[Felix Culpa AU: I, Robot]

[stilljustandrew]

It's Happy Hour, and there's a new guy behind the bar who gives his name as Jake; the Specials board reads HALF OFF FOR ANY ORDER INVOLVING A PUN.

This has led to a discussion of puns in particular and humor in general, between two regular patrons seated at the bar.

"-- but the 'hickory daiquiri' pun relies both on phoenetic similarity and awareness of an element of popular culture," Andrew explains earnestly, and takes a sip of his kahlua-spiked milkshake.

Comments

[mr_gaeta]

"Yeah."

He's already turning away.

[stilljustandrew]

The momentum's gone.

He makes himself move anyway, bunching the crumpled jacket under one arm and reaching for the doorknob.

And opening the door.

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta hears the door open. He makes no further move to stop him, and half a heartbeat later, he hears the jamb click closed again.

He rakes his hands through his hair and stares up at the ceiling in beseechment, not moving right away.

When he does, it's to halfheartedly smack his fist against the nearest wall as he hisses out a much more vehement, "Frak."

[stilljustandrew]

If he'd looked, he would have seen that the door didn't open on Milliways.




Andrew doesn't have any particular place in mind; he's just walking, eyes on the pavement ahead of his feet, looking up only to cross the street -- not even then, if there are enough other pedestrians around him.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

It's not until the concrete changes to brick paving underfoot that he realizes he's on Central Park West, with the first dead leaves of fall brushing past his ankles on the wind.

I don't know what to do.

[mr_gaeta]

The easiest way to ignore it is the same way as always: keep busy with what needs to be done.

The apartment doesn't need much more than a superficial tidying, though. Gaeta takes care of it anyway, sweeping up the soda cans and takeout containers, sorting them out into trash and recycling. Neither of the bins are full, but he takes them downstairs to the dumpsters anyway, keeping watch on his surroundings the whole time.

Dinner's next. He digs out samples of everything from the fridge and eyes them critically, like they're a navigation problem in need of solving. It takes more than an hour to finish putting together the meal: shrimp, sweet potato fries, a cucumber salad tossed with honey and vinegar.

(He doesn't think twice about wrapping up a second plate for Andrew.)

He goes over the bills. He sorts out the ones he can pay from the ones Andrew will have to cover this month. He recycles the junk mail, and does the dishes, and scoops out a little more food for himself.

And then there's nothing left, and all he can do is sit on the couch and put in a movie as he waits.

[stilljustandrew]

He walks down to Columbus Circle, hands in his pockets. Spends about fifteen minutes leaning against the side of a newsstand and watching a pair of street performers, a young woman with multicolor-dyed dreadlocks playing a tall African drum and a slightly older man playing a violin.

He doesn't look at the denomination of the bill he drops into their open instrument case when he moves on.

There's a Whole Foods across the circle from here. With no particular thought in mind, he goes in, to emerge some forty-five minutes later carrying a single orange and a bottle of water.




Four blocks down, he carefully sets the orange down on the sidewalk next to a half-asleep homeless man, just behind the propped-up cardboard sign that reads PLEASE HELP.

[mr_gaeta]

He picked a DVD at random without looking at the case; it turns out to be The Wrath of Khan.

He can remember how he ribbed Andrew gently about the inaccuracy of Star Trek space travel (though he did allow that it wasn't as bad as Star Wars) -- years ago, by this point, the first time they watched it together. It's not as funny to him anymore. Especially right now.

Halfway through, Gaeta considers turning it off and picking a different movie instead, or just flipping through the TV channels for a while.

He doesn't.

[stilljustandrew]

The neon sign on the corner ahead catches his eye: a silhouette of a girl waving a record over her head and happily proclaiming I FOUND IT! at THE COLONY. He's been here many times before; without thinking about it any more than he thought about going into the grocery store, he turns to go in.

Slowly he moves down the racks, staring half-blindly at records and CDs and music books, rarities and Broadway librettos and movie soundtracks and pop music.

A shape catches his eye, and he stops.




Eventually a young store employee has to touch his arm to get his attention, after several repetitions of sir? fail to, and tell him that they're about to close.

(The employee doesn't ask, but as they're closing up, he and his co-worker will spend about ten minutes speculating about why a guy would be standing there staring at the soundtrack to The Iron Giant with tears in his eyes.)

[mr_gaeta]

He pauses the movie right before Spock dies, taking in the frozen shock on Kirk's face without seeing it at all. For five minutes, Gaeta sits there with his knuckles to his mouth, until the DVD's screensaver pops up and starts bouncing a multicolored logo around the TV.

That jars him enough to pick up the remote and hit the EJECT button.

He picks up the disc, gently presses it back into its case, and returns it to the shelf. Gaeta glances out the window at the emerging lights; maybe he should call Andrew's cell, he thinks. Just to make sure he's not lying in a metaphorical ditch somewhere.

It can wait a few more hours, another thought mumbles, and he sets his mental alarm for one AM before moving to fetch a Post-It pad and a pen.

The note he scratches out and presses to the kitchen table reads:

Left a plate for you in the fridge.
There's more in the tupperware on the
bottom shelf if you're still hungry.
--F.

And keeping his phone close, he switches off the lights and curls up on the couch to sleep.

[stilljustandrew]

The Starbucks in Times Square is still open, of course; it's not even midnight yet. He gets a pomegranate-juice-and-tea blend, for the caffeine and the heat, and claims a seat by the window.

He doesn't feel how much his feet are aching until he's sitting down.



Staring down into his cup, he tries for the first time in a while to move past the circling despair of I don't know what to do.

It doesn't work much better now than it did last time.

And really, does he need to do anything? Does he have any right to do anything? Twelve planets' worth of PTSD, he told Stark that time; and more -- too personal and painful to share with even a friendly stranger, let alone a hostile one -- one stranded Raptor's worth. If Felix hates Cylons for what they've done to his people, and to him personally, isn't that understandable? And if he generalizes that to all AIs, all robots, well ... Cylons are the only AIs his world's ever known, so that's ... surely that's defensible too. Surely.




No it's not.

[mr_gaeta]

He dozes fitfully, not exactly tired enough to sleep, not alert enough to think of anything else to do. After a half-hour of trying to get comfortable, he sits up just long enough to doff his prosthesis and set it on the floor beside him.

Fifteen minutes later, he puts it back on so he can get a glass of water and a cigarette from the kitchen.

He leans against the window as he drinks and smokes, keeping the window cracked to let out the smell, listening to the city murmuring, taking a little comfort in the noise.

Gaeta wishes he could take more.

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew's no closer to finding an answer when they start closing up shop, at about quarter to one.

He could find a door and go to Milliways, and sleep there.

Or he could go home.

[mr_gaeta]

At one o'clock on the dot, a text message pops up on Andrew's phone.

Gaeta wasn't sure how to phrase it; asking if Andrew's okay encompasses too much, is too vague and inadequate, puts too much pressure on both of them to start a conversation. What he's settled on at last is, Checking in - let me know ur alive?

[stilljustandrew]

He studies it for a moment.

Felix is awake. That makes going home ... more complicated. Maybe.

Still alive, he types in. Hesitates. Leaves it.

And adds, after a much longer hesitation: be home soon.

[mr_gaeta]

In their apartment, Gaeta exhales a long breath and scrubs a hand over his hair as he reads the reply.

Ok, is all he sends back before tucking the phone into his pocket.

This time, when he takes off his prosthesis and curls up on the couch, he falls fast asleep within ten minutes.

[stilljustandrew]

Fifteen minutes after that, there's the sound of the key in the lock.

[mr_gaeta]

The apartment's dark and soundless.

Gaeta's just visible in the sliver of light from the hallway, asleep on the couch with his back to the door. He doesn't stir.

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew closes the door as silently as he can, puts down his bag very carefully, and stands there a moment to let his eyes adjust.

Slowly he shrugs out of his jacket, hangs it on the hook on the back of the door, and moves to one of the living room chairs to take off his shoes.

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta shifts as if in a precursor to rolling over.

Hidden against the couch cushions, his brow creases, faintly.

[stilljustandrew]

He stops moving, one shoe in his hand, studying Felix.

(In unconscious echo, a faint crease appears on his own brow.)

[mr_gaeta]

The moment subsides, and passes.

His shoulders go back to the steady, uninterrupted rise and fall of before.

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew takes off his other shoe, pulls off his socks, rubs the aching sole of his left foot.

Lets out a long, silent sigh.



And leans forward to gently touch Felix's shoulder.

[mr_gaeta]

Blurrily: "Mm?"

Gaeta rolls halfway over, eyes blinking open. After a beat, his brain catches up with the sight before him; a small, shaking smile of relief touches the edges of his mouth.

[stilljustandrew]

That smile makes his heart ache.

"Hey," he whispers.

[mr_gaeta]

"Hi."

He props himself on his elbows, searching Andrew's face as best he can in the dark.