Her feet are dangling over the armrest of the couch, her head bare and resting against his thigh (he has forgone his jacket, clothed in his tanks and uniform pants). She has forgone the head scarf, he had asked her to, wanting her to get used to the absence of her hair – she laughs softly to herself, he needs her to get used to it, he already has.

The time he had spent running his fingers through her lost locks is now spent tracing patterns on her scalp, delicate, wonderful touches that somehow run through her from top to toes. His left hand now is not on her head, in her phantom hair, it is resting on her stomach. Her shirt is unbuttoned just short of indecency (she has a meeting in an hour), his palm is over her navel, his fingers are below the waistband of her pants (they too, are unbuttoned, she cannot remember doing that herself) swirling intricate designs, secret messages between his skin and hers. Her eyes are closed, absorbing the sensation (and the design, the messages of love) while he reads softly to her.

Her hand comes to rest on his, stroking the back with her thumb, her other hand dancing lightly down his forearm, caressing him, the soft hairs there. She moves to kiss the inside of his arm briefly, her mouth against the pale flesh of his inner elbow. She smiles and settles back again. His thumb is now moving in concentric circles.

His hand shifts slightly, an adjustment, and she is distracted by the feel of metal. It is not new – he has touched her before (often), has laced his fingers through hers, and she has felt this before. His wedding ring against her skin. She traces it now with her index finger, running it along the cool metallic surface, the line of its top and bottom, gold contrasting with her pale flesh.

"Why do you still wear it?" The question almost asks itself, she has no control over it as it forms within her and frees itself from her mouth. She almost gasps as the words break out, wanting to chase after and recapture them (fugitive thoughts released without sanction).

She feels his pause, feels the brush of air as he closes the book (as the atmosphere around them changes), the words to explain apparently not within his immediate grasp. She is not a woman of regrets, but she wishes she could reclaim this question, could pull it back from the air where it is swirling now, intangible yet managing to touch them both.

He is silent for some time and she worries that she has overstepped some mark, some invisible line that she had not been aware of (she is troubled by the very idea of its possible existence). She starts slightly when his voice, a low rumble, rolls over her. "Because losing a wife is..." he trails off and she stills, disquiet running through her (a mistress once before, she has no desire to be so again). His love for Galactica she will always abide, but she is already fighting death, she cannot fight a ghost for his love. The thought that she might have to is cutting her to her core.

"Ah." She nods softly, absently, lost in a tumultuous storm of thoughts, hearing only what he has said and not what he is saying. "You and Carolanne..." His fingers twitch against her skin and she realises in that second, in that tiny spasm of muscle that it is not Carolanne he meant.

(Rings and symbols and pieces of your heart you can look at. Wives you haven't married who are dying.)

Her heart starts to crack and she fears it is about to shatter (she does not wish to be lost, not from him, not ever) before she pain and fear slide away, supplanted by love that seals the breaks, making her heart stronger.

She smiles, her face aching with a happiness that is now bursting from her being, her flesh and bones incapable of holding it in. Words, the language between them (both their own words and others) are (thankfully) eluding her now. Giving voice to how she feels would be solidifying the ethereal, giving edges where there should be blurs. Words would act like boundaries, failing to outline the scope, instead reducing it, giving it limits, making it ordinary. What she feels for him is not ordinary.

"Bill." His name full of all the ways she has of saying love, full of all the vows they have taken without words. "I think you're supposed to ask a girl out before you jump to telling her that you've married her without her knowledge." (consent on the matter is not an issue)

"Amateur's mistake."

She laughs and feels free and loved and in love.

She is in love with him.