(This was actually written for a prompt at bsg_epics today, but it's definitely Kara gen so I'm cross-posting it here too!)
He hardly notices at first.
But two days after his delightful experience in the portside airlock, Felix Gaeta has to count his socks twice. Yes, there's 13 instead of the usual 12 neatly rolled balls in his footlocker, the extra wedged between the straight rows. He assumes its a laundry mixup and plucks them out, unrolling them and looking for initials or other identifying marks, but finds none. Felix frowns and debates bringing them back to the quartermaster for approximately 15 seconds, before dropping them and shutting the footlocker with a bang. Socks are in short supply and he's not feeling especially charitable these days anyway.
A few days after that he grabs his shower kit only to find his old dull razor replaced by a sharp new one. Its plastic handle is pink, and Felix wonders for a half second if this might be some kind of primitive hazing ritual, a dig at his sexual preferences. It's never been a secret, but the military has always retained a streak of closed-mindedness about certain things, and Felix hasn't gone out of his way to make his personal appetites public knowledge. After a moment, he looks around, half-expecting childish taunts to ensue, but his few rackmates that are awake seem to be entirely uncurious about his discovery, simply going about their own morning preparations. He pauses for a few more seconds, then grabs the razor, an old half-formed Gemenon saying suddenly drifting through his mind. Something about counting the teeth on a gifthorse, but that's not exactly right, and it occupies his brain all the way to the head, the provenance of the object forgotten entirely.
The unexpected gifts continue—soap, protein bars, other small notions easily overlooked. Dee starts teasing him that he has a secret admirer, and he wonders fleetingly if that Pegasus CO, Hoshi, could be the one behind the presents. He’d traded a few glances with the man in the CIC yesterday as they were changing shifts, and there’s definitely something interesting there. For the first time since before they settled on that frakking hellhole of a planet, Felix feels something besides numb acceptance.
Continued at my LJ (http://taragel.livejournal.com/205854.html#cutid1)
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timeasmymeasure
Offerings, Gaeta, PSD
Date: 2012-03-13 05:51 pm (UTC)He hardly notices at first.
But two days after his delightful experience in the portside airlock, Felix Gaeta has to count his socks twice. Yes, there's 13 instead of the usual 12 neatly rolled balls in his footlocker, the extra wedged between the straight rows. He assumes its a laundry mixup and plucks them out, unrolling them and looking for initials or other identifying marks, but finds none. Felix frowns and debates bringing them back to the quartermaster for approximately 15 seconds, before dropping them and shutting the footlocker with a bang. Socks are in short supply and he's not feeling especially charitable these days anyway.
A few days after that he grabs his shower kit only to find his old dull razor replaced by a sharp new one. Its plastic handle is pink, and Felix wonders for a half second if this might be some kind of primitive hazing ritual, a dig at his sexual preferences. It's never been a secret, but the military has always retained a streak of closed-mindedness about certain things, and Felix hasn't gone out of his way to make his personal appetites public knowledge. After a moment, he looks around, half-expecting childish taunts to ensue, but his few rackmates that are awake seem to be entirely uncurious about his discovery, simply going about their own morning preparations. He pauses for a few more seconds, then grabs the razor, an old half-formed Gemenon saying suddenly drifting through his mind. Something about counting the teeth on a gifthorse, but that's not exactly right, and it occupies his brain all the way to the head, the provenance of the object forgotten entirely.
The unexpected gifts continue—soap, protein bars, other small notions easily overlooked. Dee starts teasing him that he has a secret admirer, and he wonders fleetingly if that Pegasus CO, Hoshi, could be the one behind the presents. He’d traded a few glances with the man in the CIC yesterday as they were changing shifts, and there’s definitely something interesting there. For the first time since before they settled on that frakking hellhole of a planet, Felix feels something besides numb acceptance.
Continued at my LJ (http://taragel.livejournal.com/205854.html#cutid1)