fic-adjacent fic
Okay, so, this fic may will take some explaining. (Especially since I have not previously shown enough interest in BSG to write an 8000+ fic about it.)
So y'all remember my slight, um, hiccough with Show about a year ago? Yeah, well, it may or may not have contributed to me finally watching the last season of BSG, which I gave up on ages ago. The comfort this offered turned out to be twofold: one, that Show was NOT THAT (and never would be); and two, it led me to an awesomely enthusiastic Kara/Lee comm which was, at least to me, angst-fee and lolmaking. There was some fic, most of it quite-to-exceptionally good, all of which was like a holiday by the sea because I could take it or leave it and didn't gleefully stomp on my chained heart WOE. (Oh Show, you know I'll never quit you, baby.)
Anyway. There were also passionate, gracious, talented, delightful and story-geeky fangirls on this comm, and I found a friend or two. One of whom, workerbee73, is all of the above and, in response to a challenge on the comm, dashed off a little contemporary-earth-based AU comment-fic where Lee (and Bill) were a mafia family (and HOW MUCH does that make scary sense?) and Kara was an undercover CIA agent investigating him - and had somehow managed to get herself married to him. It was noir-ish and intriguing and cliffhangery and compelling. Then? It exploded. The commentfic became the prologue, Kara's CIA handler turned out to be Laura, other BSG peeps showed up and it just kept growing. - And the fangirls rejoiced.
Well. The sensible ones did; the non-sensible ones (read: me) immediately began theorising (because that's what I do) and noodling out the backstory connections. The major one of which was that Bill and Laura, despite having no textual connection whatsoever that any sane person would contemplate, CLEARLY had a History. (The fact that there's a little corner of my heart reserved for Heat, and the coffee-shop conversation between McCauly and Hanna, as I have mentioned - as well as the way the Bill-Laura power dynamics push-pull in the early seasons of BSG was initially the most interesting relationship to me - pretty much made this inevitable.) So, to show my appreciation for the series, and have a little turn with all the spy!crime!tropes it was playing with, I was going to write a commentfic for her, essentially homage-ing the Heat scene, with Bill and Laura instead. It was gonna be, you know, short.
Or ... not so much.
Title: First Principles
Ficverse: workerbee73's BSG Spypilots AU fic; prequel to her Dangerous Games ( index).
Series: Spyparents
Rating: Gen, Het, PG13 (a few bad words)
Length: 4,000 of 8,100 ish
Characters: Bill Adama/Laura Roslin
Teaser: It was just a reasonable conclusion that if any Adama was going to slip up, it would be him. But more than that, she just … knew. William was the key to the Adamas.
Notes and shoutouts: In addition to writing such a kick-ass fic that it spawned this prequel, workerbee73 has been the absolute best in bouncing ideas, backstory, theories, and beta-ing this story, as well as cheerleading for it's follow-up (coming, um, sometime).
Warnings/Spoiler: It's completely AU, so nothing for the show. Nothing for Dangerous Games, either.
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. They belong to others, like Ron Moore and whoever, and the setting belongs to Bee. Oh, and the initial exchange between them directly parallels (with a bit of inversion) the scene in Heat. Oh! and there's a line from Casino Royale in there somewhere too.
Feedback: let's hear it. The good, the bad, the ugly. . . .
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
-- Bertrand Russell
Laura lowered the binoculars and sighed. She cast an eye over the empty coffee cups and notes littering the passenger seat beside her, refused to calculate how long it had been since she got up that morning, and debated the merits of stretching her legs for a few minutes, even if it was drizzling. It wasn't like much had gone on in the nightclub so far this evening … it wasn't like she was supposed to be here in the first place.
She felt a rebellious little kick at that and resolved to stay right where she was. She loved the agency, God knew she did, but that didn't mean her superiors weren't sometimes blind, deaf, dumb, and stupid when it came to the frakking obvious.
Joe Adama was never - ever - going to get himself caught. They had files upon files on him, stretching back nearly fifty years, and she knew this because she'd read them all. She'd scoured them until her brain was swimming in legit corporate structures and national networks that put the snarl of her Nana's knitting basket to shame, marinating in shadowy dealings and whispers of blood. And there was not one thing anybody could make stick in a court of law.
Joe Adama was far too slick. He hadn't just gamed the system, he'd practically renovated it. And he made sure to pay his taxes.
No, if they were going to bring down the Adama family, it was going to be through the son. William. She'd argued for it endlessly: he was younger, looser, arrogant, more likely to make a mistake. Sources were unanimous that Joe was grooming him to take over the family business one day, but he seemed to spend most of his time with a pack of young men who followed him in and out of whatever wild life the city had to offer. It was just a reasonable conclusion that if any Adama was going to slip up, it would be him. But more than that, she just … knew. William was the key to the Adamas.
Laura just couldn't seem to convince anyone to put resources into watching him and his goon squad parade from club to club, trailed by a cloud of ladies who did not, with any stretch of generosity, deserve the term. There had been a few token attempts to infiltrate the group with voluptuous undercover agents, but somehow they were invariably left behind or escorted firmly out, and the higher-ups still wouldn’t take him seriously. Which left her sitting in her own beat-up car on her own time, staking out his favorite haunts, waiting for the slip she knew would come.
She stretched right there in her seat, weighing the need to get more takeout coffee from down the road against the unpleasant prospect of actually having to drink the burnt-carpet-tasting stuff. If she put more sugar in, this time - a lot more sugar -
She froze, eyes widening. Then her hand went from its instinctive grab for her binoculars to her weapon.
William Adama had come out of the club and was heading straight for her car.
Her eyes darted around the street, but none of his pals were in evidence. Just him, sauntering across the road like the traffic and the fine rain didn't exist, relaxed shoulders and hands in pockets but no sign of a weapon, and a faint grin, none of which gave her any clue as to what the hell he was doing.
He was getting closer and there could be no doubt he was coming over to her. She gripped her weapon tighter, surreptitiously angling it on him, out of sight. Then tried to keep herself from shooting him out of sheer jumpiness. As he closed the last few yards, this became markedly more difficult.
She pulled her best iron-clad poker face over a hammering pulse, and when he knocked on her window with a lazy knuckle, she wound it down and met his eyes squarely.
His smile widened a little, but he didn't say anything. He just leaned over until he was skimming the edge of her personal space in a way that made the hair prickle on the back of her neck. Dark eyes hit her like a spear, riveting her to her seat, then traveled around the car's interior and back to her. In that moment, two realizations broke over her. One, she now had a very good idea why deer didn't get their asses out of the way of oncoming headlights, and two, she hadn't misread William Adama - but she had underestimated him.
He tilted his head, eyes not leaving hers, but she forced her body and breathing to remain steady because frak if she'd give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he'd unsettled her. Or the peculiar thrill she wasn't yet even willing to admit had run down her spine.
"How're you doing?" he asked, and showed no surprise when she just frowned, not deigning to answer a bullshit small-talk opening. He nodded, and leaned a little closer; not menacing - pushing. Testing. "What d'you say I buy you a cup of coffee?"
She double-checked the street - still no one around - before looking back up at him, at his smirk, her blood up and answering for her, without any help from her better judgment. "Yeah, sure," she said, voice hard and tight, feeling like she was leaping off a precipice. "Let's go."
That smirk widened briefly, a flare of anticipation, and he nodded at his car, further up the street. "Follow me."
He strode over to his car, giving her a single self-assured look before he got in, leaving her to feel like she'd been as much pushed off that edge as done it herself. Had … had that really just happened? Had William Adama just asked to have coffee with her? Pushed, jumped, it made no difference; she was falling from a world where William Adama and Laura Roslin having coffee together was just not a thing that happened … to a world where it was.
She shook her head clear, and pulled out when he did. This was not an opportunity she was about to let pass. She just needed to kick her thinking, and her training, into gear.
By the time they pulled up at an all-nite diner, in what she knew to be a neutral part of the city, Laura was certain that they weren't followed by his guys; that the likelihood of ambush was minimal; and that there was nothing in her car she was very worried about losing, should it be ransacked. Beyond that, well - some risks were more than worth taking.
She settled her holster and made sure it was hidden before she got out, although she had little doubt William Adama knew she would be armed. She turned her coat collar up and approached him where he stood at the diner door, and found herself to be slightly surprised by the lack of a leer in his eyes, steady and inscrutable on her. She didn't exactly dress up for staking out, but that had never stopped her colleagues from taking an eyeful and giving some kind of comment in return, usually about redheads. So when he opened the door and inclined his head to her, she couldn't quite suppress the arch smile that turned itself upon him over her shoulder going in. Nor did she miss another answering flare in his eyes; which, if they did travel downward, did so only after she couldn't see.
The waitress led them to a booth in the corner, overlooking the street, dark and shine-edged with streetlight. Laura slid into the side near the wall, feeling marginally more secure. There was just something about having a wall at your back in a public place, regardless of how supposedly neutral it was.
He slouched in across from her, almost insultingly casual.
“What’ll you have to drink?” asked the waitress, with no especial interest.
“Just coffee,” he said, glancing at Laura for confirmation before handing the menus back. “Cream for me, black and two sugars for her.”
Laura stared at him, enough that even the waitress noticed. “That okay by you, hon?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “It’s - perfect.” She waited until their audience had left, then leaned in and hissed at him, “How did you know that?”
His eyebrows rose, provocative, amused. “You joined the team investigating my family, what - four months ago?”
“Five,” she corrected, too defensively.
“Right.” William Adama smiled, but his eyes were sharp. “You think your side is the only one with files?”
Laura realized her mouth was open, and closed it with a snap of her teeth. She leaned back and stared at him, mind racing.
He sat straighter, came forward, shoulders angling into a predatory line. “How does that happen, anyway? Since when was … legitimate enterprise … in the US, a CIA beat?”
Laura searched his face. For a just second, she had an image of slitted eyes and big sheathed claws and only the tip of a tail signaling the intent to pounce. So that was what this was about; she tried to ignore the shimmer of disappointment that ran through her. It made sense. She was the youngest - the greenest - agent on the case, and she’d never met a man besides her father who hadn’t underestimated her. Her lips curved in a smile she knew was hard to read, and leaned in to match him with an easy beckon of her fingers.
“Tell you what,” she said, coyly, “you tell me everything your people know about it, and I’ll just fill in the gaps.” She considered. “So long as you keep the coffee coming.”
It was his turn to stare, for just a second, before jolting back with a laugh so honest it she couldn’t help but grin. She hadn’t intended he buy it, but she hadn’t expected him to share the joke, either. Or that him doing so would be so … sexy.
She only barely kept from recoiling when he thrust his hand at her. “Bill,” he said, open humor still lacing his tone.
Slowly, unable to think of any of dozens of good reasons not to, she reached across her half of the table and put her hand to his. Matched his grip. “Laura,” it felt appropriate to answer.
“Mm,” Bill hummed, eyes crinklingly intent on her, as if to say I know. As if his probing question had been nothing more than a passing thought; and she was once again at sea. With strong warm fingers clasping hers just a little too long. She pulled away and he let her, draping his arm back across his booth with what could not possibly be a companionable smile, but looked disconcertingly like one.
Before Laura could decide whether to smile back, the waitress returned with their coffees. Laura snatched up the cover it provided, bringing it to her mouth and only the warning heat at her lips kept her from gulping a scalding mouthful. She forced herself to slow, to savor the aroma of the coffee (take a damn breath, get it together), before taking a sip. The second she did, all thought processes shut down, the warm, rich, mellow taste rippling deliciously through her body and filling up her brain, washing her tiredness away. Not even her poker face could stop her eyelids fluttering closed, her mouth from curving slightly in pleasure as she rested the lip of the cup against it, her tiny sigh before she swallowed.
Unfortunately, the single moment of bliss was just that, and she remembered where she was. Her eyes flew open and found his fixed on her, and she hoped the mouth of her cup had concealed at least some of her embarrassingly open reaction. But there was no smirk like she was expecting, no leap on the advantage where her guard was down. In fact, he looked kind of nonplussed; tense, like he’d been physically caught in the moment with her.
He snapped out of it immediately after she did, with a raised eyebrow that wasn’t as derisive as he’d obviously meant it to be. Feeling better, she met it by lowering the cup and letting the curve of her smile deepen. “Good coffee,” she murmured, a little wickedly.
“So I see.” He laughed, then shook his head. “I knew you drank a lot of it, but … wow.”
She grinned back, unabashed. “Total addict,” she admitted. “That - and science fiction novels.”
Bill narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but the smile still played around them. “You’re just saying that.”
“Nope.” Her grinned widened. “It’s true.”
“Name one,” he challenged. “And don’t say Dune.”
“The Left Hand of Darkness,” she answered promptly, and saw his expression. “That whole series is amazing. Don’t even start about ‘soft’ sci-fi.”
He threw his hands up quickly in mock surrender. “You actually have that about me on file?”
Her own eyebrow went up. “The Government of This Great Nation is very thorough.”
He snorted darkly. “Yeah. I’ll bet.”
Which effectively put an end to the friendly neighborhood book club. She stared at him, astonished. “Don’t tell me you’re honestly claiming a moral high ground here?”
He locked eyes like he was locking horns, almost as taken aback as she was. “Don’t tell me you are.”
The staring match promised to be a good one, but she was not about to let him dig in. “You have got to be kidding. Do you … I mean, you know what your father does. He’s training you to take over from him, right?” She couldn’t look away, anger rising irrationally, anger at his hotly unrepentant eyes and his brutal family and his honest laugh. “So you know about all of it - you have to,” she accused. “And who knows what you’ve done yourself. What you’re going to do by the time -” She broke off, trying to get a grip. “And all for what? Money? Power?”
She trailed off, feeling her eyes pleading with him for she didn’t even know what. Distantly she recognized that this had gone far beyond what she’d ever thought to accomplish as an agent; that somewhere across the table between them, the battlefield had shifted. Her guard had been well and truly dropped somewhere along the way, and it was not going to be easy to retrieve it. But his face had taken on that same puzzled, searching intensity from before, and her every instinct screamed that this was where the crux lay. The risks didn’t even seem relevant anymore. If she backed off now, hid safely behind the agent’s handbook, she knew she would always regret it.
“Security,” he answered her finally, never wavering for an instant. “The safety and stability of us, and ours. Against enemy interests, both foreign and domestic. There’s only one way to fight that war - as the CIA frakking well knows.”
Laura caught her breath at the accusation in his hard voice, the sting of it hitting too close to home. “There is a difference. We - the country - have to be defended -” She shook her head. “Stuff makes the news, okay, and it’s bad, I know that. But you have no idea what -” She stopped herself abruptly.
“What doesn’t get told?” he finished for her, almost gentle with understanding.
She held his look unhappily. “The whole country,” she eventually returned. “Full of people who can’t - who shouldn’t have to - do … what is necessary. Innocent people, just trying to live their lives.”
Bill studied her for a few minutes, while the silence between them slowly let its hackles down. Once it was calm, if not comfortable, he opened his mouth, and it was the first uncertain action she’d seen him take. Slowly, he said, “When I was five, my father showed me his side.”
He paused, watching her, assessing things she could only guess at. Then he stretched upward, laying a hand over the corresponding area on his own body, and it felt like a relief to rest her eyes on fingers pressed upon cloth instead of his carefully impassive face.
“Three old scars,” he continued, his voice equally expressionless. “One from the knife, two from the scalpel.” The next words tore her attention back up to him. “He was fifteen when it happened.”
He paused again, to make sure his point was going to land with her. “Everyone does what they have to.”
It was hard to know what to say. It was horrible, of course, but - “Bill, the police -”
His expression didn’t change. “Were the reason he needed the scalpel.”
Tempered sympathy skidded into dismay. “What?” she asked, even though she could already feel the shape of what this was.
He took a mouthful of coffee, eyes steady over it, but there was a hint of reluctance there. She wondered if he was regretting telling her, if it violated some deep-seated family code in him. She waited, incapable of pushing, of trying to manipulate it from him. In this, if nothing else, she could not treat him as the enemy.
He lowered the cup and shrugged, belatedly trying to dismiss the weight of what he was sharing. But he didn’t stop. “Broken ribs, internal bleeding, punctured lung - you know how it goes. The local boss had a guy on the payroll, a sawbones. Shady, but good enough. Otherwise Dad probably wouldn’t have lived. He grew up in the neighborhood, so - you know - he wasn’t squeaky clean. But that day, he was just in the wrong place. Police didn’t care who’d done what.” He snorted. “Why should they? And after that, Dad was in.”
And after that, Dad took it all over, Laura thought, and then she thought, fifteen, and of the first police report that had put Joe Adama’s name on record. She decided to hold her judgment. At least for now.
Then she looked at the man across from her, and thought, five. “I’m sorry.” It came out softly, but even as it did she knew it was the wrong thing to say.
His face closed off, lips curling cynically, and she braced for the scalding words to pour forth. But he surprised her again; that predatory feline smile flashed out and he propelled himself out of his seat, a barely-controlled edge to his stride over to the diner’s jukebox. He fed it change and jabbed buttons before returning, hand out, far more challenge than invitation.
Laura felt oddly touched that he’d chosen diversion rather than attack to recover ground, to declare that all-too-familiar don’t you dare pity me. There was nothing for her to gain from refusing; in fact, she was almost certain he was close enough to spooking that he’d just walk out the door and take this unique chance with him if she did. Besides, having got this far, she was hardly going to back down now.
She put her hand in his without hesitation and let him pull her to her feet. He didn’t let go, leading her across to the open space next to the jukebox. The strains of piano and percussion started quietly, but the vocals soon lunged in, as assertive and insistent as Bill drawing her into it, both easily followed when she fit herself to his hands and the rhythm. He grinned down at her when she did, twirling her, tight enough to avoid running her into anything, and she couldn’t help but laugh when he caught her securely.
“Nicely done,” she said lightly, getting her breath back.
“And you,” he answered, pulling her closer.
She didn’t resist. This was her intention, after all, to lure him back into the open, allay his defenses again. Let him regain a sense of control, the self-assurance with which he’d knocked on her car window. It was the easiest thing in the world to make a man feel like he was in charge.
What she hadn’t counted on was how little she wanted to resist him, how much she just wanted to stop thinking, stop calculating, stop fighting him, just be with him in this moment. There was a dizziness to their proximity, a promise of abandon in their bodies speaking motion back and forth through space, an urgency to the wail and beat of the song, asking her to lose herself in it. Begging her to. It was intoxicating, to be held by the hands of a stranger who should be her enemy but felt like a friend.
No; the way she leaned into his touch and her eyes kept seeking his and she felt as alive as she’d ever been, even in a firefight, all told her she knew better than that.
He felt like a lover.
A sway and a counter had her catching her own balance against his chest, palms flat against him, while he instinctively grabbed her upper arms to steady her. She gasped, overwhelmed; he was just too - too close. His grasp firmed - tugged - and before she could stop herself, the scent of him filled her nose; sharp, spicy, husky.
She couldn’t know what William Adama smelled like, she just - couldn’t. But as Bill stared down at her, gripping her as though no other option in this surreal little world they’d created between them was worth considering, it was so terribly tempting to breathe him in again, draw that scent deep down into her lungs and keep him there.
She jerked against his hold, panicked, but he didn’t let her go; he gripped harder. Not painful, but enough that breaking it was going to take some effort, which she was on the brink of unleashing when he made a frustrated sound and released her. Put his hands up, took a step back - gave space - in apology.
She stared at him, arms crossed, hands clamping defensively over the pressure his had left behind them. Even though the panic was subsiding she was on the brink of walking out herself. But then she’d never know. “Why did you do this?” she demanded.
He didn’t look away, didn’t back off, didn’t pretend to not understand. He shook his head. “I … I don’t think I know, anymore.” There was something like anguish there, and it calmed her somewhat. Like she wasn’t the only one completely off-balance and terrified and trying to figure out exactly what in the real world she was supposed to do with this impossible situation.
He laughed and it didn’t sound anything but hollow. “Maybe you should go.”
She resisted the instinctive urge to step toward him and cursed reverse psychology. “Do you want me to?”
“No!” he said too quickly, and flushed. He waited a moment, watching for rejection before edging close again, seeming to know how to hover exactly on the boundary where it became an invasion. Frak, he was good. And, if her ability to read people hadn’t completely betrayed her, entirely sincere.
“I haven’t got a frakking clue what this is anymore - but I don’t want you to go.” He searched her face, his whole body strained. “Do … you?”
Looking up at him, Laura didn’t know why she should suddenly notice now that his eyes were actually blue; dark blue like dusk, so dark that anyone who never got this close would assume they were brown.
The files said brown; all of them. She knew it for a fact.
She cleared her throat, reached for the smart answer and wasn’t all that surprised to discover it was true. “Not yet.”
This time when he laughed it sounded soft and wry and honest again, and it warmed her in a way she couldn’t fight. A thought seemed to strike him, and he looked over through the windows at the street outside. “Do you want to go somewhere?”
“Will I regret it?” she asked, grinning, which faltered when she realized she would trust his answer.
She would trust William Adama to tell her whether she was safe with him.
His grin faded with hers. He opened his mouth but then closed it again, apprehension worrying its edges. “I don’t want you to,” he said eventually.
She drew herself up. If she was going over another precipice, she was damn well going to take this one at a run. “Yes. I want to go somewhere.”
part two
So y'all remember my slight, um, hiccough with Show about a year ago? Yeah, well, it may or may not have contributed to me finally watching the last season of BSG, which I gave up on ages ago. The comfort this offered turned out to be twofold: one, that Show was NOT THAT (and never would be); and two, it led me to an awesomely enthusiastic Kara/Lee comm which was, at least to me, angst-fee and lolmaking. There was some fic, most of it quite-to-exceptionally good, all of which was like a holiday by the sea because I could take it or leave it and didn't gleefully stomp on my chained heart WOE. (Oh Show, you know I'll never quit you, baby.)
Anyway. There were also passionate, gracious, talented, delightful and story-geeky fangirls on this comm, and I found a friend or two. One of whom, workerbee73, is all of the above and, in response to a challenge on the comm, dashed off a little contemporary-earth-based AU comment-fic where Lee (and Bill) were a mafia family (and HOW MUCH does that make scary sense?) and Kara was an undercover CIA agent investigating him - and had somehow managed to get herself married to him. It was noir-ish and intriguing and cliffhangery and compelling. Then? It exploded. The commentfic became the prologue, Kara's CIA handler turned out to be Laura, other BSG peeps showed up and it just kept growing. - And the fangirls rejoiced.
Well. The sensible ones did; the non-sensible ones (read: me) immediately began theorising (because that's what I do) and noodling out the backstory connections. The major one of which was that Bill and Laura, despite having no textual connection whatsoever that any sane person would contemplate, CLEARLY had a History. (The fact that there's a little corner of my heart reserved for Heat, and the coffee-shop conversation between McCauly and Hanna, as I have mentioned - as well as the way the Bill-Laura power dynamics push-pull in the early seasons of BSG was initially the most interesting relationship to me - pretty much made this inevitable.) So, to show my appreciation for the series, and have a little turn with all the spy!crime!tropes it was playing with, I was going to write a commentfic for her, essentially homage-ing the Heat scene, with Bill and Laura instead. It was gonna be, you know, short.
Or ... not so much.
Title: First Principles
Ficverse: workerbee73's BSG Spypilots AU fic; prequel to her Dangerous Games ( index).
Series: Spyparents
Rating: Gen, Het, PG13 (a few bad words)
Length: 4,000 of 8,100 ish
Characters: Bill Adama/Laura Roslin
Teaser: It was just a reasonable conclusion that if any Adama was going to slip up, it would be him. But more than that, she just … knew. William was the key to the Adamas.
Notes and shoutouts: In addition to writing such a kick-ass fic that it spawned this prequel, workerbee73 has been the absolute best in bouncing ideas, backstory, theories, and beta-ing this story, as well as cheerleading for it's follow-up (coming, um, sometime).
Warnings/Spoiler: It's completely AU, so nothing for the show. Nothing for Dangerous Games, either.
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. They belong to others, like Ron Moore and whoever, and the setting belongs to Bee. Oh, and the initial exchange between them directly parallels (with a bit of inversion) the scene in Heat. Oh! and there's a line from Casino Royale in there somewhere too.
Feedback: let's hear it. The good, the bad, the ugly. . . .
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
-- Bertrand Russell
Laura lowered the binoculars and sighed. She cast an eye over the empty coffee cups and notes littering the passenger seat beside her, refused to calculate how long it had been since she got up that morning, and debated the merits of stretching her legs for a few minutes, even if it was drizzling. It wasn't like much had gone on in the nightclub so far this evening … it wasn't like she was supposed to be here in the first place.
She felt a rebellious little kick at that and resolved to stay right where she was. She loved the agency, God knew she did, but that didn't mean her superiors weren't sometimes blind, deaf, dumb, and stupid when it came to the frakking obvious.
Joe Adama was never - ever - going to get himself caught. They had files upon files on him, stretching back nearly fifty years, and she knew this because she'd read them all. She'd scoured them until her brain was swimming in legit corporate structures and national networks that put the snarl of her Nana's knitting basket to shame, marinating in shadowy dealings and whispers of blood. And there was not one thing anybody could make stick in a court of law.
Joe Adama was far too slick. He hadn't just gamed the system, he'd practically renovated it. And he made sure to pay his taxes.
No, if they were going to bring down the Adama family, it was going to be through the son. William. She'd argued for it endlessly: he was younger, looser, arrogant, more likely to make a mistake. Sources were unanimous that Joe was grooming him to take over the family business one day, but he seemed to spend most of his time with a pack of young men who followed him in and out of whatever wild life the city had to offer. It was just a reasonable conclusion that if any Adama was going to slip up, it would be him. But more than that, she just … knew. William was the key to the Adamas.
Laura just couldn't seem to convince anyone to put resources into watching him and his goon squad parade from club to club, trailed by a cloud of ladies who did not, with any stretch of generosity, deserve the term. There had been a few token attempts to infiltrate the group with voluptuous undercover agents, but somehow they were invariably left behind or escorted firmly out, and the higher-ups still wouldn’t take him seriously. Which left her sitting in her own beat-up car on her own time, staking out his favorite haunts, waiting for the slip she knew would come.
She stretched right there in her seat, weighing the need to get more takeout coffee from down the road against the unpleasant prospect of actually having to drink the burnt-carpet-tasting stuff. If she put more sugar in, this time - a lot more sugar -
She froze, eyes widening. Then her hand went from its instinctive grab for her binoculars to her weapon.
William Adama had come out of the club and was heading straight for her car.
Her eyes darted around the street, but none of his pals were in evidence. Just him, sauntering across the road like the traffic and the fine rain didn't exist, relaxed shoulders and hands in pockets but no sign of a weapon, and a faint grin, none of which gave her any clue as to what the hell he was doing.
He was getting closer and there could be no doubt he was coming over to her. She gripped her weapon tighter, surreptitiously angling it on him, out of sight. Then tried to keep herself from shooting him out of sheer jumpiness. As he closed the last few yards, this became markedly more difficult.
She pulled her best iron-clad poker face over a hammering pulse, and when he knocked on her window with a lazy knuckle, she wound it down and met his eyes squarely.
His smile widened a little, but he didn't say anything. He just leaned over until he was skimming the edge of her personal space in a way that made the hair prickle on the back of her neck. Dark eyes hit her like a spear, riveting her to her seat, then traveled around the car's interior and back to her. In that moment, two realizations broke over her. One, she now had a very good idea why deer didn't get their asses out of the way of oncoming headlights, and two, she hadn't misread William Adama - but she had underestimated him.
He tilted his head, eyes not leaving hers, but she forced her body and breathing to remain steady because frak if she'd give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he'd unsettled her. Or the peculiar thrill she wasn't yet even willing to admit had run down her spine.
"How're you doing?" he asked, and showed no surprise when she just frowned, not deigning to answer a bullshit small-talk opening. He nodded, and leaned a little closer; not menacing - pushing. Testing. "What d'you say I buy you a cup of coffee?"
She double-checked the street - still no one around - before looking back up at him, at his smirk, her blood up and answering for her, without any help from her better judgment. "Yeah, sure," she said, voice hard and tight, feeling like she was leaping off a precipice. "Let's go."
That smirk widened briefly, a flare of anticipation, and he nodded at his car, further up the street. "Follow me."
He strode over to his car, giving her a single self-assured look before he got in, leaving her to feel like she'd been as much pushed off that edge as done it herself. Had … had that really just happened? Had William Adama just asked to have coffee with her? Pushed, jumped, it made no difference; she was falling from a world where William Adama and Laura Roslin having coffee together was just not a thing that happened … to a world where it was.
She shook her head clear, and pulled out when he did. This was not an opportunity she was about to let pass. She just needed to kick her thinking, and her training, into gear.
By the time they pulled up at an all-nite diner, in what she knew to be a neutral part of the city, Laura was certain that they weren't followed by his guys; that the likelihood of ambush was minimal; and that there was nothing in her car she was very worried about losing, should it be ransacked. Beyond that, well - some risks were more than worth taking.
She settled her holster and made sure it was hidden before she got out, although she had little doubt William Adama knew she would be armed. She turned her coat collar up and approached him where he stood at the diner door, and found herself to be slightly surprised by the lack of a leer in his eyes, steady and inscrutable on her. She didn't exactly dress up for staking out, but that had never stopped her colleagues from taking an eyeful and giving some kind of comment in return, usually about redheads. So when he opened the door and inclined his head to her, she couldn't quite suppress the arch smile that turned itself upon him over her shoulder going in. Nor did she miss another answering flare in his eyes; which, if they did travel downward, did so only after she couldn't see.
The waitress led them to a booth in the corner, overlooking the street, dark and shine-edged with streetlight. Laura slid into the side near the wall, feeling marginally more secure. There was just something about having a wall at your back in a public place, regardless of how supposedly neutral it was.
He slouched in across from her, almost insultingly casual.
“What’ll you have to drink?” asked the waitress, with no especial interest.
“Just coffee,” he said, glancing at Laura for confirmation before handing the menus back. “Cream for me, black and two sugars for her.”
Laura stared at him, enough that even the waitress noticed. “That okay by you, hon?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “It’s - perfect.” She waited until their audience had left, then leaned in and hissed at him, “How did you know that?”
His eyebrows rose, provocative, amused. “You joined the team investigating my family, what - four months ago?”
“Five,” she corrected, too defensively.
“Right.” William Adama smiled, but his eyes were sharp. “You think your side is the only one with files?”
Laura realized her mouth was open, and closed it with a snap of her teeth. She leaned back and stared at him, mind racing.
He sat straighter, came forward, shoulders angling into a predatory line. “How does that happen, anyway? Since when was … legitimate enterprise … in the US, a CIA beat?”
Laura searched his face. For a just second, she had an image of slitted eyes and big sheathed claws and only the tip of a tail signaling the intent to pounce. So that was what this was about; she tried to ignore the shimmer of disappointment that ran through her. It made sense. She was the youngest - the greenest - agent on the case, and she’d never met a man besides her father who hadn’t underestimated her. Her lips curved in a smile she knew was hard to read, and leaned in to match him with an easy beckon of her fingers.
“Tell you what,” she said, coyly, “you tell me everything your people know about it, and I’ll just fill in the gaps.” She considered. “So long as you keep the coffee coming.”
It was his turn to stare, for just a second, before jolting back with a laugh so honest it she couldn’t help but grin. She hadn’t intended he buy it, but she hadn’t expected him to share the joke, either. Or that him doing so would be so … sexy.
She only barely kept from recoiling when he thrust his hand at her. “Bill,” he said, open humor still lacing his tone.
Slowly, unable to think of any of dozens of good reasons not to, she reached across her half of the table and put her hand to his. Matched his grip. “Laura,” it felt appropriate to answer.
“Mm,” Bill hummed, eyes crinklingly intent on her, as if to say I know. As if his probing question had been nothing more than a passing thought; and she was once again at sea. With strong warm fingers clasping hers just a little too long. She pulled away and he let her, draping his arm back across his booth with what could not possibly be a companionable smile, but looked disconcertingly like one.
Before Laura could decide whether to smile back, the waitress returned with their coffees. Laura snatched up the cover it provided, bringing it to her mouth and only the warning heat at her lips kept her from gulping a scalding mouthful. She forced herself to slow, to savor the aroma of the coffee (take a damn breath, get it together), before taking a sip. The second she did, all thought processes shut down, the warm, rich, mellow taste rippling deliciously through her body and filling up her brain, washing her tiredness away. Not even her poker face could stop her eyelids fluttering closed, her mouth from curving slightly in pleasure as she rested the lip of the cup against it, her tiny sigh before she swallowed.
Unfortunately, the single moment of bliss was just that, and she remembered where she was. Her eyes flew open and found his fixed on her, and she hoped the mouth of her cup had concealed at least some of her embarrassingly open reaction. But there was no smirk like she was expecting, no leap on the advantage where her guard was down. In fact, he looked kind of nonplussed; tense, like he’d been physically caught in the moment with her.
He snapped out of it immediately after she did, with a raised eyebrow that wasn’t as derisive as he’d obviously meant it to be. Feeling better, she met it by lowering the cup and letting the curve of her smile deepen. “Good coffee,” she murmured, a little wickedly.
“So I see.” He laughed, then shook his head. “I knew you drank a lot of it, but … wow.”
She grinned back, unabashed. “Total addict,” she admitted. “That - and science fiction novels.”
Bill narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but the smile still played around them. “You’re just saying that.”
“Nope.” Her grinned widened. “It’s true.”
“Name one,” he challenged. “And don’t say Dune.”
“The Left Hand of Darkness,” she answered promptly, and saw his expression. “That whole series is amazing. Don’t even start about ‘soft’ sci-fi.”
He threw his hands up quickly in mock surrender. “You actually have that about me on file?”
Her own eyebrow went up. “The Government of This Great Nation is very thorough.”
He snorted darkly. “Yeah. I’ll bet.”
Which effectively put an end to the friendly neighborhood book club. She stared at him, astonished. “Don’t tell me you’re honestly claiming a moral high ground here?”
He locked eyes like he was locking horns, almost as taken aback as she was. “Don’t tell me you are.”
The staring match promised to be a good one, but she was not about to let him dig in. “You have got to be kidding. Do you … I mean, you know what your father does. He’s training you to take over from him, right?” She couldn’t look away, anger rising irrationally, anger at his hotly unrepentant eyes and his brutal family and his honest laugh. “So you know about all of it - you have to,” she accused. “And who knows what you’ve done yourself. What you’re going to do by the time -” She broke off, trying to get a grip. “And all for what? Money? Power?”
She trailed off, feeling her eyes pleading with him for she didn’t even know what. Distantly she recognized that this had gone far beyond what she’d ever thought to accomplish as an agent; that somewhere across the table between them, the battlefield had shifted. Her guard had been well and truly dropped somewhere along the way, and it was not going to be easy to retrieve it. But his face had taken on that same puzzled, searching intensity from before, and her every instinct screamed that this was where the crux lay. The risks didn’t even seem relevant anymore. If she backed off now, hid safely behind the agent’s handbook, she knew she would always regret it.
“Security,” he answered her finally, never wavering for an instant. “The safety and stability of us, and ours. Against enemy interests, both foreign and domestic. There’s only one way to fight that war - as the CIA frakking well knows.”
Laura caught her breath at the accusation in his hard voice, the sting of it hitting too close to home. “There is a difference. We - the country - have to be defended -” She shook her head. “Stuff makes the news, okay, and it’s bad, I know that. But you have no idea what -” She stopped herself abruptly.
“What doesn’t get told?” he finished for her, almost gentle with understanding.
She held his look unhappily. “The whole country,” she eventually returned. “Full of people who can’t - who shouldn’t have to - do … what is necessary. Innocent people, just trying to live their lives.”
Bill studied her for a few minutes, while the silence between them slowly let its hackles down. Once it was calm, if not comfortable, he opened his mouth, and it was the first uncertain action she’d seen him take. Slowly, he said, “When I was five, my father showed me his side.”
He paused, watching her, assessing things she could only guess at. Then he stretched upward, laying a hand over the corresponding area on his own body, and it felt like a relief to rest her eyes on fingers pressed upon cloth instead of his carefully impassive face.
“Three old scars,” he continued, his voice equally expressionless. “One from the knife, two from the scalpel.” The next words tore her attention back up to him. “He was fifteen when it happened.”
He paused again, to make sure his point was going to land with her. “Everyone does what they have to.”
It was hard to know what to say. It was horrible, of course, but - “Bill, the police -”
His expression didn’t change. “Were the reason he needed the scalpel.”
Tempered sympathy skidded into dismay. “What?” she asked, even though she could already feel the shape of what this was.
He took a mouthful of coffee, eyes steady over it, but there was a hint of reluctance there. She wondered if he was regretting telling her, if it violated some deep-seated family code in him. She waited, incapable of pushing, of trying to manipulate it from him. In this, if nothing else, she could not treat him as the enemy.
He lowered the cup and shrugged, belatedly trying to dismiss the weight of what he was sharing. But he didn’t stop. “Broken ribs, internal bleeding, punctured lung - you know how it goes. The local boss had a guy on the payroll, a sawbones. Shady, but good enough. Otherwise Dad probably wouldn’t have lived. He grew up in the neighborhood, so - you know - he wasn’t squeaky clean. But that day, he was just in the wrong place. Police didn’t care who’d done what.” He snorted. “Why should they? And after that, Dad was in.”
And after that, Dad took it all over, Laura thought, and then she thought, fifteen, and of the first police report that had put Joe Adama’s name on record. She decided to hold her judgment. At least for now.
Then she looked at the man across from her, and thought, five. “I’m sorry.” It came out softly, but even as it did she knew it was the wrong thing to say.
His face closed off, lips curling cynically, and she braced for the scalding words to pour forth. But he surprised her again; that predatory feline smile flashed out and he propelled himself out of his seat, a barely-controlled edge to his stride over to the diner’s jukebox. He fed it change and jabbed buttons before returning, hand out, far more challenge than invitation.
Laura felt oddly touched that he’d chosen diversion rather than attack to recover ground, to declare that all-too-familiar don’t you dare pity me. There was nothing for her to gain from refusing; in fact, she was almost certain he was close enough to spooking that he’d just walk out the door and take this unique chance with him if she did. Besides, having got this far, she was hardly going to back down now.
She put her hand in his without hesitation and let him pull her to her feet. He didn’t let go, leading her across to the open space next to the jukebox. The strains of piano and percussion started quietly, but the vocals soon lunged in, as assertive and insistent as Bill drawing her into it, both easily followed when she fit herself to his hands and the rhythm. He grinned down at her when she did, twirling her, tight enough to avoid running her into anything, and she couldn’t help but laugh when he caught her securely.
“Nicely done,” she said lightly, getting her breath back.
“And you,” he answered, pulling her closer.
She didn’t resist. This was her intention, after all, to lure him back into the open, allay his defenses again. Let him regain a sense of control, the self-assurance with which he’d knocked on her car window. It was the easiest thing in the world to make a man feel like he was in charge.
What she hadn’t counted on was how little she wanted to resist him, how much she just wanted to stop thinking, stop calculating, stop fighting him, just be with him in this moment. There was a dizziness to their proximity, a promise of abandon in their bodies speaking motion back and forth through space, an urgency to the wail and beat of the song, asking her to lose herself in it. Begging her to. It was intoxicating, to be held by the hands of a stranger who should be her enemy but felt like a friend.
No; the way she leaned into his touch and her eyes kept seeking his and she felt as alive as she’d ever been, even in a firefight, all told her she knew better than that.
He felt like a lover.
A sway and a counter had her catching her own balance against his chest, palms flat against him, while he instinctively grabbed her upper arms to steady her. She gasped, overwhelmed; he was just too - too close. His grasp firmed - tugged - and before she could stop herself, the scent of him filled her nose; sharp, spicy, husky.
She couldn’t know what William Adama smelled like, she just - couldn’t. But as Bill stared down at her, gripping her as though no other option in this surreal little world they’d created between them was worth considering, it was so terribly tempting to breathe him in again, draw that scent deep down into her lungs and keep him there.
She jerked against his hold, panicked, but he didn’t let her go; he gripped harder. Not painful, but enough that breaking it was going to take some effort, which she was on the brink of unleashing when he made a frustrated sound and released her. Put his hands up, took a step back - gave space - in apology.
She stared at him, arms crossed, hands clamping defensively over the pressure his had left behind them. Even though the panic was subsiding she was on the brink of walking out herself. But then she’d never know. “Why did you do this?” she demanded.
He didn’t look away, didn’t back off, didn’t pretend to not understand. He shook his head. “I … I don’t think I know, anymore.” There was something like anguish there, and it calmed her somewhat. Like she wasn’t the only one completely off-balance and terrified and trying to figure out exactly what in the real world she was supposed to do with this impossible situation.
He laughed and it didn’t sound anything but hollow. “Maybe you should go.”
She resisted the instinctive urge to step toward him and cursed reverse psychology. “Do you want me to?”
“No!” he said too quickly, and flushed. He waited a moment, watching for rejection before edging close again, seeming to know how to hover exactly on the boundary where it became an invasion. Frak, he was good. And, if her ability to read people hadn’t completely betrayed her, entirely sincere.
“I haven’t got a frakking clue what this is anymore - but I don’t want you to go.” He searched her face, his whole body strained. “Do … you?”
Looking up at him, Laura didn’t know why she should suddenly notice now that his eyes were actually blue; dark blue like dusk, so dark that anyone who never got this close would assume they were brown.
The files said brown; all of them. She knew it for a fact.
She cleared her throat, reached for the smart answer and wasn’t all that surprised to discover it was true. “Not yet.”
This time when he laughed it sounded soft and wry and honest again, and it warmed her in a way she couldn’t fight. A thought seemed to strike him, and he looked over through the windows at the street outside. “Do you want to go somewhere?”
“Will I regret it?” she asked, grinning, which faltered when she realized she would trust his answer.
She would trust William Adama to tell her whether she was safe with him.
His grin faded with hers. He opened his mouth but then closed it again, apprehension worrying its edges. “I don’t want you to,” he said eventually.
She drew herself up. If she was going over another precipice, she was damn well going to take this one at a run. “Yes. I want to go somewhere.”
part two