Fic: Erythrocytes and Daydreams
A final fic for the bsg_epics charity drive.
Title: Erythrocytes and Daydreams
Summary: Mid-Season 2, Laura ponders the implications of her 'cure'.
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: MA
Word Count: 9,648
A/N: This is simultaneously my first attempt at writing A/R and at writing anything MA, so let me know your thoughts, and if you see something I could do to improve either one of those things I'd love to hear it!
So, when I asked nixmom what, if anything, she'd like to see in my first attempt at an A/R fic she said a kiss and I figured I'd write a cute and short little story about them...this is what I ended up with instead. I hope you enjoy...and maybe I'll try and write something a bit sweeter and more in my wheelhouse using this pairing sometime soon :)
Erythrocytes and Daydreams
The cool, recycled air aboard the Colonial One caused Laura Roslin to shiver as it circulated around the cabin that served as her office. Once the Office of the President of the Twelve Colonies had been a grand room in the ostentatious government headquarters of Caprica City. The room had been filled with plush rugs, expensive leather chairs, and antique writing tables and desks…all carrying the seal of the Presidential Office. And all baring witness to some of Adar’s less-than-presidential actions - her part in which she’d rather forget.
Now the Office of the President consisted of some old chairs, a couch, and one rickety desk sitting in the interior of what used to be a cabin on a passenger transport vessel. Yet despite all of that, Laura would almost say she liked this office better. It was cold in space, the constantly recycling air aboard her ship certainly didn’t help that issue, and it could feel isolating only ever seeing darkness outside her office windows, but all the same - Laura felt more at peace in this office than she ever had in the President’s Office on Caprica.
Here she felt like she was doing something useful, like whatever she was working on had a purpose that would directly help the people she served - a feeling she didn’t often experience as Secretary of Education and part-time mistress.
Even on it’s busiest, most stressful day with people storming in and out of the flimsy blue curtains and demanding her attention, Laura still preferred her space on Colonial One to any government building she’d been in on Caprica. Feeling busy and full of purpose in this little office beat sitting around networking and dealing with bureaucracy in the nicest of Caprican mansions.
The problem was, that she wasn’t currently busy. For the first time in what felt like ages, Laura Roslin wasn’t swamped with paperwork or meetings. Maybe she was more efficient now that she wasn’t spending half her energy fighting a terminal illness, or maybe Billy was lying to her and intentionally keeping her schedule light these first few weeks back as work after her ‘cure’. Whatever the reason the President had finished her evening paperwork early, and consequently she found herself sitting at her desk and longing for the fountain she used to walk to on her breaks in Caprica City. What she wouldn’t give to dip her toes in that refreshing water, tune out all of her surroundings, and just feel a spring breeze on her face.
She wasn’t sure if they’d all just spent too long in space, if having a new lease on life had made her long for the simple pleasures, or if this was some weird and unanticipated side effect of her ‘cure’, but for whatever reason Laura couldn’t stop thinking about the things she’d left behind on Caprica.
At night she dreamt of the plays she missed seeing in the theater district, the old lovers she’d left, and the walks she would never again take through the beautiful paths of Riverside Park. During the day she longed for her lingerie and heel collections, good dark chocolate and red wine, and any other impractical luxury she could think of.
Laura knew it was pointless to wish for such frivolous things, they wouldn’t do the people of the fleet any good, and they would never be available again anyway. The only practical thing to do was to forget about the indulgences of her old life on Caprica and focus on making a new life for the surviving members of the human race - just like every person in this fleet had to do.
And usually Laura was pretty good at it. She was a practical woman, a President who deeply cared about her people, and not one to spend time lamenting unalterable circumstances. Every now and then, though, in moments like this one, when there was no urgent work to be done and nobody around to count on her reliable Presidential image, Laura found her thoughts drifting to the old comforts of home.
She thought of beaches, of favorite books left behind on her shelves, and of cool breezes flowing through her hair while jogging through the city. Her thoughts were interrupted as another current of circulating air caused her to shiver and reach for the suit jacket on the back of her leather chair. As she slid her arms through the sleeves of the jacket and flicked her hair out from under the collar, Laura thought about how her internal temperature had been so erratic since her recovery.
It was something she didn’t like to think about these days - all of the little changes that she’d noticed in her body in the last few weeks - and avoiding such thoughts was admittedly part of the reason she allowed herself indulge in reminiscences of their home worlds during her free time.
Yet even these deliberate distractions from her daily life weren’t enough to keep reality away forever. Whenever she had free time something would inevitably disrupt her thoughts - like a burst of unusual shivers - and she’d be abruptly reminded of just how different and unfamiliar her body now was to her.
She hated suddenly not knowing how her body was going to respond anymore. She was a grown woman, damn it, she’d taken years to learn how to feel completely comfortable in her own skin and now that was all being taken away from her! Just yesterday she’d been in a meeting with the Quorum and an aide had reached down to hand her a file and accidentally brushed the inside of her elbow with the back of his hand.
It was the sort of thing she normally would barely have noticed, but now after her recovery, even through the layers of her jacket and blouse, she’d felt a tingle shoot straight down her spine and had to use all of her false, political calm to keep from blushing in front of the delegates.
She’d never had that sort of immediate visceral reaction to someone touching her elbow before - maybe the back of her neck - but never her elbow! It felt like she couldn’t trust her body anymore, like she’d be constantly waiting for it to betray again in public.
And who knew if all of the discoveries she’d come across would be as benign as the inability to regulate her body temperature or finding some newly sensitive pleasurable areas on her skin? What if she stopped being able to sleep, or if her judgment was somehow impaired without her realizing it - how would that affect the fleet?
How would she even know something was different? If she couldn’t trust her body anymore, who was to say that her mind was any different? She simply had no way of knowing how far-reaching the changes caused by her cure would turn out to be.
Taking a deep breath, Laura leaned her head back against her chair and tried to calm herself and reign in her rampant thoughts. Working herself into some sort of a panic wouldn’t do anyone any good. She just needed to take this one day at time - that’s what they said in all of those support groups, wasn’t it? - take it one day at a time and try to respond logically to the situation rather than react out of fear.
It certainly sounded like the best plan she had available. Resolved to move on from her concerns about circumstances she couldn’t change, Laura sat forward and tugged on her suit jacket to straighten it out - as if appearing more collected and in control would somehow make it true.
She reached forward to grab the stack of finished paperwork on her desk and move it to the outgoing shelf of her plastic filing system. She had just grabbed the stack when the bottom of her knee brushed against the support of her desk and her leg gave a reflexive kick, causing her to startle and cut her hand on the sharp edge of the paper.
Damn it! Add overly sensitive reflexes to the list of things her body couldn’t be trusted to respond to properly anymore.
Now that the surprise of her unanticipated reflex had worn off, Laura was starting to feel the sharp sting in her hand, and looking down she saw that a thin line of blood was beginning to form on her palm. She reached for a drawer to find some tissues or a cloth to stop the bleeding, but stopped just short of opening it.
What a funny thing blood was, she thought as she sat frozen in place, staring at her palm. Such a simple substance - some plasma, red blood cells, platelets - yet somehow it had so much importance. She watched quietly as one small drop of blood pooled at the end of her cut and began to trickle its way down towards her wrist.
They all depended on blood to survive…loose too much of it and there was no coming back - she’d seen more proof of that than she’d ever cared to in the time since the attacks on the colonies. So much blood - littering the halls of Galactica, coating Captain Apollo’s arms, drenching the ground on New Caprica - yet just the addition of a little blood was somehow enough to save a life.
Transfusion. It sounded like such an innocent word. She’d heard it plenty of times on the medical dramas that used to exist back on Caprica, but this hadn’t been some ordinary transfusion using liters of blood to save a life. It had been just one syringe full - or so she’d been told.
Such a small amount. What amazing or horrifying properties did that hybrid blood contain, that such a small amount could make that big of a difference? One syringe. She watched transfixed as blood trickled down past her wrist and along her forearm.
She knew the cut wasn’t that deep and that she just ought to grab something from the drawer beside her and apply some pressure to stop the bleeding, but a part of her had to wonder…
What would happen if she just kept bleeding? She reached up with her uninjured hand to squeeze her palm and watched as more of the glossy red substance flowed across her arm. What would happen if she lost a syringe’s worth of blood? Would the changed go away? Could the blood infect someone else, give them these same unknown side effects?
Laura knew she was being foolish, that whatever the blood had done to her, it had certainly made its way through her circulatory system by now - and sitting here dripping blood onto her desk wasn’t going to help matters. But a part of her was still enthralled…her blood looked normal - it had that same bright red appearance she’d seen during her days as a teacher in all the children with scraped knees and boys with bloody noses from fistfights - but it wasn’t normal. At least not anymore. Laura continued to look at her cut intently, as if somehow analyzing the liquid substance might reveal the answers to her questions.
And that was exactly how Admiral William Adama found her sitting when he walked into her office a few moments later for their evening meeting on the condition of the fleet. “Sorry I’m a little late Laura,” Bill began as he strode through the curtain towards her desk, “It’s been a hectic day of Galactica. Two of my best pilots are at each others’ throats - have been since the whole Scar cylon raider incident and…”
He stopped short at the sight of her, sitting calmly at her desk with a cut hand and a small circle of blood pooling on her desk. “Frak Laura! What happened?! Are you alright?” Bill asked as he sprang into action, rushing to grab a towel from the nearby bathroom.
“Bill,” Laura responded, trying to reassure him now that he’d startled her out of her daze. “Bill I’m fine, honestly.” Her words seemed to go straight past him as he completely ignored her and knelt in front of her chair to grab her arm and hastily put pressure on her cut.
He was relived to see that most of the blood on her arm wiped right off and that the actual cut was just a small thing on her hand. It was then that he started to process her words again, “Really Bill, this is unnecessary. I just accidentally cut myself when reaching for some files. It’s a paper cut, that’s all.”
“It’s a pretty deep paper cut,” Bill grumbled to himself as he felt his heart rate return to normal now that he’d ascertained that there was no serious damage. He lifted the towel to assess the severity of her cut, and when he was satisfied that a bit of pressure would be sufficient to stop the bleeding, he placed the towel back against her palm and closed Laura’s fingers around it.
Standing up, and wincing as he felt how sore his knees were from standing in the CIC all day, Bill said, “Keep holding the towel like that, keeping pressure with your fist, and the bleeding should stop relatively soon.”
“Thank you Admiral” Laura said with a polite smile as Bill took his seat across from her desk. She sat forward, ready to put the entire incident behind them and move on with the meeting.
“Now if you’ll look at the agenda Billy drew up for us yesterday you’ll see that…” “That was a fair amount of blood for a paper cut.” Bill interjected before she had the chance to completely shift the direction of their conversation.
“Yes, well like you said, it was a deep paper cut.” Laura replied as she reached for a pen and notepad with her free hand. She was disconcerted with her reaction to the situation to begin with, and now that Bill was there she simply wanted to get on with their meeting.
Recently their meetings had begun to feel more companionable, less like duties and more like a break from the usual stresses of her days. If she was honest with herself she’d noticed the change as soon as they got back from Kobol - they were a better team, more united, and something more like friends. And she’d certainly noticed it in the weeks leading up to her ‘death’, when he had come to visit her often and one evening had even decided to kiss her - not that she minded in the least.
But they hadn’t really spoken about it since - and things had felt initially tense after her recovery when it had become clear that he was the one who ordered her injection. Ultimately, however, she couldn’t bring herself to blame him no matter how angry she was - after all, she might have done the exact same thing if it meant saving the only other person in the universe who understood what the burden of leading this fleet really meant.
And since she couldn’t reasonably stay mad at him, their meetings had fallen back into the same companionable pattern they’d taken on during the short time between their return from Kobol and the arrival of that wretched Helena Cain.
All of that was behind them now, and Laura was still alive, so all she wanted to do was move on with their review of fleet conditions and then maybe have some time at the end of the meeting to talk Bill into lending her another book. He was convinced they were gifts, but if that were the case then he’d be out of books to give her long before they reached Earth. She’d simply have to find some way to sneak them back onto his shelves when he wasn’t looking.
The problem was, Bill didn’t seem to want to cooperate with her view of how the evening ought to progress. “I mean it Laura. Even a deep paper cut, is still a paper cut and that’s an unnecessary amount of blood on the table.”
That was probably going to stain the table, Laura realized as Bill continued talking, “Do you need me to call Cottle? Do you still have some sort of blood thinner in your system that we don’t know about from the time you were staying in sickbay?”
She scoffed internally…he couldn’t even say the word ‘dying’. “Well if I did I certainly wouldn’t know about it now would I?” Laura snapped at him and then immediately regretted it. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bill asked as he leaned forward in his chair and Laura sighed.
“Nothing.” She said as she raised he uninjured hand to take off her glasses and set them on the table, “It doesn’t mean anything Bill. I’m just tired after a long day and I know you are to, can we please just get on with the meeting?”
“Alright Laura,” he said skeptically as he glanced down at the files he’d brought with him, “but it’s not like you have that many options of people in the fleet that you can talk to.”
She opened her mouth to say something - possibly contradict him, or maybe yell at him - but before she had the chance to speak he rushed on, “I get it if you don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m certainly not going to tell you that you have to share your feelings if you don’t want to - I may have turned into a touchy-feely wuss after I got shot, like I told you on Kobol,” she couldn’t help but smile a bit at that memory, “but I don’t think I’m that much of one. I’m simply saying that I know you’ve been through a lot recently and if you want to talk to someone I’m here.”
She looked at him levelly for a moment as she considered her options and tried to access his sincerity level, “I suppose your other option is that I could always call Cottle for you and the two of you could talk since he’s bound by doctor/patient privilege, but I have to warn you, I’m guessing his skills as a shrink are on par with his skills as a bedside nursemaid.”
That startled a short laugh out of her and then Laura was horrified to feel tears welling up in her eyes on the heels of her laughter. Gods this had been a long day for not having that heavy a Presidential workload.
Looking away from him and blinking her eyes to will back her tears and get herself under control, Laura shook her head and turned back to Bill, “I’m sorry. I usually have better control of my emotions than this, but it seems that they - like everything else in body - refuse to behave ever since I came back from sickbay.”
“That’s alright” Bill responded with a gruff nod, not wanting her to think that he was one of those people who would ever think less of her as a leader because of her emotions, “But it’s not alright!” Laura responded angrily, “It’s not alright at all!”
Seeing how upset she was, and having no idea how he should properly respond as the Admiral or as a close friend, Bill just sat patiently.
Quirking a small conciliatory and slightly self-deprecating smile in his direction, Laura said, “It’s not you I’m mad at per se…I’m just upset that I can’t seem to control any of my physical reactions anymore and I don’t even know why that’s happening.”
Bill considered responding by asking her what she meant, but he decided that if she wanted him to know what she was feeling, she’d tell him. “When you say you can’t control any of your physical reactions…” Bill began suggestively as he crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair with a smirk.
“Bill!” Laura exclaimed with a combination of outrage and humor, and he could swear she would’ve swatted him on the shoulder if he’d been within arm’s length, “I’m just saying,” he continued playfully, “We could still go looking for one of those blond cylon models for you, maybe get a couple of upgrades…”
He trailed off as he saw the mirth that had momentarily been on her face replaced by some darker emotion. “Laura?”
“I guess I’m not that different from the blonde model anymore am I? I got my upgrade and now I have to live with whatever that means.” She looked down at her hand clenching the towel and sighed sadly.
“What?! Laura, that’s ridiculous, you’re nothing like the cylon models…” “How do you know Bill?” Laura interrupted him harshly before he could continue placating her, “I mean really, how do you know?”
She was glaring at him with such intensity that Bill could tell it wasn’t a rhetorical question, “You’re kind, you’re willing to risk your well being to help others, and you care about this fleet more than any other person I’ve met,”
“Yes, but those are your impressions Bill.” He looked across the desk at her in confusion, “What would you have told me about your impressions of Sharon Valerii if I’d asked you in the first couple months after the attacks? I’ll tell you what…you’d have told me she was a kind, brave, and caring person and you’d have sworn that she couldn’t be like any of the cylons we’d met.”
“You’re not her Laura, you’re not a sleeper agent.” Bill said as he stood from his chair and rounded the desk to stand in front of her, “You got your blood tested - we both did - and there’s no way you’re a cylon.”
“Yes exactly Bill,” Laura replied as she stood, bringing her within inches of his body, “we got my blood tested and it said I wasn’t a cylon. My blood.” she unclenched her hand and pulled off the towel to look at the dark red line across her palm.
She glanced up at his face only to find him staring down at her palm as well, and then said softly, “What do you think it would tell us now?”
“Oh Laura,” he responded sadly as he pulled her into a hug, “It would tell us the same thing it did before…that you’re perfectly human, with all the faults and fears that come along with it.”
“I just don’t know anymore Bill” Laura whispered dejectedly. Allowing herself a brief moment of comfort to enjoy the warm feeling his hug was giving her she leaned her face against his shoulder and continued, “Sometimes I wonder if this blood has changed me more than I know, if one day they’re just going to be able to flip a switch and I’ll make a bad decision, give some order that will lead to the destruction of the entire fleet.”
“You’d never do that.” Bill said with renewed conviction in his voice as he squeezed her tightly and then gently pushed her shoulders back until he could look her in the eyes, “Even if you were somehow connected to the cylons, you’d never do that. You’d die before letting anything happen to this fleet, we both know that.”
“That’s true,” Laura said exasperatedly as she stepped out of his reach and turned to look out her office window where she could just make out the nearby bulk of Galactica amidst the darkness of space.
She took a few steps away from him and clasped her hands together before gently running her thumb over the now clotted cut, “but what if I don’t have a choice? What if it’s not me that makes that decision? That’s what you’re not getting - what if saving my life has compromised me as the leader of this fleet?”
The unspoken ‘what if it was the wrong decision?’ hung in the air between them as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
Refusing to let her distance herself or try and turn his decision to save her life into something wrong - selfish maybe, but never wrong - Bill stepped into the space she’d created between them and said, “You’re far too stubborn to let that happen.”
She looked like she was about to protest, but he cut her off before she could try, “You survived an apocalypse, quickly adapted to the pressures of the most powerful civilian job left in the galaxy - despite what anyone else had to say about it - incited a mutiny - twice if we count both Lee and Kara’s separate incidents of disregarding orders - and now you’ve beat an incurable disease. Trust me,” he couldn’t keep the wry smile from his face as he went on, “I’ve seen far too many examples of you bull-headed stubbornness to believe that something as little as cylon mind control could convince you to do something you don’t want to do.”
The slightly cocky smile on his face made him look years younger and despite herself, Laura felt the corner of her mouth quirk up in a small smile at his words. Regaining a more serious demeanor, Bill reached out to draw her injured hand towards him and ran his fingers along the cut, “You honestly think something as little as a bit of blood is going to change who you are?”
Shivering unconsciously at the sensation of his fingers skimming delicately along her skin, Laura sighed, “It cured my supposedly terminal cancer…if it can do that, who’s to say that ‘little bit of blood’ can’t change a whole lot of other things as well?”
“That’s just your body, Laura” Bill said as he reached out with his free hand to tuck strand of hair behind her ear and skim his fingers along her cheek before his hand returned to rest by his side, “You are so much more than that. Whatever changes the hybrid blood injection may have caused in your body, it’s not going to change who you are as a person. You’re simply too strong-willed to allow that to happen. And I refuse to regret or apologize for allowing that injection to save your life.”
“I’m not asking you to apologize Bill,” she said with a shake of her head as she gently extracted her hand from his grasp and leaned back to sit against her desk. “Honestly, I know that you’re probably right, don’t let that go to your head,” she said as she looked up at him with a little smirk before sighing again and glancing back out the window to collect her thoughts.
“I know it’s unlikely that a blood injection could affect my thoughts, and I know that I just have to get used to these changes I’m experiencing, because there’s nothing that I can do about them now and the alternative certainly isn’t any better.”
“No, it’s not.” Bill agreed quietly, and with so much sincerity, that Laura had to smile softly at his caring. It reminded her of a time not too long ago in this very office when he told her to have hope and she’d felt an awfully lot like she was saying goodbye.
“It’s not.” Laura agreed again with an inclining tilt of her head, “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish things were different. That I don’t wish I could have complete certainty that I won’t do something to endanger this fleet.”
“Have we ever really had complete certainty of that?” Bill asked frankly…and she was suddenly grateful that he’d pushed her to confide in him this evening. He really was the one person in the fleet who could understand the burden of leadership that she carried. The only one who could’ve given her the exact response she needed to hear.
He was right, of course, she thought as she nodded slowly at him while processing this information and crossing her ankles to get more comfortable leaning against the desk - there really was no way, now or before, that either one of them could guarantee they wouldn’t someday make a mistake that would cost the fleet horrifically.
“Alright,” Laura smiled at him in relief as she truly began to accept the implications of what he was saying, “So nothing’s changed on that front.”
She’d never imagined that talking to him about these concerns could lead to anything other than a sympathetic ear and the equivalent of a ‘suck it up, and I promise to keep an eye on you and put the wellbeing of the fleet before your own if any of your actions start to seem off”, but instead he’d found a way to actually make her feel better.
She felt the loosening of muscles in her chest she hadn’t realized had been tense since her recovery - he’d relieved her of a concern that had been worrying her more than she’d been willing to admit to herself. Now if only the rest of the changes the hybrid blood had caused in her could be so easily taken care of.
Laura could feel her pulse throbbing in her cut - something she never would’ve noticed before her extended stay in Galactica’s sick bay - and she resigned herself to the fact that some things simply would never be the same again. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad…if she could just figure out what all the differences the blood had caused would turn out to be, she wouldn’t have to be caught by anymore ill-timed surprise reactions.
Noticing her shift in thoughts from relief to something he couldn’t quite identify yet as she stopped talking for a few minutes, Bill stood back with his arms crossed to give her time to process everything she was thinking about and to wait until she realized that he was still in the room.
When she looked up and saw him standing there quietly with an expectant look on his face, Laura blushed at being caught letting her thoughts wander and then answered the unspoken question, “I was just thinking,” “That much seemed clear.” Bill added wryly as he waited for her to continue.
“I know you said earlier that - how did you phrase it? That I’m so much more than my body?” She quirked and eyebrow at him as she repeated his early sentiment, “That’s not quite how I meant it.” Bill responded gruffly, “Taken out of context it sounds different. Sure there are plenty of people in the fleet who would agree it’s one of your best qualities…”
“Okay, okay,” Laura conceded as before Bill could tell her anything more about how many people in the fleet preferred having a female President for her legs than for educational/political background and practical way of thinking, “All I was going to say is that you’re right that there are more important things - especially in my role as President - but sometimes it would still be nice to feel like I could trust my body again. Like it’s not about to do something new and not well understood every time I take a step, or sneeze, or do anything else. It would be wonderful to just feel normal again, to feel completely human and not wonder how many of my responses are similar to those of a cylon, to just feel like me again.”
While she’d started her explanation calmly, by the end she was gesticulating expansively and letting her frustration come through in her speech as she sat perched against the desk. Sensing that there was more to this story than he’d initially realized, Adama sank into her desk chair and looked up at her, “What do you mean, feel like you again?”
“Everything just feels so out of control,” Laura said as she set her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned forward to talk with him, “and out of control is not a good thing for a President to be, I mean just yesterday…” she trailed off with a slight blush as she realized what she’d been about to say.
“Just yesterday…?” Bill prompted from his spot in her leather chair, “Never mind,” Laura said as she leaned over to retrieve a file folder from the other side of her desk, “it’s not that important. Why don’t we start going over the figures we were supposed to be discussing in our meeting? I’ve already taken up enough of our time with my concerns…”
“Laura,” Bill said as he rose from the chair to stand in front of her and took the folder from her hands, “we’ve read the fleet reports, we both know this meeting was superfluous - we already know everything that needed to be discussed and I think we’ve established a good enough partnership that we can each take care of our respective tasks without needing to discuss them. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a scheduled meeting time when we can take time to talk about the responsibilities of leading this fleet. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing here, so don’t say you’re wasting our meeting time, just tell me what you were going to say.”
Looking away from him and over towards her white board in the corner, Laura explained, “Yesterday during our Quorum meeting and aide was handing me a file folder…”
“And…” Bill said with raised eyebrows, “And he brushed my elbow when he was handing me a file and I reacted…unusually.”
“Ok Laura you’re going to have to work with me here, I’m trying to understand what you’re going through, but I’m not exactly the world’s best express-your-feelings guy. You reacted…”
“Unusually” Laura repeated slowly with a fair amount of emphasis. “Oh. Oh!” Bill said when he finally got it and quickly placed the file folder he’d taken from her back on the desk beside her.
She almost laughed - she could swear that if he weren’t a dignified Admiral he’d be blushing right now. “It wasn’t the file folder that did it Bill” she said with a smirk and raised an eyebrow towards the hastily discarded file.
“No. No, of course not” Bill said as he straightened his uniform jacket and then looked anywhere around the office but at her.
Laura refused to let herself feel hurt by his immediate desire to distance himself from anything remotely sexual involving her. She sat up straighter, smoothed out her skirt, and sought to end the conversation, “So anyway you asked, and that’s your answer. I’m just annoyed at my current inability to predict how I’ll react to things, constantly needing to try and control myself, and wondering if that’s why you…”
She could’ve kicked herself for letting her mouth get ahead of her brain, but after taking a deep breath and looking straight at him, Laura decided to continue, “And wondering if maybe that’s why you’ve never mentioned that kiss again. If somehow you subconsciously understand that the cylon blood changed me and now you’re not interested anymore.”
Bill stared at her for a few long moments, and Laura was starting to seriously regret divulging that information, when he suddenly burst out laughing and she wondered if there was a ship anywhere in the fleet distant enough from Galactica for her to spend the rest of her life hiding out in.
“Seriously, Laura?” He asked once his guffaws had subsided, “That’s what you’re worried about? Not that I kissed you out of pity, or that I kissed you as a close friend and colleague saying goodbye, but that I might think differently because of the blood in your veins? Blood that I gave the order to inject, might I add, and that saved your life.”
“Oh,” Laura said quietly as she straightened the pile of folders next to her, “I guess I never really thought about that, of course you were just being nice to me when I was dying, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said anything.”
She tried to stand up from the desk and move further away, but found her retreat blocked by the Admiral’s arm along her side pinning her to the desk. “I never said those were my reasons, Laura,” he said in a voice that suddenly seemed an entire octave lower, “I merely meant that those were the reasons I expected you to have for not bringing it up before now.”
Swallowing and glancing up at his face - when had he gotten so close? - Laura replied in a near whisper, “No, I can’t say that I really thought about either of those things. I guess I was too preoccupied worrying about the changes caused by the hybrid blood and how to react to them.”
“Oh you mean like this?” He asked softly as his fingers skimmed under her jacket sleeve and up the skin of her inner arm to brush her elbow. “Hmm,” she replied absently as an involuntary shiver went down her spine.
“That certainly seems like a human response to me,” Bill said as he moved closer to her perch on the desk, his thighs bumping against her legs. He continued to run his thumb back and forth over the crook of her elbow, and Laura tried desperately to remember all of the reasons that this was probably a bad idea, but all she could think of was the fact that for the first time since her recovery she was reacting to a touch that was actually supposed to make her feel this way.
“Hmm, you’re right, very human” she said as she leaned into his touch, “but maybe we should run a few more tests, just to be safe?”
“That sounds like a very academically sound idea, Madame President.” Bill said as he moved his hand from her jacket to her hips, and suddenly she found herself fully seated on the desk.
She knew there was a perfect opportunity there for a ‘Secretary of Education’ joke, but she’d had enough of the ‘Hot for Teacher’ game - along with a fair amount of others - with Adar to last her a lifetime. For now she really wanted him to stop talking and touch her.
“You were saying something earlier about that kiss when I gave you your Admiral’s wings not being out of pity? About how the fact that I now have hybrid blood in my veins isn’t a turn off…”
“Why yes, I believe I was.” Bill moved forward even further and she parted her legs to accommodate him. Placing his hands flat on the desk on either side of her, he leaned in and said, “Now you may have to remind me, it’s been a while since I’ve done something like this…”
Oh frak it!, Laura thought, flirting was all well and good, but if he wasn’t going to kiss her she’d do it herself damn it. Grabbing the back of his neck with one hand and wrapping a leg around his thigh, Laura pulled him closer and kissed him fiercely.
It was certainly nothing like the tentative kiss they shared when she was practically on her deathbed - and she was glad. This kiss was passionate, almost harsh, all tongues and clashing teeth - and it felt good. It made her feel alive with heightened sensations, but unlike all the other times since her cure these new reactions felt right, felt like her.
She felt his hands grab her waist and pull her towards the edge of the desk and took that as her cue to run her hands up his chest and begin attacking the buttons on his uniform. She’d just managed to undo the third button when he tore his mouth from hers and began kissing his way down her neck.
He trailed a series of open-mouthed kisses across her collarbone and she couldn’t help letting out a low keening moan that only spurred him on more. She felt him harden against her thigh and had to grasp onto his arms for support as he practically tore her jacket off so that his hands could reach the silk blouse underneath.
“Careful,” she breathed as he tossed the jacket onto one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Don’t worry about it,” he murmured between kisses placed below her ear, “I’ll buy you a new one next time I’m at the shopping mall.”
“Yeah, right.” she huffed as she finally finished unbuttoning his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders to reveal the military tanks below. “Just don’t rip my hose or else we’ll be in real trouble, I don’t think they’re manufacturing any more of those in the fleet these days.”
“You look better without them anyway,” he said as he lowered a hand to slide over her hose, up the inside of her thigh, “I don’t see any point in covering up such fabulous legs.”
“Yeah,” Laura said, inhaling sharply as his hand underneath her skirt skimmed over her inner thigh before sliding around her hip and tugging at her hose, “Well until you make the rules about what does or doesn’t count as politically appropriate attire I’d like to keep all of my clothing in tact, thank you.”
“Hmm” Bill said as he leaned in to steal another quick kiss while pulling down her hose and coaxing her to raise her hips so he could slide them out from under her, taking her shoes off with them. Breaking the kiss and tossing her hose in the direction of one of the leather airline chairs - Gods she hoped she could find those in the morning, the last thing she needed was for Billy to stumble across them when he came back to the office - he began to slowly unfasten the buttons on her blouse and said, “Well I do believe somebody made me an Admiral recently, and if the Admiral doesn’t have the power to change Presidential dress codes, then I don’t know who does.”
“How about the President?” She quipped in response with a raised eyebrow as she ran her hands under his tank tops and yanked them over his head. “After all if we’re talking about who has the most power in the fleet…”
She trailed off as she noticed the scar on his chest. It wasn’t that she didn’t know it was there or that she’d expected it to look any less severe, she’d simply gotten caught up in their banter - and in how amazing it felt to have someone else touch her again, that she’d forgotten what was really at stake here.
Slowly, almost unconsciously, Laura brought her hand up and gently ran it across the scar that transected his torso. She began to wonder if this was such a good idea. Yes she’d been willing to dismiss their positions in the fleet, to overlook the impropriety of it to enjoy this moment - these sensations - with him, but what if something like that were to happen again? What if she were somehow the cause of it, or if some other side effect of her injection caused her to be seriously injured and he was too busy worrying about her to look after the fleet?
Okay, maybe that was unfair and rather egocentric of her, but what if the reverse was true? What if sleeping with him caused her to care too much and forget her professional boundaries?
“Laura.” Bill said gently as he brought his hand up to wrap around her fingers that had stilled over his scar, “You’re thinking too much. I can see it from here.”
Placing her hand on his chest and holding it there, he used his other hand to gently tilt up her chin so that she was forced to look at him and continued, “We all have scars, Laura, we’ve all experienced things that have changed us - whether they’re visible on the surface of our body, mixed in our blood, or hidden somewhere deeper - it doesn’t mean they’re a bad thing. It just shows that we’re human, that unlike the cylons we can still change, adapt, all the while remaining the same, human person.”
“Bill, I…” Laura began, still marveling at how much the man could read her like an open book at times, “I just don’t know…” she said as she started to pull her hand out from beneath his, but he held fast.
“Nothing we do here tonight is going to make either one of us any less capable as leaders or any more vulnerable, you know that right?” Sighing, Laura looked into strikingly blue eyes and knew that she couldn’t disagree with him. She wanted this so much…would it really be that wrong to allow herself the comfort of this for one night? It was after all a very human response to give into these impulses.
With that thought in mind, she reached for the partly undone buttons of her blouse to finish the job herself while Bill stared on with a gratifyingly hungry look in his eyes. When she’d finished with the last button, he couldn’t stay still any longer and he brought his hands to her sides to skim the smooth skin of her torso underneath the open edges of her blouse.
The movement caused her to let out a high pitch squeak followed closely by a moan as his hands reached her bra-covered breasts and he paused to gauge her reaction. “Sorry,” she said as she bit her bottom lip, revealing a bit of embarrassment, “That’s a new reaction, I’ve never done that before.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Bill said as he ran a finger along cup of her bra causing a layer of goosebumps to break out across her skin, “Consider it an adventure, we’ll discover you’re new reactions together.”
He flicked his thumb across a nipple he could see straining through the fabric of her thin bra and her hips to involuntarily rolled against his at the edge of the desk. He then lowered his face to murmur in her ear, “I very much like the sound of that…discovering new reactions could take quite a long time, and you never know when new side effects are going to crop up. I may be needed again at any time.”
He punctuated his sentence with a short thrust of his hips and she whimpered at the delicious feeling that was pooling in her core in response to his words in tandem with his hips. She ran her hands up his back and pulled him in to frantically kiss him again as his hands slid around her sides to fully push off her blouse and reach for the clasp of her bra.
In a few practiced movements - if anyone had ever been looking for proof that he’d been a viper jock in his youth they’d have it - he had her bra unhooked, pushed it off her arms, and was leaning over her, pressing her to lie back against the desk. His hands came up to cup her breasts and mouth trailed down to plant kisses in the valley between them as his thumbs expertly toyed with her nipples, drawing out little hums and moans from her vocal chords.
When he moved his mouth to kiss up the slope of her breast and gently tug the peak between his teeth, it took all her self-control not to tear open his fly, shove up her skirt, and frak him then and there. But she’d had enough experience frakking on the Presidential desk. Even from the other side of the situation, the allure of that power no longer intrigued her - plus she had a stapler digging into her shoulder and for all she knew one of her aides could return to deliver some forgotten file at any minute.
She gasped as his fingers found their way back under her skirt and shoved her underwear aside to rub along the already very wet folds waiting there. He dragged his mouth across her chest to give attention to her other breast and it took all her will power to bring her hands up to grab hold of his wrist under her skirt and push against his shoulder giving them some distance and halting his actions.
He looked momentarily confused and concerned, but she quickly moved a hand to cup his cheek and said huskily, “This is wonderful Bill, but all I want right now is to move to a location where I can get you out of those pants and we can find a surface with better leverage that doesn’t dig into my back. So what do you say we move this to my cot?”
His expression morphed from confusion back to lust and he was just reaching for her as she slid to his side and hopped of the desk. Slowly stepping forward and exaggerating the sway of her hips, Laura reached behind her for the zipper of her skirt and then looked over her shoulder and said, “Last one to the cot without clothes on gets to be the one to tell Colonel Tigh we’re involved.”
She’d just stepped out of her skirt and underwear, and was getting ready to sit on the cot, when she was surprised by a strong pair of hands grabbing her hips and flipping her to lie beneath one very naked Bill Adama on her cot. Giggling at his sudden appearance, and then letting her laugh dissolve into a moan as she felt him naked and hard against her thigh, Laura bent one leg to rub it along his side and asked, “Now how did you get here so fast?”
“Years of military training,” he replied in a gravely voice as he ran a hand up the leg against his side and slowly rocked his hips into hers, drawing out another moan. “Gods I love that sound.” Bill said as he leant down to kiss her slowly and sensually, bringing his hands back to toy with her breasts.
“Bill,” Laura said sharply as she tore her lips from his, “We’ve waited too damn long to do this, and these heightened reactions from the hybrid blood in me are not making it easy for me to wait.”
She reached down to firmly stroke him and said, “We can do slow and steady another time,” she was through even trying to deny that this would happen again, “for now will you please just frak…”
The rest of her statement was cut off by a deep moan as he reached between them and positioned himself at her entrance, pushing his way into her. She was so wet, and the sensations from the hybrid blood made her feel like a teenager again. This was all so new, and overwhelming, and wonderful.
“Ahh Bill!” She exclaimed sharply as he began to thrust in earnest. She wrapped her legs around his back and cursed the small size of her cot as she met him thrust for thrust…what she wouldn’t give for her queen size bed on Caprica. Mmm, the things they could have done in that bed. She was jolted out of her thoughts about Caprica as he reached down to rub her clit with his thumb and she clawed at his shoulders to pull him closer.
Gods this felt so good. How on earth had she survived since the attacks without this - especially these last few weeks? This was exactly what she’d needed…it was a miracle she hadn’t verbally attacked anyone or fired one of her aides.
Their continued thrusts were bringing her closer and closer to the edge. She could feel his movements start to become erratic and they both knew he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. Continuing her rub circles on her clit, he leaned down to whisper her in ear, “Gods Laura do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do this? How many meetings I’ve sat through spending so much energy trying not to stare at your legs or down your blouse that I’ve completely lost track of the topic? How much I’ve wanted to pin you to the leather couch in my quarters and frak you until you can’t walk straight?”
She could feel the energy in her abdomen coiling increasingly tighter as he whispered to her, until finally it was too much, and she arched her head back against the pillow as she came with a sharp cry. Another thrust or two and he followed immediately after her, collapsing on top of her with a short cry of her name.
She lay underneath him enjoying the comfortably sated and relaxed feeling in her limbs. It was one she hadn’t experienced in a long time, and she was certain that it had never been quite like this. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be experiencing some sort of drug-induced comatose state, and she wasn’t sure she could move just now even if she’d wanted to.
After a few more moments, Bill stirred into a conscious enough state to shift his weight from her body and flip them so that she was resting on top of his chest. “Mmm” Laura mumbled as she buried her head against his chest and pressed her lips to the scar sitting under her cheek, “Is this okay? I’m not hurting you?”
He let out a short bark of laughter and said, “I think it’s a little late to be asking that question Laura. I’m fairly certain that Cottle wouldn’t want either one of us engaging in strenuous activities so soon after being injured, but what can you do? I was off hiking around Kobol to find you a few days after my surgery, and you were back to being President mere hours after yours. I suppose neither one of us is the ideal patient. But if you’re concerned about Cottle’s opinion, then go ahead, be my guest, ask him about it yourself.”
She smacked him lightly on the chest and said with a yawn, “I don’t think I need to sign myself up for that particular lecture, thanks.” Lifting his arm to slowly stroke her hair Bill said innocently, “I suppose I was the last one to the rack…does that mean you’d like me to inform Saul?”
He shifted his legs and he made a movement as if to get up from the cot, “The comm unit isn’t that far away, and it’s still pretty early, I doubt he’d be asleep yet.” “You know perfectly well I was joking,” Laura said wryly as she pushed him back down to lie flat and used her leg to readjust him to the center of the cot, “besides, I think we at least ought to wait until we’ve been together longer than a one-night stand before we bring children into this.”
“I’m sorry, did you just call Saul Tigh a child?” “Well I highly doubt his reaction to this will be any more mature than any of the students I’ve taught over the years.” Smiling when he didn’t argue the point, Laura reached down over the side of the cot and pulled up a discarded blanket to cover their now rapidly cooling bodies.
“And is that what this was?” Bill asked softly after a while. “Hmm?” she responded sleepily, the stress of the day combined with their physical exertion finally catching up with her, “A one-night stand? Is that what we’re calling this?”
“I don’t know Bill,” she sighed as she played with the hair on his chest and looked at the cut, which had thankfully remained closed, on her palm, “I really have no clue about much of anything these days…I tend to take things as they come and try not to screw up too much.”
“Okay…” he said thoughtfully, and she could tell he was getting ready to distance himself and deal with her rejection, “What I do know is this,” she said as she absently ran her fingers along the red line of her cut, “I have no real idea what I’m doing or if I’m doing any of it correctly, but I know we work well as a team and recently it seems a little easier to get things done and to feel like myself when I’m around you. I don’t know what that means, but I suggest we take it from there.”
Knowing when to argue with the President and when to let her be, Bill smiled and continued to run his fingers through her hair as he pulled her closer to him with his free arm, “That sounds like a very good idea, Laura. And just so you know…I’m pretty new to this whole ‘Admiral’ thing, and I often just take things as they come as well. But let’s not tell the fleet that, we wouldn’t want them to know that their leaders are only humans who don’t really have a master plan as to what they’re doing.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.” Laura said with a little laugh as she snuggled closer to him, “Humans who don’t really have a master plan…I rather like the sound of that.”
“Yeah, well get used to it,” Bill said sleepily, “because you’re human. That’s all you are, and now you’re going to have to live with that fact for a very long time. Thanks to me.”
“Trying to take all the credit for that one, huh?” Laura asked with a yawn, “Mmhmm,” Bill said as his eyelids struggled to stay open, “and I’ll take all the credit for those new heightened bodily responses as well.” “Of course you will.” Laura said as she patted his chest and slowly drifted off to sleep with a smile.
And that was exactly how Billy Keikeya found them the next morning…with Laura draped across Bill’s chest covered in nothing but an unconscious smile and a blanket. Quietly stepping back and pulling the curtain shut behind him Billy stepped into the Presidential office with a smile.
Today was going to be a better day than he’d had in weeks. Now he just had to figure out how he was going to call Galactica back and tell Colonel Tigh that there was no emergency, and that the Admiral was no longer missing, without telling him anything else.
Title: Erythrocytes and Daydreams
Summary: Mid-Season 2, Laura ponders the implications of her 'cure'.
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: MA
Word Count: 9,648
A/N: This is simultaneously my first attempt at writing A/R and at writing anything MA, so let me know your thoughts, and if you see something I could do to improve either one of those things I'd love to hear it!
So, when I asked nixmom what, if anything, she'd like to see in my first attempt at an A/R fic she said a kiss and I figured I'd write a cute and short little story about them...this is what I ended up with instead. I hope you enjoy...and maybe I'll try and write something a bit sweeter and more in my wheelhouse using this pairing sometime soon :)
Erythrocytes and Daydreams
The cool, recycled air aboard the Colonial One caused Laura Roslin to shiver as it circulated around the cabin that served as her office. Once the Office of the President of the Twelve Colonies had been a grand room in the ostentatious government headquarters of Caprica City. The room had been filled with plush rugs, expensive leather chairs, and antique writing tables and desks…all carrying the seal of the Presidential Office. And all baring witness to some of Adar’s less-than-presidential actions - her part in which she’d rather forget.
Now the Office of the President consisted of some old chairs, a couch, and one rickety desk sitting in the interior of what used to be a cabin on a passenger transport vessel. Yet despite all of that, Laura would almost say she liked this office better. It was cold in space, the constantly recycling air aboard her ship certainly didn’t help that issue, and it could feel isolating only ever seeing darkness outside her office windows, but all the same - Laura felt more at peace in this office than she ever had in the President’s Office on Caprica.
Here she felt like she was doing something useful, like whatever she was working on had a purpose that would directly help the people she served - a feeling she didn’t often experience as Secretary of Education and part-time mistress.
Even on it’s busiest, most stressful day with people storming in and out of the flimsy blue curtains and demanding her attention, Laura still preferred her space on Colonial One to any government building she’d been in on Caprica. Feeling busy and full of purpose in this little office beat sitting around networking and dealing with bureaucracy in the nicest of Caprican mansions.
The problem was, that she wasn’t currently busy. For the first time in what felt like ages, Laura Roslin wasn’t swamped with paperwork or meetings. Maybe she was more efficient now that she wasn’t spending half her energy fighting a terminal illness, or maybe Billy was lying to her and intentionally keeping her schedule light these first few weeks back as work after her ‘cure’. Whatever the reason the President had finished her evening paperwork early, and consequently she found herself sitting at her desk and longing for the fountain she used to walk to on her breaks in Caprica City. What she wouldn’t give to dip her toes in that refreshing water, tune out all of her surroundings, and just feel a spring breeze on her face.
She wasn’t sure if they’d all just spent too long in space, if having a new lease on life had made her long for the simple pleasures, or if this was some weird and unanticipated side effect of her ‘cure’, but for whatever reason Laura couldn’t stop thinking about the things she’d left behind on Caprica.
At night she dreamt of the plays she missed seeing in the theater district, the old lovers she’d left, and the walks she would never again take through the beautiful paths of Riverside Park. During the day she longed for her lingerie and heel collections, good dark chocolate and red wine, and any other impractical luxury she could think of.
Laura knew it was pointless to wish for such frivolous things, they wouldn’t do the people of the fleet any good, and they would never be available again anyway. The only practical thing to do was to forget about the indulgences of her old life on Caprica and focus on making a new life for the surviving members of the human race - just like every person in this fleet had to do.
And usually Laura was pretty good at it. She was a practical woman, a President who deeply cared about her people, and not one to spend time lamenting unalterable circumstances. Every now and then, though, in moments like this one, when there was no urgent work to be done and nobody around to count on her reliable Presidential image, Laura found her thoughts drifting to the old comforts of home.
She thought of beaches, of favorite books left behind on her shelves, and of cool breezes flowing through her hair while jogging through the city. Her thoughts were interrupted as another current of circulating air caused her to shiver and reach for the suit jacket on the back of her leather chair. As she slid her arms through the sleeves of the jacket and flicked her hair out from under the collar, Laura thought about how her internal temperature had been so erratic since her recovery.
It was something she didn’t like to think about these days - all of the little changes that she’d noticed in her body in the last few weeks - and avoiding such thoughts was admittedly part of the reason she allowed herself indulge in reminiscences of their home worlds during her free time.
Yet even these deliberate distractions from her daily life weren’t enough to keep reality away forever. Whenever she had free time something would inevitably disrupt her thoughts - like a burst of unusual shivers - and she’d be abruptly reminded of just how different and unfamiliar her body now was to her.
She hated suddenly not knowing how her body was going to respond anymore. She was a grown woman, damn it, she’d taken years to learn how to feel completely comfortable in her own skin and now that was all being taken away from her! Just yesterday she’d been in a meeting with the Quorum and an aide had reached down to hand her a file and accidentally brushed the inside of her elbow with the back of his hand.
It was the sort of thing she normally would barely have noticed, but now after her recovery, even through the layers of her jacket and blouse, she’d felt a tingle shoot straight down her spine and had to use all of her false, political calm to keep from blushing in front of the delegates.
She’d never had that sort of immediate visceral reaction to someone touching her elbow before - maybe the back of her neck - but never her elbow! It felt like she couldn’t trust her body anymore, like she’d be constantly waiting for it to betray again in public.
And who knew if all of the discoveries she’d come across would be as benign as the inability to regulate her body temperature or finding some newly sensitive pleasurable areas on her skin? What if she stopped being able to sleep, or if her judgment was somehow impaired without her realizing it - how would that affect the fleet?
How would she even know something was different? If she couldn’t trust her body anymore, who was to say that her mind was any different? She simply had no way of knowing how far-reaching the changes caused by her cure would turn out to be.
Taking a deep breath, Laura leaned her head back against her chair and tried to calm herself and reign in her rampant thoughts. Working herself into some sort of a panic wouldn’t do anyone any good. She just needed to take this one day at time - that’s what they said in all of those support groups, wasn’t it? - take it one day at a time and try to respond logically to the situation rather than react out of fear.
It certainly sounded like the best plan she had available. Resolved to move on from her concerns about circumstances she couldn’t change, Laura sat forward and tugged on her suit jacket to straighten it out - as if appearing more collected and in control would somehow make it true.
She reached forward to grab the stack of finished paperwork on her desk and move it to the outgoing shelf of her plastic filing system. She had just grabbed the stack when the bottom of her knee brushed against the support of her desk and her leg gave a reflexive kick, causing her to startle and cut her hand on the sharp edge of the paper.
Damn it! Add overly sensitive reflexes to the list of things her body couldn’t be trusted to respond to properly anymore.
Now that the surprise of her unanticipated reflex had worn off, Laura was starting to feel the sharp sting in her hand, and looking down she saw that a thin line of blood was beginning to form on her palm. She reached for a drawer to find some tissues or a cloth to stop the bleeding, but stopped just short of opening it.
What a funny thing blood was, she thought as she sat frozen in place, staring at her palm. Such a simple substance - some plasma, red blood cells, platelets - yet somehow it had so much importance. She watched quietly as one small drop of blood pooled at the end of her cut and began to trickle its way down towards her wrist.
They all depended on blood to survive…loose too much of it and there was no coming back - she’d seen more proof of that than she’d ever cared to in the time since the attacks on the colonies. So much blood - littering the halls of Galactica, coating Captain Apollo’s arms, drenching the ground on New Caprica - yet just the addition of a little blood was somehow enough to save a life.
Transfusion. It sounded like such an innocent word. She’d heard it plenty of times on the medical dramas that used to exist back on Caprica, but this hadn’t been some ordinary transfusion using liters of blood to save a life. It had been just one syringe full - or so she’d been told.
Such a small amount. What amazing or horrifying properties did that hybrid blood contain, that such a small amount could make that big of a difference? One syringe. She watched transfixed as blood trickled down past her wrist and along her forearm.
She knew the cut wasn’t that deep and that she just ought to grab something from the drawer beside her and apply some pressure to stop the bleeding, but a part of her had to wonder…
What would happen if she just kept bleeding? She reached up with her uninjured hand to squeeze her palm and watched as more of the glossy red substance flowed across her arm. What would happen if she lost a syringe’s worth of blood? Would the changed go away? Could the blood infect someone else, give them these same unknown side effects?
Laura knew she was being foolish, that whatever the blood had done to her, it had certainly made its way through her circulatory system by now - and sitting here dripping blood onto her desk wasn’t going to help matters. But a part of her was still enthralled…her blood looked normal - it had that same bright red appearance she’d seen during her days as a teacher in all the children with scraped knees and boys with bloody noses from fistfights - but it wasn’t normal. At least not anymore. Laura continued to look at her cut intently, as if somehow analyzing the liquid substance might reveal the answers to her questions.
And that was exactly how Admiral William Adama found her sitting when he walked into her office a few moments later for their evening meeting on the condition of the fleet. “Sorry I’m a little late Laura,” Bill began as he strode through the curtain towards her desk, “It’s been a hectic day of Galactica. Two of my best pilots are at each others’ throats - have been since the whole Scar cylon raider incident and…”
He stopped short at the sight of her, sitting calmly at her desk with a cut hand and a small circle of blood pooling on her desk. “Frak Laura! What happened?! Are you alright?” Bill asked as he sprang into action, rushing to grab a towel from the nearby bathroom.
“Bill,” Laura responded, trying to reassure him now that he’d startled her out of her daze. “Bill I’m fine, honestly.” Her words seemed to go straight past him as he completely ignored her and knelt in front of her chair to grab her arm and hastily put pressure on her cut.
He was relived to see that most of the blood on her arm wiped right off and that the actual cut was just a small thing on her hand. It was then that he started to process her words again, “Really Bill, this is unnecessary. I just accidentally cut myself when reaching for some files. It’s a paper cut, that’s all.”
“It’s a pretty deep paper cut,” Bill grumbled to himself as he felt his heart rate return to normal now that he’d ascertained that there was no serious damage. He lifted the towel to assess the severity of her cut, and when he was satisfied that a bit of pressure would be sufficient to stop the bleeding, he placed the towel back against her palm and closed Laura’s fingers around it.
Standing up, and wincing as he felt how sore his knees were from standing in the CIC all day, Bill said, “Keep holding the towel like that, keeping pressure with your fist, and the bleeding should stop relatively soon.”
“Thank you Admiral” Laura said with a polite smile as Bill took his seat across from her desk. She sat forward, ready to put the entire incident behind them and move on with the meeting.
“Now if you’ll look at the agenda Billy drew up for us yesterday you’ll see that…” “That was a fair amount of blood for a paper cut.” Bill interjected before she had the chance to completely shift the direction of their conversation.
“Yes, well like you said, it was a deep paper cut.” Laura replied as she reached for a pen and notepad with her free hand. She was disconcerted with her reaction to the situation to begin with, and now that Bill was there she simply wanted to get on with their meeting.
Recently their meetings had begun to feel more companionable, less like duties and more like a break from the usual stresses of her days. If she was honest with herself she’d noticed the change as soon as they got back from Kobol - they were a better team, more united, and something more like friends. And she’d certainly noticed it in the weeks leading up to her ‘death’, when he had come to visit her often and one evening had even decided to kiss her - not that she minded in the least.
But they hadn’t really spoken about it since - and things had felt initially tense after her recovery when it had become clear that he was the one who ordered her injection. Ultimately, however, she couldn’t bring herself to blame him no matter how angry she was - after all, she might have done the exact same thing if it meant saving the only other person in the universe who understood what the burden of leading this fleet really meant.
And since she couldn’t reasonably stay mad at him, their meetings had fallen back into the same companionable pattern they’d taken on during the short time between their return from Kobol and the arrival of that wretched Helena Cain.
All of that was behind them now, and Laura was still alive, so all she wanted to do was move on with their review of fleet conditions and then maybe have some time at the end of the meeting to talk Bill into lending her another book. He was convinced they were gifts, but if that were the case then he’d be out of books to give her long before they reached Earth. She’d simply have to find some way to sneak them back onto his shelves when he wasn’t looking.
The problem was, Bill didn’t seem to want to cooperate with her view of how the evening ought to progress. “I mean it Laura. Even a deep paper cut, is still a paper cut and that’s an unnecessary amount of blood on the table.”
That was probably going to stain the table, Laura realized as Bill continued talking, “Do you need me to call Cottle? Do you still have some sort of blood thinner in your system that we don’t know about from the time you were staying in sickbay?”
She scoffed internally…he couldn’t even say the word ‘dying’. “Well if I did I certainly wouldn’t know about it now would I?” Laura snapped at him and then immediately regretted it. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bill asked as he leaned forward in his chair and Laura sighed.
“Nothing.” She said as she raised he uninjured hand to take off her glasses and set them on the table, “It doesn’t mean anything Bill. I’m just tired after a long day and I know you are to, can we please just get on with the meeting?”
“Alright Laura,” he said skeptically as he glanced down at the files he’d brought with him, “but it’s not like you have that many options of people in the fleet that you can talk to.”
She opened her mouth to say something - possibly contradict him, or maybe yell at him - but before she had the chance to speak he rushed on, “I get it if you don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m certainly not going to tell you that you have to share your feelings if you don’t want to - I may have turned into a touchy-feely wuss after I got shot, like I told you on Kobol,” she couldn’t help but smile a bit at that memory, “but I don’t think I’m that much of one. I’m simply saying that I know you’ve been through a lot recently and if you want to talk to someone I’m here.”
She looked at him levelly for a moment as she considered her options and tried to access his sincerity level, “I suppose your other option is that I could always call Cottle for you and the two of you could talk since he’s bound by doctor/patient privilege, but I have to warn you, I’m guessing his skills as a shrink are on par with his skills as a bedside nursemaid.”
That startled a short laugh out of her and then Laura was horrified to feel tears welling up in her eyes on the heels of her laughter. Gods this had been a long day for not having that heavy a Presidential workload.
Looking away from him and blinking her eyes to will back her tears and get herself under control, Laura shook her head and turned back to Bill, “I’m sorry. I usually have better control of my emotions than this, but it seems that they - like everything else in body - refuse to behave ever since I came back from sickbay.”
“That’s alright” Bill responded with a gruff nod, not wanting her to think that he was one of those people who would ever think less of her as a leader because of her emotions, “But it’s not alright!” Laura responded angrily, “It’s not alright at all!”
Seeing how upset she was, and having no idea how he should properly respond as the Admiral or as a close friend, Bill just sat patiently.
Quirking a small conciliatory and slightly self-deprecating smile in his direction, Laura said, “It’s not you I’m mad at per se…I’m just upset that I can’t seem to control any of my physical reactions anymore and I don’t even know why that’s happening.”
Bill considered responding by asking her what she meant, but he decided that if she wanted him to know what she was feeling, she’d tell him. “When you say you can’t control any of your physical reactions…” Bill began suggestively as he crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair with a smirk.
“Bill!” Laura exclaimed with a combination of outrage and humor, and he could swear she would’ve swatted him on the shoulder if he’d been within arm’s length, “I’m just saying,” he continued playfully, “We could still go looking for one of those blond cylon models for you, maybe get a couple of upgrades…”
He trailed off as he saw the mirth that had momentarily been on her face replaced by some darker emotion. “Laura?”
“I guess I’m not that different from the blonde model anymore am I? I got my upgrade and now I have to live with whatever that means.” She looked down at her hand clenching the towel and sighed sadly.
“What?! Laura, that’s ridiculous, you’re nothing like the cylon models…” “How do you know Bill?” Laura interrupted him harshly before he could continue placating her, “I mean really, how do you know?”
She was glaring at him with such intensity that Bill could tell it wasn’t a rhetorical question, “You’re kind, you’re willing to risk your well being to help others, and you care about this fleet more than any other person I’ve met,”
“Yes, but those are your impressions Bill.” He looked across the desk at her in confusion, “What would you have told me about your impressions of Sharon Valerii if I’d asked you in the first couple months after the attacks? I’ll tell you what…you’d have told me she was a kind, brave, and caring person and you’d have sworn that she couldn’t be like any of the cylons we’d met.”
“You’re not her Laura, you’re not a sleeper agent.” Bill said as he stood from his chair and rounded the desk to stand in front of her, “You got your blood tested - we both did - and there’s no way you’re a cylon.”
“Yes exactly Bill,” Laura replied as she stood, bringing her within inches of his body, “we got my blood tested and it said I wasn’t a cylon. My blood.” she unclenched her hand and pulled off the towel to look at the dark red line across her palm.
She glanced up at his face only to find him staring down at her palm as well, and then said softly, “What do you think it would tell us now?”
“Oh Laura,” he responded sadly as he pulled her into a hug, “It would tell us the same thing it did before…that you’re perfectly human, with all the faults and fears that come along with it.”
“I just don’t know anymore Bill” Laura whispered dejectedly. Allowing herself a brief moment of comfort to enjoy the warm feeling his hug was giving her she leaned her face against his shoulder and continued, “Sometimes I wonder if this blood has changed me more than I know, if one day they’re just going to be able to flip a switch and I’ll make a bad decision, give some order that will lead to the destruction of the entire fleet.”
“You’d never do that.” Bill said with renewed conviction in his voice as he squeezed her tightly and then gently pushed her shoulders back until he could look her in the eyes, “Even if you were somehow connected to the cylons, you’d never do that. You’d die before letting anything happen to this fleet, we both know that.”
“That’s true,” Laura said exasperatedly as she stepped out of his reach and turned to look out her office window where she could just make out the nearby bulk of Galactica amidst the darkness of space.
She took a few steps away from him and clasped her hands together before gently running her thumb over the now clotted cut, “but what if I don’t have a choice? What if it’s not me that makes that decision? That’s what you’re not getting - what if saving my life has compromised me as the leader of this fleet?”
The unspoken ‘what if it was the wrong decision?’ hung in the air between them as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
Refusing to let her distance herself or try and turn his decision to save her life into something wrong - selfish maybe, but never wrong - Bill stepped into the space she’d created between them and said, “You’re far too stubborn to let that happen.”
She looked like she was about to protest, but he cut her off before she could try, “You survived an apocalypse, quickly adapted to the pressures of the most powerful civilian job left in the galaxy - despite what anyone else had to say about it - incited a mutiny - twice if we count both Lee and Kara’s separate incidents of disregarding orders - and now you’ve beat an incurable disease. Trust me,” he couldn’t keep the wry smile from his face as he went on, “I’ve seen far too many examples of you bull-headed stubbornness to believe that something as little as cylon mind control could convince you to do something you don’t want to do.”
The slightly cocky smile on his face made him look years younger and despite herself, Laura felt the corner of her mouth quirk up in a small smile at his words. Regaining a more serious demeanor, Bill reached out to draw her injured hand towards him and ran his fingers along the cut, “You honestly think something as little as a bit of blood is going to change who you are?”
Shivering unconsciously at the sensation of his fingers skimming delicately along her skin, Laura sighed, “It cured my supposedly terminal cancer…if it can do that, who’s to say that ‘little bit of blood’ can’t change a whole lot of other things as well?”
“That’s just your body, Laura” Bill said as he reached out with his free hand to tuck strand of hair behind her ear and skim his fingers along her cheek before his hand returned to rest by his side, “You are so much more than that. Whatever changes the hybrid blood injection may have caused in your body, it’s not going to change who you are as a person. You’re simply too strong-willed to allow that to happen. And I refuse to regret or apologize for allowing that injection to save your life.”
“I’m not asking you to apologize Bill,” she said with a shake of her head as she gently extracted her hand from his grasp and leaned back to sit against her desk. “Honestly, I know that you’re probably right, don’t let that go to your head,” she said as she looked up at him with a little smirk before sighing again and glancing back out the window to collect her thoughts.
“I know it’s unlikely that a blood injection could affect my thoughts, and I know that I just have to get used to these changes I’m experiencing, because there’s nothing that I can do about them now and the alternative certainly isn’t any better.”
“No, it’s not.” Bill agreed quietly, and with so much sincerity, that Laura had to smile softly at his caring. It reminded her of a time not too long ago in this very office when he told her to have hope and she’d felt an awfully lot like she was saying goodbye.
“It’s not.” Laura agreed again with an inclining tilt of her head, “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish things were different. That I don’t wish I could have complete certainty that I won’t do something to endanger this fleet.”
“Have we ever really had complete certainty of that?” Bill asked frankly…and she was suddenly grateful that he’d pushed her to confide in him this evening. He really was the one person in the fleet who could understand the burden of leadership that she carried. The only one who could’ve given her the exact response she needed to hear.
He was right, of course, she thought as she nodded slowly at him while processing this information and crossing her ankles to get more comfortable leaning against the desk - there really was no way, now or before, that either one of them could guarantee they wouldn’t someday make a mistake that would cost the fleet horrifically.
“Alright,” Laura smiled at him in relief as she truly began to accept the implications of what he was saying, “So nothing’s changed on that front.”
She’d never imagined that talking to him about these concerns could lead to anything other than a sympathetic ear and the equivalent of a ‘suck it up, and I promise to keep an eye on you and put the wellbeing of the fleet before your own if any of your actions start to seem off”, but instead he’d found a way to actually make her feel better.
She felt the loosening of muscles in her chest she hadn’t realized had been tense since her recovery - he’d relieved her of a concern that had been worrying her more than she’d been willing to admit to herself. Now if only the rest of the changes the hybrid blood had caused in her could be so easily taken care of.
Laura could feel her pulse throbbing in her cut - something she never would’ve noticed before her extended stay in Galactica’s sick bay - and she resigned herself to the fact that some things simply would never be the same again. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad…if she could just figure out what all the differences the blood had caused would turn out to be, she wouldn’t have to be caught by anymore ill-timed surprise reactions.
Noticing her shift in thoughts from relief to something he couldn’t quite identify yet as she stopped talking for a few minutes, Bill stood back with his arms crossed to give her time to process everything she was thinking about and to wait until she realized that he was still in the room.
When she looked up and saw him standing there quietly with an expectant look on his face, Laura blushed at being caught letting her thoughts wander and then answered the unspoken question, “I was just thinking,” “That much seemed clear.” Bill added wryly as he waited for her to continue.
“I know you said earlier that - how did you phrase it? That I’m so much more than my body?” She quirked and eyebrow at him as she repeated his early sentiment, “That’s not quite how I meant it.” Bill responded gruffly, “Taken out of context it sounds different. Sure there are plenty of people in the fleet who would agree it’s one of your best qualities…”
“Okay, okay,” Laura conceded as before Bill could tell her anything more about how many people in the fleet preferred having a female President for her legs than for educational/political background and practical way of thinking, “All I was going to say is that you’re right that there are more important things - especially in my role as President - but sometimes it would still be nice to feel like I could trust my body again. Like it’s not about to do something new and not well understood every time I take a step, or sneeze, or do anything else. It would be wonderful to just feel normal again, to feel completely human and not wonder how many of my responses are similar to those of a cylon, to just feel like me again.”
While she’d started her explanation calmly, by the end she was gesticulating expansively and letting her frustration come through in her speech as she sat perched against the desk. Sensing that there was more to this story than he’d initially realized, Adama sank into her desk chair and looked up at her, “What do you mean, feel like you again?”
“Everything just feels so out of control,” Laura said as she set her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned forward to talk with him, “and out of control is not a good thing for a President to be, I mean just yesterday…” she trailed off with a slight blush as she realized what she’d been about to say.
“Just yesterday…?” Bill prompted from his spot in her leather chair, “Never mind,” Laura said as she leaned over to retrieve a file folder from the other side of her desk, “it’s not that important. Why don’t we start going over the figures we were supposed to be discussing in our meeting? I’ve already taken up enough of our time with my concerns…”
“Laura,” Bill said as he rose from the chair to stand in front of her and took the folder from her hands, “we’ve read the fleet reports, we both know this meeting was superfluous - we already know everything that needed to be discussed and I think we’ve established a good enough partnership that we can each take care of our respective tasks without needing to discuss them. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a scheduled meeting time when we can take time to talk about the responsibilities of leading this fleet. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing here, so don’t say you’re wasting our meeting time, just tell me what you were going to say.”
Looking away from him and over towards her white board in the corner, Laura explained, “Yesterday during our Quorum meeting and aide was handing me a file folder…”
“And…” Bill said with raised eyebrows, “And he brushed my elbow when he was handing me a file and I reacted…unusually.”
“Ok Laura you’re going to have to work with me here, I’m trying to understand what you’re going through, but I’m not exactly the world’s best express-your-feelings guy. You reacted…”
“Unusually” Laura repeated slowly with a fair amount of emphasis. “Oh. Oh!” Bill said when he finally got it and quickly placed the file folder he’d taken from her back on the desk beside her.
She almost laughed - she could swear that if he weren’t a dignified Admiral he’d be blushing right now. “It wasn’t the file folder that did it Bill” she said with a smirk and raised an eyebrow towards the hastily discarded file.
“No. No, of course not” Bill said as he straightened his uniform jacket and then looked anywhere around the office but at her.
Laura refused to let herself feel hurt by his immediate desire to distance himself from anything remotely sexual involving her. She sat up straighter, smoothed out her skirt, and sought to end the conversation, “So anyway you asked, and that’s your answer. I’m just annoyed at my current inability to predict how I’ll react to things, constantly needing to try and control myself, and wondering if that’s why you…”
She could’ve kicked herself for letting her mouth get ahead of her brain, but after taking a deep breath and looking straight at him, Laura decided to continue, “And wondering if maybe that’s why you’ve never mentioned that kiss again. If somehow you subconsciously understand that the cylon blood changed me and now you’re not interested anymore.”
Bill stared at her for a few long moments, and Laura was starting to seriously regret divulging that information, when he suddenly burst out laughing and she wondered if there was a ship anywhere in the fleet distant enough from Galactica for her to spend the rest of her life hiding out in.
“Seriously, Laura?” He asked once his guffaws had subsided, “That’s what you’re worried about? Not that I kissed you out of pity, or that I kissed you as a close friend and colleague saying goodbye, but that I might think differently because of the blood in your veins? Blood that I gave the order to inject, might I add, and that saved your life.”
“Oh,” Laura said quietly as she straightened the pile of folders next to her, “I guess I never really thought about that, of course you were just being nice to me when I was dying, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said anything.”
She tried to stand up from the desk and move further away, but found her retreat blocked by the Admiral’s arm along her side pinning her to the desk. “I never said those were my reasons, Laura,” he said in a voice that suddenly seemed an entire octave lower, “I merely meant that those were the reasons I expected you to have for not bringing it up before now.”
Swallowing and glancing up at his face - when had he gotten so close? - Laura replied in a near whisper, “No, I can’t say that I really thought about either of those things. I guess I was too preoccupied worrying about the changes caused by the hybrid blood and how to react to them.”
“Oh you mean like this?” He asked softly as his fingers skimmed under her jacket sleeve and up the skin of her inner arm to brush her elbow. “Hmm,” she replied absently as an involuntary shiver went down her spine.
“That certainly seems like a human response to me,” Bill said as he moved closer to her perch on the desk, his thighs bumping against her legs. He continued to run his thumb back and forth over the crook of her elbow, and Laura tried desperately to remember all of the reasons that this was probably a bad idea, but all she could think of was the fact that for the first time since her recovery she was reacting to a touch that was actually supposed to make her feel this way.
“Hmm, you’re right, very human” she said as she leaned into his touch, “but maybe we should run a few more tests, just to be safe?”
“That sounds like a very academically sound idea, Madame President.” Bill said as he moved his hand from her jacket to her hips, and suddenly she found herself fully seated on the desk.
She knew there was a perfect opportunity there for a ‘Secretary of Education’ joke, but she’d had enough of the ‘Hot for Teacher’ game - along with a fair amount of others - with Adar to last her a lifetime. For now she really wanted him to stop talking and touch her.
“You were saying something earlier about that kiss when I gave you your Admiral’s wings not being out of pity? About how the fact that I now have hybrid blood in my veins isn’t a turn off…”
“Why yes, I believe I was.” Bill moved forward even further and she parted her legs to accommodate him. Placing his hands flat on the desk on either side of her, he leaned in and said, “Now you may have to remind me, it’s been a while since I’ve done something like this…”
Oh frak it!, Laura thought, flirting was all well and good, but if he wasn’t going to kiss her she’d do it herself damn it. Grabbing the back of his neck with one hand and wrapping a leg around his thigh, Laura pulled him closer and kissed him fiercely.
It was certainly nothing like the tentative kiss they shared when she was practically on her deathbed - and she was glad. This kiss was passionate, almost harsh, all tongues and clashing teeth - and it felt good. It made her feel alive with heightened sensations, but unlike all the other times since her cure these new reactions felt right, felt like her.
She felt his hands grab her waist and pull her towards the edge of the desk and took that as her cue to run her hands up his chest and begin attacking the buttons on his uniform. She’d just managed to undo the third button when he tore his mouth from hers and began kissing his way down her neck.
He trailed a series of open-mouthed kisses across her collarbone and she couldn’t help letting out a low keening moan that only spurred him on more. She felt him harden against her thigh and had to grasp onto his arms for support as he practically tore her jacket off so that his hands could reach the silk blouse underneath.
“Careful,” she breathed as he tossed the jacket onto one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Don’t worry about it,” he murmured between kisses placed below her ear, “I’ll buy you a new one next time I’m at the shopping mall.”
“Yeah, right.” she huffed as she finally finished unbuttoning his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders to reveal the military tanks below. “Just don’t rip my hose or else we’ll be in real trouble, I don’t think they’re manufacturing any more of those in the fleet these days.”
“You look better without them anyway,” he said as he lowered a hand to slide over her hose, up the inside of her thigh, “I don’t see any point in covering up such fabulous legs.”
“Yeah,” Laura said, inhaling sharply as his hand underneath her skirt skimmed over her inner thigh before sliding around her hip and tugging at her hose, “Well until you make the rules about what does or doesn’t count as politically appropriate attire I’d like to keep all of my clothing in tact, thank you.”
“Hmm” Bill said as he leaned in to steal another quick kiss while pulling down her hose and coaxing her to raise her hips so he could slide them out from under her, taking her shoes off with them. Breaking the kiss and tossing her hose in the direction of one of the leather airline chairs - Gods she hoped she could find those in the morning, the last thing she needed was for Billy to stumble across them when he came back to the office - he began to slowly unfasten the buttons on her blouse and said, “Well I do believe somebody made me an Admiral recently, and if the Admiral doesn’t have the power to change Presidential dress codes, then I don’t know who does.”
“How about the President?” She quipped in response with a raised eyebrow as she ran her hands under his tank tops and yanked them over his head. “After all if we’re talking about who has the most power in the fleet…”
She trailed off as she noticed the scar on his chest. It wasn’t that she didn’t know it was there or that she’d expected it to look any less severe, she’d simply gotten caught up in their banter - and in how amazing it felt to have someone else touch her again, that she’d forgotten what was really at stake here.
Slowly, almost unconsciously, Laura brought her hand up and gently ran it across the scar that transected his torso. She began to wonder if this was such a good idea. Yes she’d been willing to dismiss their positions in the fleet, to overlook the impropriety of it to enjoy this moment - these sensations - with him, but what if something like that were to happen again? What if she were somehow the cause of it, or if some other side effect of her injection caused her to be seriously injured and he was too busy worrying about her to look after the fleet?
Okay, maybe that was unfair and rather egocentric of her, but what if the reverse was true? What if sleeping with him caused her to care too much and forget her professional boundaries?
“Laura.” Bill said gently as he brought his hand up to wrap around her fingers that had stilled over his scar, “You’re thinking too much. I can see it from here.”
Placing her hand on his chest and holding it there, he used his other hand to gently tilt up her chin so that she was forced to look at him and continued, “We all have scars, Laura, we’ve all experienced things that have changed us - whether they’re visible on the surface of our body, mixed in our blood, or hidden somewhere deeper - it doesn’t mean they’re a bad thing. It just shows that we’re human, that unlike the cylons we can still change, adapt, all the while remaining the same, human person.”
“Bill, I…” Laura began, still marveling at how much the man could read her like an open book at times, “I just don’t know…” she said as she started to pull her hand out from beneath his, but he held fast.
“Nothing we do here tonight is going to make either one of us any less capable as leaders or any more vulnerable, you know that right?” Sighing, Laura looked into strikingly blue eyes and knew that she couldn’t disagree with him. She wanted this so much…would it really be that wrong to allow herself the comfort of this for one night? It was after all a very human response to give into these impulses.
With that thought in mind, she reached for the partly undone buttons of her blouse to finish the job herself while Bill stared on with a gratifyingly hungry look in his eyes. When she’d finished with the last button, he couldn’t stay still any longer and he brought his hands to her sides to skim the smooth skin of her torso underneath the open edges of her blouse.
The movement caused her to let out a high pitch squeak followed closely by a moan as his hands reached her bra-covered breasts and he paused to gauge her reaction. “Sorry,” she said as she bit her bottom lip, revealing a bit of embarrassment, “That’s a new reaction, I’ve never done that before.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Bill said as he ran a finger along cup of her bra causing a layer of goosebumps to break out across her skin, “Consider it an adventure, we’ll discover you’re new reactions together.”
He flicked his thumb across a nipple he could see straining through the fabric of her thin bra and her hips to involuntarily rolled against his at the edge of the desk. He then lowered his face to murmur in her ear, “I very much like the sound of that…discovering new reactions could take quite a long time, and you never know when new side effects are going to crop up. I may be needed again at any time.”
He punctuated his sentence with a short thrust of his hips and she whimpered at the delicious feeling that was pooling in her core in response to his words in tandem with his hips. She ran her hands up his back and pulled him in to frantically kiss him again as his hands slid around her sides to fully push off her blouse and reach for the clasp of her bra.
In a few practiced movements - if anyone had ever been looking for proof that he’d been a viper jock in his youth they’d have it - he had her bra unhooked, pushed it off her arms, and was leaning over her, pressing her to lie back against the desk. His hands came up to cup her breasts and mouth trailed down to plant kisses in the valley between them as his thumbs expertly toyed with her nipples, drawing out little hums and moans from her vocal chords.
When he moved his mouth to kiss up the slope of her breast and gently tug the peak between his teeth, it took all her self-control not to tear open his fly, shove up her skirt, and frak him then and there. But she’d had enough experience frakking on the Presidential desk. Even from the other side of the situation, the allure of that power no longer intrigued her - plus she had a stapler digging into her shoulder and for all she knew one of her aides could return to deliver some forgotten file at any minute.
She gasped as his fingers found their way back under her skirt and shoved her underwear aside to rub along the already very wet folds waiting there. He dragged his mouth across her chest to give attention to her other breast and it took all her will power to bring her hands up to grab hold of his wrist under her skirt and push against his shoulder giving them some distance and halting his actions.
He looked momentarily confused and concerned, but she quickly moved a hand to cup his cheek and said huskily, “This is wonderful Bill, but all I want right now is to move to a location where I can get you out of those pants and we can find a surface with better leverage that doesn’t dig into my back. So what do you say we move this to my cot?”
His expression morphed from confusion back to lust and he was just reaching for her as she slid to his side and hopped of the desk. Slowly stepping forward and exaggerating the sway of her hips, Laura reached behind her for the zipper of her skirt and then looked over her shoulder and said, “Last one to the cot without clothes on gets to be the one to tell Colonel Tigh we’re involved.”
She’d just stepped out of her skirt and underwear, and was getting ready to sit on the cot, when she was surprised by a strong pair of hands grabbing her hips and flipping her to lie beneath one very naked Bill Adama on her cot. Giggling at his sudden appearance, and then letting her laugh dissolve into a moan as she felt him naked and hard against her thigh, Laura bent one leg to rub it along his side and asked, “Now how did you get here so fast?”
“Years of military training,” he replied in a gravely voice as he ran a hand up the leg against his side and slowly rocked his hips into hers, drawing out another moan. “Gods I love that sound.” Bill said as he leant down to kiss her slowly and sensually, bringing his hands back to toy with her breasts.
“Bill,” Laura said sharply as she tore her lips from his, “We’ve waited too damn long to do this, and these heightened reactions from the hybrid blood in me are not making it easy for me to wait.”
She reached down to firmly stroke him and said, “We can do slow and steady another time,” she was through even trying to deny that this would happen again, “for now will you please just frak…”
The rest of her statement was cut off by a deep moan as he reached between them and positioned himself at her entrance, pushing his way into her. She was so wet, and the sensations from the hybrid blood made her feel like a teenager again. This was all so new, and overwhelming, and wonderful.
“Ahh Bill!” She exclaimed sharply as he began to thrust in earnest. She wrapped her legs around his back and cursed the small size of her cot as she met him thrust for thrust…what she wouldn’t give for her queen size bed on Caprica. Mmm, the things they could have done in that bed. She was jolted out of her thoughts about Caprica as he reached down to rub her clit with his thumb and she clawed at his shoulders to pull him closer.
Gods this felt so good. How on earth had she survived since the attacks without this - especially these last few weeks? This was exactly what she’d needed…it was a miracle she hadn’t verbally attacked anyone or fired one of her aides.
Their continued thrusts were bringing her closer and closer to the edge. She could feel his movements start to become erratic and they both knew he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. Continuing her rub circles on her clit, he leaned down to whisper her in ear, “Gods Laura do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do this? How many meetings I’ve sat through spending so much energy trying not to stare at your legs or down your blouse that I’ve completely lost track of the topic? How much I’ve wanted to pin you to the leather couch in my quarters and frak you until you can’t walk straight?”
She could feel the energy in her abdomen coiling increasingly tighter as he whispered to her, until finally it was too much, and she arched her head back against the pillow as she came with a sharp cry. Another thrust or two and he followed immediately after her, collapsing on top of her with a short cry of her name.
She lay underneath him enjoying the comfortably sated and relaxed feeling in her limbs. It was one she hadn’t experienced in a long time, and she was certain that it had never been quite like this. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be experiencing some sort of drug-induced comatose state, and she wasn’t sure she could move just now even if she’d wanted to.
After a few more moments, Bill stirred into a conscious enough state to shift his weight from her body and flip them so that she was resting on top of his chest. “Mmm” Laura mumbled as she buried her head against his chest and pressed her lips to the scar sitting under her cheek, “Is this okay? I’m not hurting you?”
He let out a short bark of laughter and said, “I think it’s a little late to be asking that question Laura. I’m fairly certain that Cottle wouldn’t want either one of us engaging in strenuous activities so soon after being injured, but what can you do? I was off hiking around Kobol to find you a few days after my surgery, and you were back to being President mere hours after yours. I suppose neither one of us is the ideal patient. But if you’re concerned about Cottle’s opinion, then go ahead, be my guest, ask him about it yourself.”
She smacked him lightly on the chest and said with a yawn, “I don’t think I need to sign myself up for that particular lecture, thanks.” Lifting his arm to slowly stroke her hair Bill said innocently, “I suppose I was the last one to the rack…does that mean you’d like me to inform Saul?”
He shifted his legs and he made a movement as if to get up from the cot, “The comm unit isn’t that far away, and it’s still pretty early, I doubt he’d be asleep yet.” “You know perfectly well I was joking,” Laura said wryly as she pushed him back down to lie flat and used her leg to readjust him to the center of the cot, “besides, I think we at least ought to wait until we’ve been together longer than a one-night stand before we bring children into this.”
“I’m sorry, did you just call Saul Tigh a child?” “Well I highly doubt his reaction to this will be any more mature than any of the students I’ve taught over the years.” Smiling when he didn’t argue the point, Laura reached down over the side of the cot and pulled up a discarded blanket to cover their now rapidly cooling bodies.
“And is that what this was?” Bill asked softly after a while. “Hmm?” she responded sleepily, the stress of the day combined with their physical exertion finally catching up with her, “A one-night stand? Is that what we’re calling this?”
“I don’t know Bill,” she sighed as she played with the hair on his chest and looked at the cut, which had thankfully remained closed, on her palm, “I really have no clue about much of anything these days…I tend to take things as they come and try not to screw up too much.”
“Okay…” he said thoughtfully, and she could tell he was getting ready to distance himself and deal with her rejection, “What I do know is this,” she said as she absently ran her fingers along the red line of her cut, “I have no real idea what I’m doing or if I’m doing any of it correctly, but I know we work well as a team and recently it seems a little easier to get things done and to feel like myself when I’m around you. I don’t know what that means, but I suggest we take it from there.”
Knowing when to argue with the President and when to let her be, Bill smiled and continued to run his fingers through her hair as he pulled her closer to him with his free arm, “That sounds like a very good idea, Laura. And just so you know…I’m pretty new to this whole ‘Admiral’ thing, and I often just take things as they come as well. But let’s not tell the fleet that, we wouldn’t want them to know that their leaders are only humans who don’t really have a master plan as to what they’re doing.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.” Laura said with a little laugh as she snuggled closer to him, “Humans who don’t really have a master plan…I rather like the sound of that.”
“Yeah, well get used to it,” Bill said sleepily, “because you’re human. That’s all you are, and now you’re going to have to live with that fact for a very long time. Thanks to me.”
“Trying to take all the credit for that one, huh?” Laura asked with a yawn, “Mmhmm,” Bill said as his eyelids struggled to stay open, “and I’ll take all the credit for those new heightened bodily responses as well.” “Of course you will.” Laura said as she patted his chest and slowly drifted off to sleep with a smile.
And that was exactly how Billy Keikeya found them the next morning…with Laura draped across Bill’s chest covered in nothing but an unconscious smile and a blanket. Quietly stepping back and pulling the curtain shut behind him Billy stepped into the Presidential office with a smile.
Today was going to be a better day than he’d had in weeks. Now he just had to figure out how he was going to call Galactica back and tell Colonel Tigh that there was no emergency, and that the Admiral was no longer missing, without telling him anything else.