Unguarded Moments
A (not entirely finished draft of a) short Laura/Billy scene about Adar that I have been playing with for a few weeks.
A/N A quiet very early 1st season scene between Laura & Billy. Laura/Adar references.
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Billy waited until the other aide left the makeshift room before closing the curtain to provide at least the illusion of privacy. If the other aide noted the item in his hand she made no mention of it.
The President’s attention was focused on the file she had just been given. Still debating internally about what he was about to do, Billy watched the President for a moment before attracting her attention.
“Madam President.”
“Billy!” She spoke without looking up. “Where did you get off to all afternoon?”
“Galactica.”
Still absorbed in the report she gave a slight laugh. “When I said you should go hang the picture yourself to make sure that the Commander didn’t hang it in one of the heads, you did realize that I was being facetious?”
On military ships it was custom to display a photograph of the sitting President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. That morning they had finally gotten around to taking her portrait.
“I …yes… it’s just that there was something else I wanted to do while I was there.”
“Something?” she asked slightly suggestively.
Billy smiled or at least tried to, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Gripping the item in his hands, he felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to experiencing around her. He wondered, not for the first time, whether this was something he should really be doing.
His silence caught her attention. Using a finger to hold her place on the page before her, she finally glanced up at him. “Billy?”
With an expression of apprehension on her face, she asked. “Where did the Commander hang my picture?”
Disregarding the question, he moved forward to tender the framed portrait he had taken from the Galactica.
“I know you two …worked together for many years. I just … I thought you might like to have it.”
Taking the picture, her smile was pained. “There we were thinking we were so discreet.”
“Oh you were, Madam President.” He was quick to assure her. “It’s just that I noticed certain things.” Billy admitted,
“Things?” she scoffed.
“Just … little things.”
In response to the entreaty in her eyes, he tried to qualify it, but it wasn’t an easy task. There hadn’t been one act that had resulted in some sudden epiphany on his part. It really had just been an accumulation of little things.
“His office was always filled with your favorite flower.”
“He was the President, but he stood when you entered the room. And whenever you were in the room, no matter how many other people were in the room or who they were, his eyes kept coming back to you. He always seemed to be waiting to catch your gaze.
Moistening his lips, Billy went on. “He was always asking to borrow your glasses in meetings, but he never put them on. President Adar didn’t need glasses. He would take them and just hold them so you couldn’t wear them.”
An indecipherable sound in her throat was her only response.
“You look so much more serious with your glasses on. Without them your face looks softer. I think he just liked seeing you that way.”
Uncomfortable with the conversation, his eyes wandered the room.
“The two of you were constantly handing things back and forth just so your fingers could brush together.
“He always took your calls - everyone else’s aide used to complain about him not taking calls or returning them. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I had to hold on the line with his secretary for more than a few minutes before she said to put you on the line to wait for the President.”
Billy’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “The way you would sometimes duck his calls.”
“The way the two of you disagreed so passionately about everything and anything. The way he listened to you -to your ideas, to your suggestions. He might not have agreed with them and he almost never did what you would have liked, but he always seemed to listen.”
Billy shifted his weight as he continued to think.
“He would stop by your office with no real reason - just to see what you were doing.” That Billy realized could be taken in a way he hadn’t intended, but he shrugged it off. “Anyone else had to go to him.”
“The way you would stand in the doorway of his office to have discussions. You wouldn’t go all the way in.”
“Whenever the two of you were alone in a room together, you were so careful about leaving the door open - except when you didn’t.”
Billy was struggling now, but there was one thing he was sure of.
“Madam President, I don’t pretend to approve of what the two of you were doing - he was a married man, but I know that that doesn’t change the genuineness of what you felt for him. Or him for you. And I think if the worlds hadn’t just ended we were about to see a huge uptick in government spending on cancer research.”
Realizing he was rambling and had most certainly crossed a line; Billy stopped and looked at her.
He wasn’t sure when but at some point her hand had moved to cover her mouth and she had begun sobbing in the only way a person who lived two curtains away from a room full of press could - silently.
After a few moments of that silence and his, she managed to regain herself enough to dismiss him. “Thank you, Billy. That will be all.”
“Yes, Madame President.”
As quickly as he respectfully could, he strode to back the way he had came.
“Billy …”
Nearly to the curtain, he stopped. Turning, he said nothing.
He watched her, the way she pressed her palm against the glass of the frame. Clearing her throat, she repeated, “… Thank you.”
nts here.