Fic: Mirrored Perspective
Title: Mirrored Perspective
Rating: T
Spoilers: through Revelations
Summary: All are pretty much satisfaction-guaranteed. Or so he had thought.
A/N: For averita, who wanted Bill and Laura to deal with the revelation of the four Cylons. Which they do. Barely. My muse was being difficult. I blame the ridiculousness of the still-missing promo.
Mirrored Perspective
He wants her, no question. The color of it’s shaded memory so that he can’t remember a time before-early anger and mistrust become displaced adoration, interactions measured in lengths of sexual tension and frustration and the cubic area of skin each of her outfits had shown at the time.
And then there’s another type of memory entirely: so absurd there’s no frakking way it’s real-fantasy bleeding into more fantasy (and ending with a trip to the shower-or at the very least a damp cloth and the distinct prickle of shame). Still, he keeps them all catalogued and close at hand. Some require props (those frakking boots, that blazed-on-his-retinas red dress, practically needed stunt doubles, his mind put them through so much those long nights of New Caprica); some simple strip-teases; others nothing but him and her and desire, which is never lacking.
All are pretty much satisfaction-guaranteed.
Or so he had thought. It proves to be a stupid assumption.
He wants her. Maybe if he keeps reminding himself of that….
#47: Knight in Shining Flight Suit. He lands his trusty Viper and pulls her out of harm’s way just in time (he always walks with a bit of a swagger-he doesn’t know why). She wants to do something to thank him, decides to let him have his way with her; and he at first declines-because he’s a gentleman-but never takes very much persuasion.
#15: Strategy. How they end up alone in CIC isn’t important-or at least not half as important as the careful deployment of tactics. (Will he take her in the first quadrant or come in from behind? Should they scatter the Vipers or keep a careful formation?)
Flying Dream #11: hard and fast in the back of a Raptor. (#10 is less plausible-mostly because she always falls for the line How’d a nice girl like you end up in an airlock like this?, but the idea that either of them will survive more than a nanosecond out in space also has a little something to do with it.)
#103: Simple Mechanics. Insert Rod A into Slot B. Repeat motion as necessary.
He can’t even frakking manage that.
First order of business after the near-silent journey back from the surface had been to slug back a good portion of the remaining alcohol (either he hadn’t learned his lesson or it had been the wrong one). Second had been to lose the Earth-crusted clothes and frak her until neither of them had to think anymore-so urgent, so necessary, so overdue, that they hadn’t even made it as far as his rack.
Of course, one affected the other. And of course it wasn’t in a particularly desirable way (though he hadn’t had all that much to drink… comparatively).
He had never been much of one for television-there hadn’t been time for it-but still all he can think now is of those frighteningly cryptic commercials: a sad man on one side of the bed, his partner’s back to him far on the other; the introduction of a magic pill, the sudden ability to score perfect pyramid goals, and-among numerous others-the supposedly alarming side effect of an erection lasting more than four hours. The dreaded voiceover never gave much in the way of specifics, but still the implication was perfectly clear: Here is some poor slob. Smooth-talking, capable. He’s got the job, the woman, the life most men only dream about. Yet like one in ten men….
He had thought about this moment so often, so long, had so many different scenarios-the thought that at least one of them wouldn’t pan out had never even occurred to him. (Well… he had managed one. Or two: #52 and #15 in tandem; he-his tongue, his fingers and his thumb-hadn’t failed her completely.)
And yet-here is Bill….
It’s her move now that he’s failed to do so-action yields reaction; that’s always the way of it-and to live up to the stereotype, she’ll either provide false comfort or turn away. She does neither, which shouldn’t surprise him. Easing downward, she presses her bare skin flush against his, her head on his shoulder, turning so her lips can brush the pulse at his throat. “I love you.”
The second time she offers it up to him aloud (fingers had relayed it, searching out his and squeezing as they’d looked out on desolation; arms linking around his torso and face burying into his chest later when she couldn’t take the view anymore). The second time he responds, but not in kind-holding her more tightly, a hand lifting to caress her cheek.
Somehow, it’s worse this way-that she’s content to ease into satiation not long after hoarsely (and surprisedly) admitting that she was still on edge even as her thighs continued to tremble against his cheeks and chin (#26: Insatiability-BillBillBiillllll…). Her heartbeat’s still fluttering, her breath quick as he sits up and lifts her-she’s light, much too light, all delicate skin and bones-and lays her gently back on the couch with a quick kiss that must still taste as she does. Draping a blanket over her, tucking it under her chin, he avoids her hands as she tries to tug him back, her eyes when they almost catch his.
He stumbles none-too-gracefully into his discarded pants-still caked with the dirt and dust of Earth-only deciding at the last instant that not caring whether he catches himself in his zipper probably won’t do much to help the situation. She’s calling out to him, but he’s on a mission-albeit a stupid one-knows that turning back and seeing her disheveled and finally naked on his couch (#17: The Different Uses of Leather) will force him to abort. Tripping over books that he’d thrown off his desk much earlier, those they’d upset while fumbling to and on the couch, he reaches the alcohol, downs the rest, and lurches to the head. The hatch slams against the frame but doesn’t close completely. That is somehow the last straw.
His broken reflection stares back at him from the fragments of the blood-stained mirror-multi-faceted, monstrous: he has too many eyes (still managed not to see what was right in front of him). He doesn’t realize she’s there until her hand slides up his chest, fingertips running along his scar. He jumps at the sudden, intimate contact, relaxes into the softness of her skin and the blanket she’s pulled tight around her.
“Come back.” She says it gently-as she would to a child-must be up on her tiptoes because her chin rests on his shoulder, the weight comforting.
“In a minute.”
“Bill. You didn’t know. No one did.”
“You knew. Tory….” He stops because she tenses at the name. He’s not the only one who’s been hurt by this, the only one who feels betrayed.
“I knew she was frakking Baltar. She was a good assistant… until she wasn’t.” Her words are careful, political, would be almost presidential if he wasn’t bare-chested, she in nothing but a blanket-if they could stop touching each other for more than a few seconds at a time. “She chose her path, Bill. Nothing did it for her.”
“I-We could have lost everything. And for what?”
“Could-not did. It’s not your fault.”
Not yours either.
She caresses his shoulder. “When you’re ready….”
He feels the loss of her when she steps away, no longer touching him, magnified even more when she softly recedes into the main quarters, little more than a sigh and the whoosh of cloth. He waits, breathes, hears her voice again-what it said but wasn’t saying: Bill, you can come out when you’re ready to behave….
He needs her.
She’s traded the blanket for her robe (#55: Disrobing-the slow, tantalizing reveal), is already setting up behind her desk, searching for her usual pen amongst the stacks of papers. His vision feels fuzzy in a way that has nothing to do with (lack of) sex or alcohol, his eyes loath to show definitive edges or clear colors. There’s too much around him so he chooses a single point and concentrates his energy on it, as if bringing that into focus will snap everything else closer to clarity.
Her wrist stretches out from the sleeve of her robe as she reaches for something across the desk (there’s a purpose to it-she’s found the pen, he thinks, but his eyes won’t move to tell him). The bone is too prominent, the skin too pale, the veins too blue (there isn’t a part of her that isn’t beautiful). Her hand is trembling.
“It’s not late,” she points out pragmatically. “I’m surprised we were able to hold off the press this long, and we’ll need a-”
“We need to feed you.”
“Feed me?”
She laughs as she says it, a soft almost nonexistent sound that he feels shiver up from her chest, passing through the hand he suddenly has on her shoulder. It’s an apology, that hand-or could be, for everything, with just the right amount of pressure. Words she’d bat back to him; his touch he’s almost sure she’ll take. He tries it: fingers bearing down lightly, thumb circling.
“You’re too thin.”
“I think at the moment we have bigger problems than my daily calorie intake.”
“Maybe. You’re pretty….” He trails off, searches-there are other words he could bring to light if he wants to make a point, but none will really match the simple truth he’s already said, so he takes a breath, touches down again with more emphasis. “… pretty.”
She cocks her head so he can just see the corner of her mouth as it quirks upward (and if he moves, little more than a few inches, that’s all it’ll take to line it up with his). “You’re pretty drunk.”
“No.” Not really. Or a little, but heightened by exhaustion, need, the way he can still taste her if he runs his tongue over his lips and- “I could have lost you.”
The pen stills above the document she’s poised to sign (he tries not to see how it tremors). “I’m right here.”
She places a hand over the one he still has on her shoulder as the other presses pen to paper, forming the L that dives into an indiscernible Laura, jumps into the flourished R. It’s here he catches her (#23: Deskwork), tugging so she turns towards him. The pen skitters across the paper, ink slashing neatly-printed words and numbers before running off the page.
“Frak….” But she mutters it almost as an afterthought, hasn’t given the paper a second glance.
“Tried to.”
Her eyes are clear, gentle but resolute. “Try again.”
He kisses her, soft and sweet-it seems the only logical thing to do now that he can. Want doesn’t diminish now that he has her, but firmly takes root as it grows, burrowing deeper at one end and blossoming at the other, entangling and entwining to pull them closer together.
A soft sound, the muscles in her arms twitching as they slide around him, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as they separate from his. “Bill. The press conference-”
“Can wait. And the Cylons. They’ve been here all along.”
Saying it is what finally makes it ring true. They’ve fought against the Cylons and with them-separately, and together, and without any obvious lines between them… and here they are. He tightens his arms around her.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She allays his fears even though he hasn’t voiced them, kisses the corner of his mouth and draws back with a smirk. “And I still say you’re drunk.”
“And I still say you’re pretty.” His fingers run down her arm-they don’t need any instruction from his brain to know just what to do-hit something solid, cylindrical, and snag it. “And I’m stealing your pen.”
“I’ll use another.”
“You won’t.” Wouldn’t usually, will just to spite him. He doesn’t give her the chance. (He does give in to sudden, silly impulse-but that is love, isn’t it?). Leaning down, pulling her with him, he scribbles along the line her signature had become: I love you.
She inspects the (not-so-secret) message, lifting her gaze to his as her fingers tickle up his spine to play in his hair. “Should I leave you and the fuel report alone?”
“Larua…” he groans, nuzzling into the crook of her neck, his mouth traipsing up it so she arches, tilting her chin back.
“Shhh,” she laughs breathily, and he loves it, loves her, loves the yelp as he presses pen to skin, rewrites his message there-in ink on her arm; with his fingertips across her chest, slipping under the robe (the pen clatters somewhere, forgotten); with his tongue against hers.
#1: Here and Now, Neverending.
Rating: T
Spoilers: through Revelations
Summary: All are pretty much satisfaction-guaranteed. Or so he had thought.
A/N: For averita, who wanted Bill and Laura to deal with the revelation of the four Cylons. Which they do. Barely. My muse was being difficult. I blame the ridiculousness of the still-missing promo.
Mirrored Perspective
He wants her, no question. The color of it’s shaded memory so that he can’t remember a time before-early anger and mistrust become displaced adoration, interactions measured in lengths of sexual tension and frustration and the cubic area of skin each of her outfits had shown at the time.
And then there’s another type of memory entirely: so absurd there’s no frakking way it’s real-fantasy bleeding into more fantasy (and ending with a trip to the shower-or at the very least a damp cloth and the distinct prickle of shame). Still, he keeps them all catalogued and close at hand. Some require props (those frakking boots, that blazed-on-his-retinas red dress, practically needed stunt doubles, his mind put them through so much those long nights of New Caprica); some simple strip-teases; others nothing but him and her and desire, which is never lacking.
All are pretty much satisfaction-guaranteed.
Or so he had thought. It proves to be a stupid assumption.
He wants her. Maybe if he keeps reminding himself of that….
#47: Knight in Shining Flight Suit. He lands his trusty Viper and pulls her out of harm’s way just in time (he always walks with a bit of a swagger-he doesn’t know why). She wants to do something to thank him, decides to let him have his way with her; and he at first declines-because he’s a gentleman-but never takes very much persuasion.
#15: Strategy. How they end up alone in CIC isn’t important-or at least not half as important as the careful deployment of tactics. (Will he take her in the first quadrant or come in from behind? Should they scatter the Vipers or keep a careful formation?)
Flying Dream #11: hard and fast in the back of a Raptor. (#10 is less plausible-mostly because she always falls for the line How’d a nice girl like you end up in an airlock like this?, but the idea that either of them will survive more than a nanosecond out in space also has a little something to do with it.)
#103: Simple Mechanics. Insert Rod A into Slot B. Repeat motion as necessary.
He can’t even frakking manage that.
First order of business after the near-silent journey back from the surface had been to slug back a good portion of the remaining alcohol (either he hadn’t learned his lesson or it had been the wrong one). Second had been to lose the Earth-crusted clothes and frak her until neither of them had to think anymore-so urgent, so necessary, so overdue, that they hadn’t even made it as far as his rack.
Of course, one affected the other. And of course it wasn’t in a particularly desirable way (though he hadn’t had all that much to drink… comparatively).
He had never been much of one for television-there hadn’t been time for it-but still all he can think now is of those frighteningly cryptic commercials: a sad man on one side of the bed, his partner’s back to him far on the other; the introduction of a magic pill, the sudden ability to score perfect pyramid goals, and-among numerous others-the supposedly alarming side effect of an erection lasting more than four hours. The dreaded voiceover never gave much in the way of specifics, but still the implication was perfectly clear: Here is some poor slob. Smooth-talking, capable. He’s got the job, the woman, the life most men only dream about. Yet like one in ten men….
He had thought about this moment so often, so long, had so many different scenarios-the thought that at least one of them wouldn’t pan out had never even occurred to him. (Well… he had managed one. Or two: #52 and #15 in tandem; he-his tongue, his fingers and his thumb-hadn’t failed her completely.)
And yet-here is Bill….
It’s her move now that he’s failed to do so-action yields reaction; that’s always the way of it-and to live up to the stereotype, she’ll either provide false comfort or turn away. She does neither, which shouldn’t surprise him. Easing downward, she presses her bare skin flush against his, her head on his shoulder, turning so her lips can brush the pulse at his throat. “I love you.”
The second time she offers it up to him aloud (fingers had relayed it, searching out his and squeezing as they’d looked out on desolation; arms linking around his torso and face burying into his chest later when she couldn’t take the view anymore). The second time he responds, but not in kind-holding her more tightly, a hand lifting to caress her cheek.
Somehow, it’s worse this way-that she’s content to ease into satiation not long after hoarsely (and surprisedly) admitting that she was still on edge even as her thighs continued to tremble against his cheeks and chin (#26: Insatiability-BillBillBiillllll…). Her heartbeat’s still fluttering, her breath quick as he sits up and lifts her-she’s light, much too light, all delicate skin and bones-and lays her gently back on the couch with a quick kiss that must still taste as she does. Draping a blanket over her, tucking it under her chin, he avoids her hands as she tries to tug him back, her eyes when they almost catch his.
He stumbles none-too-gracefully into his discarded pants-still caked with the dirt and dust of Earth-only deciding at the last instant that not caring whether he catches himself in his zipper probably won’t do much to help the situation. She’s calling out to him, but he’s on a mission-albeit a stupid one-knows that turning back and seeing her disheveled and finally naked on his couch (#17: The Different Uses of Leather) will force him to abort. Tripping over books that he’d thrown off his desk much earlier, those they’d upset while fumbling to and on the couch, he reaches the alcohol, downs the rest, and lurches to the head. The hatch slams against the frame but doesn’t close completely. That is somehow the last straw.
His broken reflection stares back at him from the fragments of the blood-stained mirror-multi-faceted, monstrous: he has too many eyes (still managed not to see what was right in front of him). He doesn’t realize she’s there until her hand slides up his chest, fingertips running along his scar. He jumps at the sudden, intimate contact, relaxes into the softness of her skin and the blanket she’s pulled tight around her.
“Come back.” She says it gently-as she would to a child-must be up on her tiptoes because her chin rests on his shoulder, the weight comforting.
“In a minute.”
“Bill. You didn’t know. No one did.”
“You knew. Tory….” He stops because she tenses at the name. He’s not the only one who’s been hurt by this, the only one who feels betrayed.
“I knew she was frakking Baltar. She was a good assistant… until she wasn’t.” Her words are careful, political, would be almost presidential if he wasn’t bare-chested, she in nothing but a blanket-if they could stop touching each other for more than a few seconds at a time. “She chose her path, Bill. Nothing did it for her.”
“I-We could have lost everything. And for what?”
“Could-not did. It’s not your fault.”
Not yours either.
She caresses his shoulder. “When you’re ready….”
He feels the loss of her when she steps away, no longer touching him, magnified even more when she softly recedes into the main quarters, little more than a sigh and the whoosh of cloth. He waits, breathes, hears her voice again-what it said but wasn’t saying: Bill, you can come out when you’re ready to behave….
He needs her.
She’s traded the blanket for her robe (#55: Disrobing-the slow, tantalizing reveal), is already setting up behind her desk, searching for her usual pen amongst the stacks of papers. His vision feels fuzzy in a way that has nothing to do with (lack of) sex or alcohol, his eyes loath to show definitive edges or clear colors. There’s too much around him so he chooses a single point and concentrates his energy on it, as if bringing that into focus will snap everything else closer to clarity.
Her wrist stretches out from the sleeve of her robe as she reaches for something across the desk (there’s a purpose to it-she’s found the pen, he thinks, but his eyes won’t move to tell him). The bone is too prominent, the skin too pale, the veins too blue (there isn’t a part of her that isn’t beautiful). Her hand is trembling.
“It’s not late,” she points out pragmatically. “I’m surprised we were able to hold off the press this long, and we’ll need a-”
“We need to feed you.”
“Feed me?”
She laughs as she says it, a soft almost nonexistent sound that he feels shiver up from her chest, passing through the hand he suddenly has on her shoulder. It’s an apology, that hand-or could be, for everything, with just the right amount of pressure. Words she’d bat back to him; his touch he’s almost sure she’ll take. He tries it: fingers bearing down lightly, thumb circling.
“You’re too thin.”
“I think at the moment we have bigger problems than my daily calorie intake.”
“Maybe. You’re pretty….” He trails off, searches-there are other words he could bring to light if he wants to make a point, but none will really match the simple truth he’s already said, so he takes a breath, touches down again with more emphasis. “… pretty.”
She cocks her head so he can just see the corner of her mouth as it quirks upward (and if he moves, little more than a few inches, that’s all it’ll take to line it up with his). “You’re pretty drunk.”
“No.” Not really. Or a little, but heightened by exhaustion, need, the way he can still taste her if he runs his tongue over his lips and- “I could have lost you.”
The pen stills above the document she’s poised to sign (he tries not to see how it tremors). “I’m right here.”
She places a hand over the one he still has on her shoulder as the other presses pen to paper, forming the L that dives into an indiscernible Laura, jumps into the flourished R. It’s here he catches her (#23: Deskwork), tugging so she turns towards him. The pen skitters across the paper, ink slashing neatly-printed words and numbers before running off the page.
“Frak….” But she mutters it almost as an afterthought, hasn’t given the paper a second glance.
“Tried to.”
Her eyes are clear, gentle but resolute. “Try again.”
He kisses her, soft and sweet-it seems the only logical thing to do now that he can. Want doesn’t diminish now that he has her, but firmly takes root as it grows, burrowing deeper at one end and blossoming at the other, entangling and entwining to pull them closer together.
A soft sound, the muscles in her arms twitching as they slide around him, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as they separate from his. “Bill. The press conference-”
“Can wait. And the Cylons. They’ve been here all along.”
Saying it is what finally makes it ring true. They’ve fought against the Cylons and with them-separately, and together, and without any obvious lines between them… and here they are. He tightens his arms around her.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She allays his fears even though he hasn’t voiced them, kisses the corner of his mouth and draws back with a smirk. “And I still say you’re drunk.”
“And I still say you’re pretty.” His fingers run down her arm-they don’t need any instruction from his brain to know just what to do-hit something solid, cylindrical, and snag it. “And I’m stealing your pen.”
“I’ll use another.”
“You won’t.” Wouldn’t usually, will just to spite him. He doesn’t give her the chance. (He does give in to sudden, silly impulse-but that is love, isn’t it?). Leaning down, pulling her with him, he scribbles along the line her signature had become: I love you.
She inspects the (not-so-secret) message, lifting her gaze to his as her fingers tickle up his spine to play in his hair. “Should I leave you and the fuel report alone?”
“Larua…” he groans, nuzzling into the crook of her neck, his mouth traipsing up it so she arches, tilting her chin back.
“Shhh,” she laughs breathily, and he loves it, loves her, loves the yelp as he presses pen to skin, rewrites his message there-in ink on her arm; with his fingertips across her chest, slipping under the robe (the pen clatters somewhere, forgotten); with his tongue against hers.
#1: Here and Now, Neverending.