lovethyneighb_or | IC inbox (pumpkin hollow)

"Believe me, my first thought had been that a tank had utterly flattened a jeep in my kitchen." Beat. "Those would be large military land vehicles."

He goes quiet for a moment, mulling over his share of pastry and coffee.

"I wish I knew," he murmurs. "Well, I do know. I'd like to be sure that I won't have my house broken into. But I don't know what you could possibly do about it. And..."

He presses his thumbs together until the tips turn white, then lets them go. "If I'm being very, very honest. I don't know if I'm really all that more scared than I usually am. All that's really changed is that one of my fears is suddenly much more material than usual."

Gaeta exhales. "Yeah, I know how that goes," he murmurs. "The background noise gets... foregrounded, by something, but it's always there either way."

His mouth twists a bit.

"Still. If you'll, ah, let me be the biggest hypocrite in the worlds for a second -- " The twist resolves into a brief, humorless smile. "A bad week's sleep only makes it worse."

Mulcahy laughs quietly.

"I... I suppose... even though I have company in the house with Peter, being the only person here at night doesn't help." Or having a window facing Hawkeye's, who still has his curtains drawn tightly shut. "But I don't know what I could do about that, except perhaps going back to the Oak and Iron."

Well...

Another solution, immediate and obvious, pops into Gaeta's mind. A solution that also feels -- overly familiar? Too intimate?

Too trusting, murmurs an equally obvious thought. And that, paradoxically, is what pushes Gaeta into making the offer. Hasn't he already trusted Mulcahy with plenty already? First with a few pieces of his past; then the Father's reassurance that not every monotheist on the island was in alignment with the Cylons. Hell, if it weren't for Mulcahy keeping his head during the cult visitation, Gaeta would have lost his own altogether.

"Well, if all you need is an extra warm body on the couch," he says, "I could stay over."

His eyes go wide. "Oh..."

He turns slightly, his gaze slipping down past Gaeta as he thinks. The first thing his mind reaches for is, of course, the fear. That somehow, such a generous offer and arrangement will go hideously, bizarrely wrong, somehow. Some factor that they forgot to account for will slither through the cracks and bite them both. And if something external doesn't ruin it, maybe something internal will. There's nowhere to hide; Gaeta will see Mulcahy for who he is at the core, unadorned. He's not sure if he wants that pity.

But he is trying to help, and Mulcahy so badly wants to sleep.

"Are you sure? I wouldn't ask you to stay any more often than you are comfortable with, of course. Even still, we have no idea how long that dirt man will be around..."

Edited 2024-08-08 07:58 (UTC)

"I'm sure." The certainty he places on those words is as much for his own benefit as Mulcahy's: if he says it firmly enough, he'll convince that last little wavering part of himself that it's true. "Even if I can't stay over all the time, you'll still get a few nights of sleep on an actual bed. It'll be better than sleeping in your yard the whole time."

Mulcahy casts his gaze downwards. He half-laughs and shakes his head, wipes his eye.

“Very well. If that’s what you’d like to do. I… thank you, Gaeta, very much.”

"You're welcome."

Gently said; and that's all Gaeta says for a bit, letting Mulcahy take the moment he needs. Discreetly, he nudges one of the napkins a little closer to Mulcahy just in case.

When he eventually speaks up again, his voice stays quiet. "I don't think I got the chance to thank you, for, ah. Helping me stay present at the cult gathering."

He takes the napkin. For now, it remains under his hand.

"I was hardly going to allow you to flounder. You'd be shocked to know how much strength one gets when they need it to help another."

...

"So it was... real, Gaeta? All of it. The former townsfolk in robes. The finger-food. The mansion, the red room and the obelisk, the book... the knives. You remember all of that too?"

He sighs heavily. "It was. I do. As -- frakked up and impossible as it was, it was definitely real."

Gaeta rubs a hand over his face.

"CT and I spent some time digging through the library to see what might turn up. Not much, yet, but we found some unsolved missing persons cases that let us narrow down the date a little. What we saw seems like it really happened."

He slumps over then, slouching the way starved plants do, but this is not despair; a stiffening fear is dissolved from his blood. A hand covers his face. "Thank God," he says. "I was afraid that I was losing my mind, to stress, or, or--or something. "

He takes another second to breathe before he looks up at Gaeta again. "So what we witnessed was something that truly happened in the past. Were our names in there? What else did you find?"

Oh, that's a posture he knows too well. The relief of seeing clearly, even if what you saw is something terrible.

"No. Not our names," he says. "It seems like we... I'm not sure of the best way to describe it. Replaced them, but not in a direct one-to-one substitution. We were seeing the past and participating in it at the same time. Still us, but a little bit of them, too. Enough that we couldn't change the events much, and that their names were filed in the missing persons cases instead of ours."

He turns over one hand in a gesture like a shrug.

"The original sacrifices didn't seem to be anyone prominent. Not like some of the members of the cult itself. And..." Gaeta sighs. "As best as we can determine, the sacrifice happened in 16:43 -- so whatever being the 'conduit' meant, Linette Brenning had to endure it for two years before the barrier went up."

He tries not to grind his teeth too hard.

"All the more reason to make sure their plans never bear fruit," he murmurs. "I've got to do some investigating of my own with one of the local occult scholars. To look into what we both saw. Those symbols in the book, and... and I believe Calloway has an artifact that was tampered with by them." He can't remember if he told him this already back then, but better safe than sorry.

He looks down in muted frustration. "Getting schedules lined up is such a challenge, though, it may be some time before I do."

"The Crystallizer, right?"

He's pretty sure that was the name of it -- the thing that lets Calloway restock his shop with objects from beyond the island's borders.

"And it'll be fine," he adds, steadily. "It's a complex case that'll take time to unravel. We'll all do as much as we can in the time we can, all right?"

A little bit of a foothold is all he needs. Gaeta offers steadiness, and just like that, Mulcahy feels confidence setting back in, a stern but reliable feeling.

"Right. I believe in us, no matter how much time it takes. As long as we keep moving forward."

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