milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Gaeta wasn't expecting to find a door this soon. Part of him, despite knowing (and knowing of) several people from Galactica who'd successfully reached Milliways, may have even expected that he wouldn't find a door at all after leaving Colonial One.

That could account for a lot: the way the door rocks backward with the full weight of Gaeta's shoulder behind it, the galley tray in his hand, the more casual civilian clothes (gone is the suit; gone, too, are the layers of someone living in a cold climate), the mildly dumbfounded expression as he stares around the room. After a moment, he heaves a sigh and makes for the nearest open seat -- in this case, one at the bar. His tray drops onto the bartop with an unceremonious clatter.

"Can I please at least finish my frakking dinner first?" he asks a beat later, too tired for the curse to carry any real heat. He gets no reply except a second napkin with a long string of zzzzzzzs scrawled across it, and so, with a quiet exhalation of, "Fine," he gets up and makes his way around the bar.

Eventually:

HAPPY HOUR
Hot Lunch
Coffee 43
After Dinner Mint

EXHIBIT A: A meal from Galactica's galley.
|
|
|
▼

(Here sits his unfinished dinner beneath the chalkboard.)

Offer suggestions to make it edible & drink half price.

It looks, for the record, like globs of something that might be mashed potato substitute, a bowl of wilted and depressed-looking greens, and a sickly-colored soup.

[tinytag: trudy chacon]

[OOC: ffffff. My body does not want to respond to pithy back room threats, alas; I am crashing and crashing hard. Mea culpa for bailing an hour early -- however, new tags are very much welcomed, and all slowtimes will be picked up!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Anna looks at the meal skeptically.

"What's edible mean?"

"Able to be eaten," says Gaeta, leaning his elbows on the bar. More wryly, "In this case, eaten without gagging on it."

It's likely his aversion to the meal has less to do with the food itself and more with extenuating circumstances.

Then again, maybe not.

Anna's nose wrinkles up, and she looks at the meal even more skeptically.

"I guess if you were really, really hungry, maybe you would want it?

"Really, really, really hungry?"

But she's not at all sure about that.

Gaeta can't help but crack a tiny smile at that assessment.

"A lot more hungry than I am right now," he agrees. "Don't think it's worth trying?"

"Well, I guess it could taste better than it looks. My mom makes this thing with beans and hamburger and cheese that looks kind of funny but it tastes really good. But it doesn't look as bad as that. I mean, you can still tell that it's beans. I'm not sure what some of that is. So I guess you could try it . . . but you might want to have a glass of water waiting, in case it's as gross as it looks."

"It doesn't taste a lot better than it looks," he admits. "It's supposed to be mashed potatoes, green beans, and beef soup."

Folding his arms, "I like the water idea, though. Maybe I'll try that."

Anna looks at it again.

"Does the person who made it know what those things are?"

Because, really. There are limits to how generous a definition you can apply.

"Can't you just get something else?"

"Supposedly," he says dryly. "And...no, I really can't. Not back home, anyway."

In an effort to forestall the likely question (and unintentionally open up a whole slew of new ones): "I live on a spaceship."

It doesn't sound like he's quite used to saying that. He's not; he hasn't for over a year.

"Oh, that's cool. That totally makes up for the icky food."

There are always trade offs.

"And anyway, you're here now and you can get something else this time.

"I'm Anna."

"I, ah, guess it does sometimes." He keeps that sentence amicable enough.

And then he offers a hand to her, adding, "I'm Felix. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Anna shakes the offered hand in a very serious and grown-up manner.

"It's nice to meet you, too.

"Do you like living on a spaceship?"

He shrugs, with more uncertainty to it than he means.

"It's home," he says, in the best dodge around the topic that he can come up with. "I'm, ah, still getting used to it again."

"I think it sounds really cool, but then I also think I'd probably want to, like, go for a walk outside, and you really can't do that on a spaceship.

"So you lived there, then didn't, and now do?"

Gaeta nods. "Exactly," he says. "I lived on the same ship I'm on now, Galactica, for four years; after that I moved to a planet for about a year and a half. I just came back to Galactica very recently."

A faint, rueful smile. "But that's one of the things I've missed when I've been on the ship. Going outside."

Edited 2010-03-12 03:13 (UTC)

"It's a very good name for a spaceship," Anna decides.

"And it's good, then, that you can come here. There's an outside, and better food."

"Much better food," he confirms. "And the outside's even better for me, because..."

He cocks his head.

"Are you from Earth?"

She nods.

"I'm from Ohio," she tells him.

(At least, as far as she knows.)

He almost starts to ask where's that?, and quickly suppresses the urge. He can ask in a minute.

"I'm not," he explains. "I'm from a place called the Twelve Colonies. But...we've been looking for Earth for a while, and it's really nice to know that if I want to see it, I can -- "

Gaeta nods to the door.

"Just step outside."

"Oh, you're not from Earth?

"What do you mean, looking for it?"

Can't they just, you know, check a map or something?

"It's pretty far away from us," says Gaeta. "And...the stories of the last people who went there are from a few thousand years ago. So it's not very easy to find."

Not to mention that the stories are from a religious text.

His own faith aside, Gaeta's aware that in the end, it might mean Earth is just a long, elaborate metaphor for something else entirely.

"Hmmmmmm," Anna says. "That's a really long time. I hope you find it.

"It's kind of right between Venus and Mars," she adds, helpfully.

For what that's worth.

Gaeta blinks, thrown an inch by the names she offers.

"Those are planets?"

Anna nods.

"There are nine of them," she says.

(She's blissfully unaware that one of them will soon be facing a demotion.)

"Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Nepture, Uranus, and Pluto.

"I had to make a model of the solar system last year."

(It's okay though, Pluto. We're not planets either.)

This time, the faint smile that emerges is a little wondering.

It would make sense. Earth's the thirteenth colony; of course they'd carry some of the older names with them, and bestow them on the planets that shared their sun. For an instant, Gaeta can feel the connection as strongly as if it were a tangible thing.

"I didn't know the planets were named for the gods."

Of course, he didn't have any sense of Earth's planetary system before now, but.

Anna nods again.

She knows all about Greek and Roman mythology. It's interesting.

"I don't really know why, but I guess it made sense to the people who named them. And I don't know who named them, either. I guess somebody a long time ago. Doesn't it seem like it would be fun to get to name a whole planet?

"I got to name our dog."