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[mr_gaeta]

The worst part of this, he thinks dully, is that he can't even get a frakking drink or ten and blind himself the way he knows half the crew's doing right now. Not unless he wants to wake up dead; despite it all, he still doesn't want to die.

So Gaeta settles for wringing a shot of morpha out of Cottle under the insistence that his new pain meds aren't doing frak-all, and retreats to Milliways, and sits with an untouched mug of coffee as he turns his face toward the lakeshore windows.

It's so green out there. It's such a frakking crock.




[ooc: not plotlocked, but please PM me before tagging! Gaeta is not in the best mental state right now.]

Comments

[simon_doctor]

Faintly rueful: "I'm afraid I don't know how to play Triad anyway."

[mr_gaeta]

"Could always teach you sometime if you really wanted."

Still dry; like you'd want to learn that. Gaeta drinks more of the water, then reaches to set the glass -- still with an inch of liquid at the bottom -- on the nightstand in favor of returning to the ambrosia bottle.

[simon_doctor]

"What do you gamble for?" It's part idle curiosity, but a much greater part trying to find some relatively innocuous subject of conversation. "Just points, or money, or what?"

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta glances past Simon for a beat. The cabinets behind him don't come into focus, no matter how hard he tries; his arms have grown even heavier in counterpoint to the way his head swims. Good.

He takes a slightly smaller sip of ambrosia as he thinks.

"Money at first," he says, with a loose shrug. "Guess a lot of people still do. 'S about all you can do with cubits nowadays anyway. But...other stuff, too. Last time I went down there a couple pilots were gambling with toothpaste."

[simon_doctor]

Toothpaste, he thinks. Wo de ma.

"We used to wager chores," he says. "When I lived on the ship. They probably still do."

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta's forehead wrinkles.

"Why would you want to earn chores?"

[simon_doctor]

"No, no -- sorry, that wasn't clear. Exemption from chores. We had a regular roster, and ... if you won the token for a particular chore, you didn't have to do it that week."

[mr_gaeta]

"Oh."

Gaeta fiddles with the bottle, lets out a tiny huff of a laugh.

"Yeah, guess that makes way more sense."

[simon_doctor]

He's not really sure where else to take that.

As the pause lengthens, he takes the waterglass and turns to refill it.

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta eyes him and the waterglass, a bit blurrily.

"How many of those am I gonna have to drink?"

[simon_doctor]

"Depends how much of the ambrosia you drink," he says. "It should be roughly equal, at the least."

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta makes a face.

"Even if I'm not thirsty?" he asks.

[simon_doctor]

"Well," judiciously, "your other options are a saline IV or a very bad hangover in the morning."

[mr_gaeta]

He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face.

"'M not in the mood for more needles," he decides, no less resigned, and accepts the refilled glass.

[simon_doctor]

He's quiet; suppressing the urge to ask how are you feeling?, recognizing the question for what it really is: are you any better? Is this helping?

It's been a long time since he's badly needed to get drunk, but he remembers well enough that it doesn't actually make anything better.

[mr_gaeta]

It's not helping as much as he'd like. If you asked him, Gaeta could probably still recite most of the reports from memory.

But it's like the morpha shot from earlier today: it makes him care a whole frak of a lot less. That's all he needs right now: to stop caring that he will never have a home, that the last three years have been for nothing, that he can't even say he lost his leg in service of a good cause.

He's spent too many frakking hours of his life caring. Just this once, he thinks it's fine if he stops.