frak did you override my request?”
“Because you were in shock and not thinking straight,” Noel said firmly. “And watching somebody saw your frakking leg-”
“Noel!” Louis hissed.
“Yes, Louis, that’s what happened, and I’m damn well going to phrase it the way it is, because pretending that something bad didn’t happen isn’t going to make it go away.”
Louis glowered at him, and Noel ignored him. It had come off harsher than he’d intended, but it needed to be said. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Felix was watching the two of them intently, but he couldn’t tell what Felix was thinking. If Noel had to guess, he would’ve said Felix almost looked scared.
Noel turned back to Felix and continued, “And watching somebody saw your frakking leg off would’ve frakked anybody up a lot more than a bad reaction to the anesthetic.”
Felix pulled his hands out of both their grasps and crossed his arms over his chest. “You try waking up to half your leg being missing and hours of puking your guts out, see how frakked up you are.”
Noel kneaded his forehead with his fingers. Louis was better at handling Felix when he got into his justifiably bitchy moods like this. Noel knew he’d be the one who’d finally yank Felix out of the morass of guilt and anger he would no doubt fall into, but while he was laid up in the infirmary, he recognized Felix probably needed someone to just hold him and tell him it wasn’t fair but that things would be all right.
“I’ve got CAP in a half-hour,” Noel said. He stood up and leaned in to kiss Felix on the forehead, consciously reminding himself not to make a face at the smell. He’d pull a nurse aside on the way out and tell them Felix needed a sponge bath.
But it was worth it, for the way Felix looked up at him, trying to smile but failing and begging forgiveness for his outburst with his eyes. Noel didn’t say anything, because by his way of thinking, there was nothing to forgive. He nodded and smiled back and showed he understood anyway.
“You’ll be out for five hours, right?” said Louis.
“Five hour CAP? Funny.”
Louis stood up and took Noel by the arm, pulling him to a corner of the cubicle, at least nominally out of earshot of Felix. “You said you were going to split your CAP shift with Snowbird.”
Noel felt his jaw tighten. “No, you said I was going to split with Snowbird.”
“I split with Thornton so I could get down here, but he can’t cover for me past 2200.”
“You know, Louis, just because your job lets you split shifts doesn’t mean everyone can. You can’t just hop out of your Viper and have somebody keep it warm for you while you go take a piss-”
“I’m not talking about hopping out to piss. I’m talking about making some time-”
“Fine. Whatever. But I can’t do that-five’s impossible. I can twist Helo’s arm and have somebody replace me early, but we’re talking seven hours, not five.”
“Frak. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“He’ll be okay for a little while.”
“Noel,” Louis whispered. “Trust me on this one. I’ll explain later-” he gave Felix a sidelong glance “-but he cannot be left alone.” There was a desperation in his eyes that Noel knew meant he was dead serious.
Noel sighed. “You’d feel okay leaving him with Dee for a few hours, wouldn’t you?”
“I would, but she’s covering for him on tactical.”
Noel ran a hand through his hair. “Frak. What if we-”
“You don’t have to stay,” Felix called out from his bed. Noel and Louis turned to him. He somehow looked even sicker, drowning in a sea of crumpled white sheets and bandages.
“Felix,” Louis admonished lightly. “Yes, we do. If there was just one of us, yeah, maybe, but between us and Dee, we should-”
Felix shook his head, eyes glassy with tears. “I mean you don’t have to stay with me. I mean, you two-I want you to be happy, and...”
It hit both of them at the same time, but Louis was the one who moved first.
“Oh, gods, baby, is that what you’re worried about?” Louis was already sitting beside the bed again, a hand on Felix’s arm and another stroking his hair. “Never. We don’t work without you.”
Noel came up to the end of the bed and patted his good knee, looking at Felix like he’d accepted a dare to not flinch. “No way in hell you’re getting rid of us that easily.”
Felix’s brow furrowed like he didn’t quite believe them, but Louis was right. Him and Felix, him and Louis-only having one other person was paradoxically just too much. He shared the horrors of New Caprica with Felix and the atrocities of the Pegasus with Louis. If two of them had to be together alone, he knew it would be like standing between two mirrors and looking into one, staring straight into the other’s eyes and seeing a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of those horrors right down to the vanishing point. The three of them together didn’t banish the specters of the Pegasus and New Caprica from any of their memories. But they could keep each other from having to face them head-on.
“I have to go,” Noel finally said. “What are we going to do?”
“Frak it,” Louis said to Felix. “I’m not leaving unless Ishay promises to sit with you the whole time I’m gone or they drag me off to the brig for insubordination. Like getting written up for missing duty matters anymore anyway.”
“I’ll get back as soon as I can, I promise,” Noel finally said, kissing Louis on the forehead and giving Felix’s good knee a final squeeze before walking away from the bed. He looked back over his shoulder when he came to the partition. He couldn’t say that it looked like something or someone was missing from the scene, the way Louis’s gaze showed his universe had narrowed down to the man in the bed, and the way Felix clung to Louis’s hand like it was the only thing keeping him from drowning.
It should hurt, he thought to himself. But in a way, it was a relief. Knowing they’d be okay without him made it easier for Noel to climb into the cockpit for every CAP and call to action stations, in a completely different but just as important a way as knowing they’d be waiting for him when (if) he came back. Having something worth fighting for-worth dying for-was a hell of a lot more than most people had these days.
Author: kappamaki33
Characters/Pairings: Gaeta, Hoshi, Narcho; Gaeta/Hoshi/Narcho (established relationship)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: One bullet, three lives: how Felix being shot while on the Demetrius affected the relationship of Felix Gaeta, Louis Hoshi, and Noel Allison.
Notes: For my long, long overdue Never Will I Ever meme, for lls_mutant’s prompt of Gaeta/Hoshi/Narcho. Apparently, I’m on a bit of a writing roll today!
Old Wounds
It’s amazing when you think about it, how much damage something as tiny as a bullet can do. The bullet that shattered Felix Gaeta’s leg on the Demetrius changed a lot of lives, but it ripped open the most delicate of old wounds for three people.
~~**~~**~~
Louis didn’t know whether he was thankful or not when he heard Noel’s voice on the other end of the line.
“What the frak is going on up there? Dragon just came from the deck, saying something about a baseship-”
“Lieutenant Allison,” Louis cut in with his most professional voice. “I need three Raptors in the air in five minutes to dock with the Demetrius and the purportedly captured enemy ship accompanying it. Two-”
“Finally,” Noel threw off Louis’s measured, controlled delivery enough that he couldn’t get his mouth to cooperate with him again. Noel continued, “You’d better get off shift soon, because it’s been far too long since I’ve gotten laid. Felix will agree with me that we are not going to wait around for you. This celibacy as fairness while Felix is off on his own idea of yours was stupid, anyway.”
“Lieutenant Allison,” Louis finally said, his voice wavering. “Two Raptors are to take Colonel Tigh and as many marines as will fit over to the baseship to secure it. One Raptor is to take an emergency medical team to the Demetrius.”
Noel didn’t say anything, but Louis heard a shaky intake of breath on the other end.
He whispered, “Noel, it’s Felix.”
“Frak. Frak!” Not for the first time, Louis envied his lover’s job giving him the right and ability to react to bad news the way he felt like reacting. He heard Noel bang the receiver down hard, but he must have missed the cradle, because he heard a chair being kicked across the room and a string of curses fading as Noel ran out of range of the phone.
Louis clicked off the channel and went back to work, fielding calls from confused and frightened ships’ captains, coordinating the Raptor out on CAP to intercept a shuttle that had almost been obliterated when the baseship jumped in nearly on top of it, and only catching snatches of Helo’s harried conversation with Adama on the secure channel when he could. Only one time did he overhear them saying anything about Felix.
“Sir, it may have just been the fever and the morpha talking,” Helo said, voice crackling, “But he said some strange things, and...I think you might want to have Cottle put him on suicide watch.”
Then Louis had received a hail from the Thera Sita, clicked the dial to their frequency, and patiently explained for the eleventh time that the baseship was under Colonial control and there was a temporary cessation of all Fleet traffic, all while he calculated the soonest he could possibly get down to the infirmary. By the time he gave the speech the thirteenth time, to the Gemenon Traveler, he realized with sinking dismay that it would be hours before he’d even have a five-minute break to step into the head and scream at the gods.
Oddly, all Louis could think about was when he and Noel had fooled around in the head two days before. They hadn’t gotten very far, and Louis was really the only one who had pushed for the celibacy pact they’d made when Felix left on the Demetrius, but he’d still broken his promise. And now Felix could be dying, and one of the last things he’d said to him was a lie...
“Shut up, shut up,” Louis whispered to himself. He was being childish. Felix would have laughed at how much this was bothering him, most likely adding a sly smile and a “Could’ve told you you couldn’t keep your hands off him for two months.” Then Noel would preen, and the two of them would roll their eyes at him, a not-uncommon occurrence.
In the beginning, the idea of being with two heroes, a Viper pilot and a resistance spy, had definitely had its appeal. They’d made Louis feel so safe, a rare commodity these days. He’d never felt strange or out-of-place as the one invited into an established couple. But there were moments when he’d try to say something important, meaningful, and Noel and Felix would exchange glances with each other that made him feel like he was a child, with two seasoned warriors communicating silently and patronizingly over his head.
When Felix had told them he was going on a secret mission to find Earth, no matter how much Felix protested that it was Starbuck-led and therefore crazy and pointless, a tiny part of Louis had burned at the thought. The mission would likely result in Felix coming home an even bigger hero. He’d come home with new war stories that Noel would understand almost instinctively, in a way that the guy who’d never gone to work outside the CIC and was little more than Adama’s secretary most days could never share.
Now, Felix might be dying, and Louis felt like a fool for his guilt and pettiness about naïve promises and war stories and feelings of being the kid barely tolerated at the adult table. Those things might nettle him, but he’d never admitted the true heart of his anxiety before.
As he stood in the relative safety of the CIC, fiddling with dials and quelling the fears of chattering civilian pilots while Noel raced off to save Felix, he couldn’t ignore the truth anymore. He couldn’t protect them. They could risk their lives for him, but Louis had to stay behind, to send them out into unknown danger and do nothing but wait and call out to them in the darkness.
Louis’s headset beeped with an incoming call. He opened a channel and took a deep breath.
“Galactica, this is Narcho. We’ve got Gaeta onboard. It’ll take us two minutes to uncouple from the Demetrius. Can you clear us for an emergency landing, over?”
“Narcho, this is Galactica. You are clear for landing whenever you get here.” It wasn’t strictly relevant to the job, but Louis couldn’t keep from asking. “How is he?”
The pause on the other end was probably only a couple seconds, but it felt like it stretched on and on. “He’s alive. I’ll get him home. Don’t worry. I’ll get him home.”
Louis squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Copy that. Godspeed.”
At least he could call them home. It wasn’t much, but having someone to wait for, having people you loved who could come home to you…it was a hell of a lot more than most people had these days.
~~**~~**~~
Felix hadn’t thought his leg could hurt any more than it had when Starbuck poured the bloodstopper on the wound before sticking him with the needle of morpha. He really hated being proven wrong. Every jostle of the makeshift litter Helo and Athena carried him in made him groan or scream. Then they waited for what seemed like a long time just outside the docking bay, and the pain wasn’t any better even now that he was still.
There was a lot of commotion when the Raptor finally docked and Helo and Athena handed him off to the medics. Even though he was at the center of it, he felt oddly detached from it all. Several voices, lots of medical jargon he didn’t understand, more needles in his arm, more movement. He couldn’t focus until the Raptor hatch hissed shut and he heard a voice going through the pre-flight check faster than he’d ever heard anyone do it before.
“Noel?”
Noel finished the check before he turned around. Seeing Noel so pale and tight-jawed hit home how bad Felix must look, more than anything else had.
“You hang in there, you hear me? You’re going to be okay,” Noel ordered more than reassured. “Louis will frakking kill me if I don’t get you back okay.”
“Yes, sir.” Felix tried to bring his hand up in a mock-salute, but a medic grabbed his arm and did something to his drip line. “I will do my best to avoid dying so Louis doesn’t muss your very pretty face. That’d be a real tragedy.”
Noel half-laughed and muttered, “Good to see you didn’t get shot in the sarcasm.”
Felix thought he heard Louis’s voice, then figured he must have been hallucinating. His limbs felt very heavy; there must’ve been some really good pain meds in the IV. He stared past the medics bending over him and looked at the Raptor’s ceiling. All the voices faded into the background, until all that was left was the steady thrum of the Raptor’s engines.
In those feverish, pain-drenched hours on the Demetrius, the only thing Felix could think of was how badly he wanted to go home. Now, with Galactica just a few minutes away, he was suddenly afraid. Knowing your leg is going to be gone and actually having it gone were two very different things. There would be more pain, therapy, a seemingly endless number of modifications and concessions for his new disability…he shuddered. At least it would likely finally rate him, Louis, and Noel the private quarters they’d been after for so long, he thought ruefully.
Louis and Noel. Felix hadn’t even thought about how this would change things among them. Deep down, he knew it was ridiculous to think they might abandon him, especially for something like this. Their pity could be even worse, though. He almost wished he were going back home to face this all by himself.
Felix cast his mind back, desperate to find something like relief in his memories. He’d gotten together with Noel on New Caprica, after Gaius broke his heart the first time, but before the Cylons came and Gaius broke his heart again in a new way. It had started out as Noel offering Felix a place to crash after Felix moved out of Colonial One, then moved quickly into frakking for comfort or convenience or because nights on New Caprica were cold and quiet, Felix didn’t really know. In a few months, it settled into something where Noel felt comfortable putting a hand on Felix’s shoulder or his ass at the bar-tent, even on busy nights, and he’d tug on Felix’s hand to get his attention when they walked through the marketplace.
Felix was the one who broached the idea of adding Louis to…whatever it was they had. He swore afterwards to both Noel and Louis that he had no idea what possessed him to suggest it. The truth was, he saw it as easing a way out for Noel. Felix expected this relationship to fly apart at the seams, like usual for him. He anticipated that, one day, he’d come home from work and find Noel in his (their) bed with someone else. The only thing he wasn’t sure about was whether Noel would attempt to apologize for cheating and make a scene, or whether it wouldn’t be cheating at all, just Noel moving on and quietly asking Felix to find somewhere else to stay.
He’d half-heartedly thought maybe Noel would find the suggestion too weird and use it as an excuse to break things off. That wasn’t what happened.
“Okay,” Noel said with a shrug at the suggestion. “If you want him, sure. The logistics of him being on Pegasus will complicate things a little.”
“That’s it?” Felix asked, incredulous. “Logistics is the only thing you’re worried about?”
“You know I’m from Canceron,” he said. “I only had two parents, but most of my cousins had six, eight. Honestly, I’m more worried about how you’ll handle it, what with the whole Virgonese monogamy obsession in your background. But like I said, if you want him, sure.”
“Do you even know Louis?” Felix pressed.
Noel smirked. “Yeah. Nice guy, bad haircut, gives an excellent blow job. What?”
Felix tried to school his face. “I…I didn’t know you’d been with him before.”
“With him? That’s debatable,” Noel said. The smirk came back. “Don’t tell me there weren’t ‘thank the Gods we survived the apocalypse’ orgies on Galactica, too.”
Felix felt so far out of his depth he couldn’t look at Noel anymore. Then he felt a warm hand on his back as Noel sat down next to him, pressing against him from shoulder to thigh.
“I was kidding about the orgies,” Noel said softly. “There were no orgies. I got around a little more than usual, but that’s only to be expected. I can happily forget you ever brought up adding your friend to us, if you want me to.”
But Felix didn’t want that, and they didn’t forget it. They approached Louis, and he entered into their routine much more easily than Felix had imagined. Noel had been right; the distance between the planet and Pegasus was their only real issue. For the three months before the Cylons arrived and separated them all-Louis in the Fleet, Noel a prisoner at a work camp, and Felix a spy in the administration-things had gone well. Given the amount of baggage they individually and collectively accumulated during the occupation, things even went remarkably well afterwards, when they were all back on Galactica.
It felt good, loving and being loved by both of them. It should have felt easy, too-comfortable. But it didn’t. Another thing Felix would never admit to Noel or Louis: he’d picked Louis because he liked him and wanted him, yes, but also because Louis was quiet, a little shy, a lot nerdy-much better suited to Felix than to Noel. A part of him hoped that, whenever Noel inevitably started to roam, Louis would want to stay with him.
The ease Noel and Louis had with each other shocked Felix so badly that he feared he’d found Noel a replacement for himself instead. They talked and laughed over drinks and dinners, traded Pegasus stories, and frakked passionately and without reservation. And then Felix fell in love with Louis, too, and Felix’s brilliant plan to save himself some heartache turned into something so lovely that he knew his heart would shatter when it ended, no matter which one of them walked away first.
The easiest way of all for you would be if you were the first one to die, some quiet but insistent part of Felix’s mind whispered.
Felix felt a small jolt when the Raptor touched down in the flight pod. The noise and commotion around him hadn’t ever stopped, but it felt like someone was turning the volume back up on reality. He almost didn’t want the Raptor hatch to open and let the future in. The next weeks and probably months were going to be hell. And every day from this day forward, he was going to look down at the place where his leg should have been and carry that reminder of how fragile the human body is, how a few ounces of lead could take away everything, even a life.
The world was an utterly terrifying place, and Felix had so much to lose. It was hard to believe it now, but he knew that, in some way, he was lucky. Having two people left to cling to, to fear losing with your whole being, was a hell of a lot more than most people had these days.
~~*~~**~~
Noel looked up when the curtain jangled open. Louis marched into the cubicle as fast as one could move without running. “They finally let me out of CIC-” Louis stopped dead in his tracks when he looked down at Felix in the hospital bed, something like confusion and maybe a little fear involuntarily creeping into his expression. Noel couldn’t tell whether it was because of the leg or because of how pained Felix’s face looked even as he slept. “How is he?”
“Stable,” Noel said, eyes returning to Felix.
Louis pulled a chair up next to the opposite side of the bed and took Felix’s other hand. “Gods, his hands are cold,” he murmured.
Noel watched as Louis scanned Felix’s face. He could almost see the thoughts racing through Louis’s frustratingly orderly bridge bunny brain, making plans and coming up with solutions to possible problems they might encounter weeks down the line. Noel knew that sort of thing comforted Louis, but he couldn’t fathom how he could focus on anything at all in a situation like this. Noel’s own mind just kept spinning, fears flying past so quickly he couldn’t grab on to any one long enough to deal with it.
There was no way he was going to be able to read Louis’s odd thoughts on a day like this. It was impossible enough trying to figure out what was going on in Felix’s head when he was awake, especially with him already starting to pull away a little more each time he woke from his fitful sleep.
Louis motioned for Noel to hand him the washcloth on the table next to the bed. He dabbed at the sweat on Felix’s forehead and temples gently enough that he didn’t wake up.
“You can take over for a while, then,” Noel said without moving to leave or letting go of Felix’s hand. “I’ve got some things to do. Like give Anders a black eye.”
Louis smiled grimly. “I already took care of that.”
“Well, he’s got two eyes, doesn’t he?”
Louis snorted and shook his head.
They sat in silence for a long time, Louis occasionally straightening the sheets or rearranging a stray curl on Felix’s forehead. Louis’s nervous energy was starting to grate on Noel, like it always did. He tried to ignore it, picking up the clipboard at the foot of Felix’s bed and reading notations that he didn’t understand until the words blurred before his eyes.
“Why does this shit always happen to him?” Louis muttered.
Noel didn’t look up. “You’d rather it happened to me?” he joked lamely.
“No, because Viper pilots don’t get bumps and bruises-they either come back without a scratch, or they don’t come back at all.” He sighed and stroked Felix’s knuckles with his thumb. “I’d rather it happened to me.”
“How does somebody get wounded in CIC?”
“I don’t know. Exploding console? That’s what always happened on the space adventure wireless show I listened to when I was a kid.”
“A wireless show?” Noel scoffed.
“The Adventures of Captain Tyro and the Star Chasers,” Felix murmured.
Louis started, and Noel set aside the clipboard. “Felix, do you know who I am?” Louis said quietly, already cupping Felix’s cheek with his free hand. Felix nodded. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. But we’re both here now.”
Felix blinked several times, as if the world refused to come into focus. “The wireless show. Was I right? Tyro and the Star Chasers?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Isn’t it, Noel?”
Noel shrugged. “Like I’d know. You two are the geeks. I’m a Viper jock.” He’d watched it every Saturday morning until he was eleven.
Felix gave him a sidelong glance, and Louis looked at him equally dubiously.
“All right, so maybe I do vaguely remember it.”
Louis smirked. “I bet you were a member of the fan club.”
“Hey, the Star Cadet miniature glider plane alone was worth more than the dues.”
All three of them chuckled. Felix started coughing after a few moments and tried to sit up.
Louis leaned in. “Don’t move, baby. Do you need something? More ice chips?”
Then Felix started gagging again, and Noel handed the bucket at his feet over to Louis seconds before Felix bent over and dry heaved into it. Louis shot a worried glance at Noel as Felix’s retching echoed off the sides of the bucket. Noel just shrugged, hoping it’d convey that this was nothing new.
Finally the gagging stopped, and after Louis raised a cup of water to Felix’s lips and Felix washed the taste from his mouth, he flopped back onto the bed, body shaking. Whatever odd closeness that little moment with the stupid wireless show had created, the spell was broken. Noel couldn’t shake the feeling that, even though they were holding hands, they were three people sitting alone in the same room.
Felix groaned. “Noel, I told them I only wanted a local for a reason. Why the frak did you override my request?”
“Because you were in shock and not thinking straight,” Noel said firmly. “And watching somebody saw your frakking leg-”
“Noel!” Louis hissed.
“Yes, Louis, that’s what happened, and I’m damn well going to phrase it the way it is, because pretending that something bad didn’t happen isn’t going to make it go away.”
Louis glowered at him, and Noel ignored him. It had come off harsher than he’d intended, but it needed to be said. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Felix was watching the two of them intently, but he couldn’t tell what Felix was thinking. If Noel had to guess, he would’ve said Felix almost looked scared.
Noel turned back to Felix and continued, “And watching somebody saw your frakking leg off would’ve frakked anybody up a lot more than a bad reaction to the anesthetic.”
Felix pulled his hands out of both their grasps and crossed his arms over his chest. “You try waking up to half your leg being missing and hours of puking your guts out, see how frakked up you are.”
Noel kneaded his forehead with his fingers. Louis was better at handling Felix when he got into his justifiably bitchy moods like this. Noel knew he’d be the one who’d finally yank Felix out of the morass of guilt and anger he would no doubt fall into, but while he was laid up in the infirmary, he recognized Felix probably needed someone to just hold him and tell him it wasn’t fair but that things would be all right.
“I’ve got CAP in a half-hour,” Noel said. He stood up and leaned in to kiss Felix on the forehead, consciously reminding himself not to make a face at the smell. He’d pull a nurse aside on the way out and tell them Felix needed a sponge bath.
But it was worth it, for the way Felix looked up at him, trying to smile but failing and begging forgiveness for his outburst with his eyes. Noel didn’t say anything, because by his way of thinking, there was nothing to forgive. He nodded and smiled back and showed he understood anyway.
“You’ll be out for five hours, right?” said Louis.
“Five hour CAP? Funny.”
Louis stood up and took Noel by the arm, pulling him to a corner of the cubicle, at least nominally out of earshot of Felix. “You said you were going to split your CAP shift with Snowbird.”
Noel felt his jaw tighten. “No, you said I was going to split with Snowbird.”
“I split with Thornton so I could get down here, but he can’t cover for me past 2200.”
“You know, Louis, just because your job lets you split shifts doesn’t mean everyone can. You can’t just hop out of your Viper and have somebody keep it warm for you while you go take a piss-”
“I’m not talking about hopping out to piss. I’m talking about making some time-”
“Fine. Whatever. But I can’t do that-five’s impossible. I can twist Helo’s arm and have somebody replace me early, but we’re talking seven hours, not five.”
“Frak. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“He’ll be okay for a little while.”
“Noel,” Louis whispered. “Trust me on this one. I’ll explain later-” he gave Felix a sidelong glance “-but he cannot be left alone.” There was a desperation in his eyes that Noel knew meant he was dead serious.
Noel sighed. “You’d feel okay leaving him with Dee for a few hours, wouldn’t you?”
“I would, but she’s covering for him on tactical.”
Noel ran a hand through his hair. “Frak. What if we-”
“You don’t have to stay,” Felix called out from his bed. Noel and Louis turned to him. He somehow looked even sicker, drowning in a sea of crumpled white sheets and bandages.
“Felix,” Louis admonished lightly. “Yes, we do. If there was just one of us, yeah, maybe, but between us and Dee, we should-”
Felix shook his head, eyes glassy with tears. “I mean you don’t have to stay with me. I mean, you two-I want you to be happy, and...”
It hit both of them at the same time, but Louis was the one who moved first.
“Oh, gods, baby, is that what you’re worried about?” Louis was already sitting beside the bed again, a hand on Felix’s arm and another stroking his hair. “Never. We don’t work without you.”
Noel came up to the end of the bed and patted his good knee, looking at Felix like he’d accepted a dare to not flinch. “No way in hell you’re getting rid of us that easily.”
Felix’s brow furrowed like he didn’t quite believe them, but Louis was right. Him and Felix, him and Louis-only having one other person was paradoxically just too much. He shared the horrors of New Caprica with Felix and the atrocities of the Pegasus with Louis. If two of them had to be together alone, he knew it would be like standing between two mirrors and looking into one, staring straight into the other’s eyes and seeing a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of those horrors right down to the vanishing point. The three of them together didn’t banish the specters of the Pegasus and New Caprica from any of their memories. But they could keep each other from having to face them head-on.
“I have to go,” Noel finally said. “What are we going to do?”
“Frak it,” Louis said to Felix. “I’m not leaving unless Ishay promises to sit with you the whole time I’m gone or they drag me off to the brig for insubordination. Like getting written up for missing duty matters anymore anyway.”
“I’ll get back as soon as I can, I promise,” Noel finally said, kissing Louis on the forehead and giving Felix’s good knee a final squeeze before walking away from the bed. He looked back over his shoulder when he came to the partition. He couldn’t say that it looked like something or someone was missing from the scene, the way Louis’s gaze showed his universe had narrowed down to the man in the bed, and the way Felix clung to Louis’s hand like it was the only thing keeping him from drowning.
It should hurt, he thought to himself. But in a way, it was a relief. Knowing they’d be okay without him made it easier for Noel to climb into the cockpit for every CAP and call to action stations, in a completely different but just as important a way as knowing they’d be waiting for him when (if) he came back. Having something worth fighting for-worth dying for-was a hell of a lot more than most people had these days.