FIC: Bedtime Story
Summary: While the dust slowly drifts downward, Laura and Bill search in the rubble for their relationship.
Rating: T+
Word Count: 1,800
Genre: Romance, Drama, Angst
Series: Love in a Time of War: 17
Setting: Six of One
A/N: I decided to do something different for the Season Four stories in this series. There’re so many wonderful stories already written for this arc, heck, this episode. So I’m going to do some experimenting in style and voice, as you’ll see if you waded through this and start to read.
And as much as I adore the idea that Bill reads Love and Bullets to Laura in The Ties that Bind to make up for their fight, unfortunately, that moment’s three more weeks away. So I had to come up with something different, but the same. Sort of. Thanks, lacklusterfic, for your suggestions!
~*~
The hatch clanks shut; there's no escape from the cell. The toilet makes a good throne for a damned drunk fool, king of this prison. You sink down, thundering head coming to rest in your hands. Listen to your heart beat too fast and your stomach gurgle discontentedly.
When your head falls from your palm and you jerk awake, an indeterminate amount of time has passed. Laura needs to ready for bed. You're afraid to open the hatch and find her standing outside the door, arms crossed. Afraid to see her curled on the couch, crying. Afraid to discover her gone, the drawers hanging open, the closet door ajar. Hurriedly, you yank off your uniform and drag on our robe. Brushing your teeth makes your gums bleed.
But when you peek around the hatch, fighting hard to focus, she's gone. Her glasses and pen lie by her folders on your desk. You could go look for her, a red-eyed Admiral in his robe wavering through the corridors, but you'll spare her that indignity. Instead, you shuffle off to the rack.
Laura faces the bulkhead, her shoulder hunched up high under the bedding. You assess the battlefield from the rack to the couch. Your marriage lasted six years past its expiration date because you knew when to take the couch. You flip the blanket back just enough to slide under the covers.
She's wearing her red negligee. She must have braved one of the public heads to clean up and then changed here, giving you the time to shift from sulking to maudlin self-loathing on your icy throne.
Her practical blue pajamas are on the back of the head's hatch but the negligee was hanging in the closet. It had migrated over from Colonial One as a special surprise for her lover one night. The spaghetti straps sliding down from her round shoulders--no protruding bones yet--the deep blush silk revealing her white breasts, then the rosy nipples...you wore nothing but your grin.
Your shaking thumb traces from the sharp sickle shape of her shoulder blade to the hard bump of her clavicle. Her body has been lush fields, soft and warm; you've slid through the valleys and over the hills, cooing like a fat pigeon in flight. Now her elbow will become a pebble in your shoe, her hipbones will dent your palms as you ride in the cradle of her thinning thighs, between the legs of an old woman.
You're the Old Man; she's not supposed to be the old woman; she'll never get old.
"I want my own quarters."
"Laura--"
"You're right; we're in each other's head too much. I won't stay there all the time--" She's suggesting a politician's deal. You hate it when she does that instead of giving you a lover's lies. "I can't storm off in a good snit; neither can you. You had to hide in the head like a little boy."
You press your damp cheek to her bare back.
"I'm going to need privacy as my treatment progresses."
"I want to help you; that's what I'm supposed to do."
"No. You're the Admiral of the Fleet. We can't have both of us at half strength."
"You can't stop me."
"You can come over and tell me a bedtime story, Bill."
She's trying to humor you. Sweeping her hair back, you lean in to kiss her neck. A hank snares and pulls loose on your callused fingers as though they were barbed wire. You don't know what to do with the strands; you ball the hair, hiding it in your palm.
She shifts back to be closer, not because she wants contact, but she needs your warmth. But you have to slide away. You don't want her to feel your half-erection and mistake it for inappropriate desire. It's the hard-on of a teenage boy, brought on by frustration and fear.
Instead, your hands run up and down her body, circulating her blood.
"How did I survive until Baltar's cure? Because you were there. I wouldn't have made it without you. Just be here for me again."
What is being here? You are here, and she's packing her bags. The old man became a sullen teenager, and now you're a toddler, rolling on the rack, beating your heels and screaming because you won't get your way.
You pull her close, erection be damned. She tugs your arm around her waist, keeping her anchored. You bury your face in her dulling hair--once it shone, once it bounced, driving you crazy when you should have been focusing on the food supply reports--and breath in its faint soap smell that can barely cover the Life Station's scent of iodine.
"Tell me a story, Bill," she asks.
Your tongue is swollen and your eyes full of sand but you try anyway. "Once upon a time..."
Her measured deep breathing means you're too late.
~*~
The guards in front carry weapons; the guards behind carry your bags. And every crewmember you pass looks worried and afraid. Mom is leaving Dad; what will happen to us kids?
You never wanted children. You accepted the sulky boy because once he hadn't been sulky with you, and like any teacher, you could see his potential. By the time you realized what that meant, it was too late-- you were stuck with him.
The girl's place in your life was even more insidious; she's always present, even when she's not sitting at the table for dinner. Only today, she's gone from the brig, from the ready room, from the duty locker, and no one will say where.
Then thousands more children clustered around your metaphorical skirts sometime between returning from Kobol and landing on New Caprica. You became like the old woman in the fable who kept her numerous children in a peetka nut to protect them from the sly raven. He dropped the nut, breaking it open, and the children ran screaming away. You never cared for that fable and always turned the page to read about the clever fox and the slow-thinking badger.
You meet the worried gaze of a passing young woman in a deckhand smock and stop yourself from saying, Mom just needs some space, honey. But she won't understand--if her commander can't get it, why would this girl?
"Here. This one," you tell your guards and the convoy grinds to a halt. One Marine opens the hatch; another marches in with your bags.
"Just set those down."
The young men stand outside the hatchway. One chews his lip. They're worried too.
"You can go."
"No, Ma'am."
Of course not. You close the hatch on their frightened faces.
The clock hands keep moving forward. You’ve unpacked; it didn’t take long. Push the desk around until you’re satisfied with its location. Then rearrange all your belongings again--not that there’s many choices for storage. The minute hand drops to the bottom of the face.
Laying a hand on the bulkhead, you feel the Old Lady’s pulse. You’ve heard the crew call you that behind your back, but Galactica is the real Old Lady. As long as her heart beats strong, everything’s going to be fine. Leaning against the steel, you can even hear the rain.
With a creak, the hour hand moves to the next number. On the tiny head’s counter, you shift your shampoo to the right of your lotion, so all the bottles are lined up smallest to largest.
Suddenly, you’re embarrassed. You’ve been wasting this time when there’s something you should be doing. But just you get your idols set up and the candles lit, there’s a knock at the door.
“Come in,” doesn’t sound loud enough, but he hears. He enters, giving you a shrug of his shoulders meant as a greeting.
“Huh,” he mutters, looking around, then he starts to sniff along the perimeter like an old dog. You wouldn’t be surprised if he peed in a corner.
He spots the flickering candles and idols. The conflict on his face asks if this was what you had wanted and couldn’t do in his quarters.
“Took you long enough to come by.”
“Problem with the damn water transfer system again.”
“Something I should deal with?”
“Nope. All taken care of.” He’s at the desk, turning the lamp on and off, checking to see if it’s strong enough. He knows you need a bright light.
“Got enough storage?”
“Yes.”
“You can leave stuff at my place if you don’t have enough room.” He peers in the tiny closet and shakes his head.
“I’m fine. I can take things back to Colonial One too.”
“Okay.” He stops in the middle of the room, fists on his hips like a boxer in the ring. “So you don’t need anything from me?”
You want to tell him that you’re not leaving him, you’re leaving us because you can’t keep up your end of the bargain. He wanted you on diloxin, and you’re doing it, but it’s taking away you. Vanity, yes, but you love your hair, you love your round hips and easily blushing skin, and you love what those parts do to him. What will be left for him when that’s all gone? Bullshit, he loves you just for your mind.
But for now, you can’t stand to see his wary eyes and downturned mouth. You tug him towards your new rack. “Tell me a bedtime story. I promise I won’t fall asleep this time. Tell me the story of the Fox and the Badger.”
Crawling up into the rack, toeing off your slippers, you lay back, the princess waiting for her kiss.
He pulls up a chair, its metal legs screeching loudly on the bare floor. “Frak this,” he grumbles, but then sits and plays nice. He recites the parable from memory, about the clever red fox who steals the badger’s treasure with her superior wits, doing it so well the badger feels he’s come out ahead.
You fight sleep, but make it to the end. “That was nice.”
He gets up. “Better go. Let you sleep.”
“Kiss me goodbye.”
“Not goodnight?”
“Bill.”
He leans over, stroking your cheek until you part your lips. Unconscious reflect; his touch opens you. His kiss deepens, becoming your kiss, your tongue meeting his. His fingers meander down your neck until his thumb settles into your throatlatch as though requesting entry into your blouse.
Your words break the kiss. “Goodbye, Bill.”
He makes his grumpy noise again, and you take it for goodbye. You roll away and he tucks your blanket up high on your neck, just as he would for a child. The room dims as he extinguishes the candles, the air becoming thick with wax-scented smoke. You’re nearly gone, but you still hear the hatch clank shut; the end of the story.
The end
Rating: T+
Word Count: 1,800
Genre: Romance, Drama, Angst
Series: Love in a Time of War: 17
Setting: Six of One
A/N: I decided to do something different for the Season Four stories in this series. There’re so many wonderful stories already written for this arc, heck, this episode. So I’m going to do some experimenting in style and voice, as you’ll see if you waded through this and start to read.
And as much as I adore the idea that Bill reads Love and Bullets to Laura in The Ties that Bind to make up for their fight, unfortunately, that moment’s three more weeks away. So I had to come up with something different, but the same. Sort of. Thanks, lacklusterfic, for your suggestions!
~*~
The hatch clanks shut; there's no escape from the cell. The toilet makes a good throne for a damned drunk fool, king of this prison. You sink down, thundering head coming to rest in your hands. Listen to your heart beat too fast and your stomach gurgle discontentedly.
When your head falls from your palm and you jerk awake, an indeterminate amount of time has passed. Laura needs to ready for bed. You're afraid to open the hatch and find her standing outside the door, arms crossed. Afraid to see her curled on the couch, crying. Afraid to discover her gone, the drawers hanging open, the closet door ajar. Hurriedly, you yank off your uniform and drag on our robe. Brushing your teeth makes your gums bleed.
But when you peek around the hatch, fighting hard to focus, she's gone. Her glasses and pen lie by her folders on your desk. You could go look for her, a red-eyed Admiral in his robe wavering through the corridors, but you'll spare her that indignity. Instead, you shuffle off to the rack.
Laura faces the bulkhead, her shoulder hunched up high under the bedding. You assess the battlefield from the rack to the couch. Your marriage lasted six years past its expiration date because you knew when to take the couch. You flip the blanket back just enough to slide under the covers.
She's wearing her red negligee. She must have braved one of the public heads to clean up and then changed here, giving you the time to shift from sulking to maudlin self-loathing on your icy throne.
Her practical blue pajamas are on the back of the head's hatch but the negligee was hanging in the closet. It had migrated over from Colonial One as a special surprise for her lover one night. The spaghetti straps sliding down from her round shoulders--no protruding bones yet--the deep blush silk revealing her white breasts, then the rosy nipples...you wore nothing but your grin.
Your shaking thumb traces from the sharp sickle shape of her shoulder blade to the hard bump of her clavicle. Her body has been lush fields, soft and warm; you've slid through the valleys and over the hills, cooing like a fat pigeon in flight. Now her elbow will become a pebble in your shoe, her hipbones will dent your palms as you ride in the cradle of her thinning thighs, between the legs of an old woman.
You're the Old Man; she's not supposed to be the old woman; she'll never get old.
"I want my own quarters."
"Laura--"
"You're right; we're in each other's head too much. I won't stay there all the time--" She's suggesting a politician's deal. You hate it when she does that instead of giving you a lover's lies. "I can't storm off in a good snit; neither can you. You had to hide in the head like a little boy."
You press your damp cheek to her bare back.
"I'm going to need privacy as my treatment progresses."
"I want to help you; that's what I'm supposed to do."
"No. You're the Admiral of the Fleet. We can't have both of us at half strength."
"You can't stop me."
"You can come over and tell me a bedtime story, Bill."
She's trying to humor you. Sweeping her hair back, you lean in to kiss her neck. A hank snares and pulls loose on your callused fingers as though they were barbed wire. You don't know what to do with the strands; you ball the hair, hiding it in your palm.
She shifts back to be closer, not because she wants contact, but she needs your warmth. But you have to slide away. You don't want her to feel your half-erection and mistake it for inappropriate desire. It's the hard-on of a teenage boy, brought on by frustration and fear.
Instead, your hands run up and down her body, circulating her blood.
"How did I survive until Baltar's cure? Because you were there. I wouldn't have made it without you. Just be here for me again."
What is being here? You are here, and she's packing her bags. The old man became a sullen teenager, and now you're a toddler, rolling on the rack, beating your heels and screaming because you won't get your way.
You pull her close, erection be damned. She tugs your arm around her waist, keeping her anchored. You bury your face in her dulling hair--once it shone, once it bounced, driving you crazy when you should have been focusing on the food supply reports--and breath in its faint soap smell that can barely cover the Life Station's scent of iodine.
"Tell me a story, Bill," she asks.
Your tongue is swollen and your eyes full of sand but you try anyway. "Once upon a time..."
Her measured deep breathing means you're too late.
~*~
The guards in front carry weapons; the guards behind carry your bags. And every crewmember you pass looks worried and afraid. Mom is leaving Dad; what will happen to us kids?
You never wanted children. You accepted the sulky boy because once he hadn't been sulky with you, and like any teacher, you could see his potential. By the time you realized what that meant, it was too late-- you were stuck with him.
The girl's place in your life was even more insidious; she's always present, even when she's not sitting at the table for dinner. Only today, she's gone from the brig, from the ready room, from the duty locker, and no one will say where.
Then thousands more children clustered around your metaphorical skirts sometime between returning from Kobol and landing on New Caprica. You became like the old woman in the fable who kept her numerous children in a peetka nut to protect them from the sly raven. He dropped the nut, breaking it open, and the children ran screaming away. You never cared for that fable and always turned the page to read about the clever fox and the slow-thinking badger.
You meet the worried gaze of a passing young woman in a deckhand smock and stop yourself from saying, Mom just needs some space, honey. But she won't understand--if her commander can't get it, why would this girl?
"Here. This one," you tell your guards and the convoy grinds to a halt. One Marine opens the hatch; another marches in with your bags.
"Just set those down."
The young men stand outside the hatchway. One chews his lip. They're worried too.
"You can go."
"No, Ma'am."
Of course not. You close the hatch on their frightened faces.
The clock hands keep moving forward. You’ve unpacked; it didn’t take long. Push the desk around until you’re satisfied with its location. Then rearrange all your belongings again--not that there’s many choices for storage. The minute hand drops to the bottom of the face.
Laying a hand on the bulkhead, you feel the Old Lady’s pulse. You’ve heard the crew call you that behind your back, but Galactica is the real Old Lady. As long as her heart beats strong, everything’s going to be fine. Leaning against the steel, you can even hear the rain.
With a creak, the hour hand moves to the next number. On the tiny head’s counter, you shift your shampoo to the right of your lotion, so all the bottles are lined up smallest to largest.
Suddenly, you’re embarrassed. You’ve been wasting this time when there’s something you should be doing. But just you get your idols set up and the candles lit, there’s a knock at the door.
“Come in,” doesn’t sound loud enough, but he hears. He enters, giving you a shrug of his shoulders meant as a greeting.
“Huh,” he mutters, looking around, then he starts to sniff along the perimeter like an old dog. You wouldn’t be surprised if he peed in a corner.
He spots the flickering candles and idols. The conflict on his face asks if this was what you had wanted and couldn’t do in his quarters.
“Took you long enough to come by.”
“Problem with the damn water transfer system again.”
“Something I should deal with?”
“Nope. All taken care of.” He’s at the desk, turning the lamp on and off, checking to see if it’s strong enough. He knows you need a bright light.
“Got enough storage?”
“Yes.”
“You can leave stuff at my place if you don’t have enough room.” He peers in the tiny closet and shakes his head.
“I’m fine. I can take things back to Colonial One too.”
“Okay.” He stops in the middle of the room, fists on his hips like a boxer in the ring. “So you don’t need anything from me?”
You want to tell him that you’re not leaving him, you’re leaving us because you can’t keep up your end of the bargain. He wanted you on diloxin, and you’re doing it, but it’s taking away you. Vanity, yes, but you love your hair, you love your round hips and easily blushing skin, and you love what those parts do to him. What will be left for him when that’s all gone? Bullshit, he loves you just for your mind.
But for now, you can’t stand to see his wary eyes and downturned mouth. You tug him towards your new rack. “Tell me a bedtime story. I promise I won’t fall asleep this time. Tell me the story of the Fox and the Badger.”
Crawling up into the rack, toeing off your slippers, you lay back, the princess waiting for her kiss.
He pulls up a chair, its metal legs screeching loudly on the bare floor. “Frak this,” he grumbles, but then sits and plays nice. He recites the parable from memory, about the clever red fox who steals the badger’s treasure with her superior wits, doing it so well the badger feels he’s come out ahead.
You fight sleep, but make it to the end. “That was nice.”
He gets up. “Better go. Let you sleep.”
“Kiss me goodbye.”
“Not goodnight?”
“Bill.”
He leans over, stroking your cheek until you part your lips. Unconscious reflect; his touch opens you. His kiss deepens, becoming your kiss, your tongue meeting his. His fingers meander down your neck until his thumb settles into your throatlatch as though requesting entry into your blouse.
Your words break the kiss. “Goodbye, Bill.”
He makes his grumpy noise again, and you take it for goodbye. You roll away and he tucks your blanket up high on your neck, just as he would for a child. The room dims as he extinguishes the candles, the air becoming thick with wax-scented smoke. You’re nearly gone, but you still hear the hatch clank shut; the end of the story.
The end