The Ex-President Part Two:

Tabula Rasa

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."

~ Winston Churchill ~

Chapter I

Admiral Adama had hoped to slip out of his quarters this morning without ever waking the temperamental redhead curled up on his sofa, therefore he had tiptoed around his quarters getting ready, quietly shutting the bathroom door to muffle the sound of the water as he performed his morning ablutions. He had even decided to get his breakfast elsewhere this morning rather than risk Private Boyd waking her on delivering it. Unfortunately, feeling slightly the worse for wear, he wasn't quick enough to leave before Colonel Tigh arrived for their morning briefing and his slamming of the hatch alone was enough to startle Laura awake.

Noticing movement to his left, the colonel turned. 'Well don't you look like a ball of sunshine,' grinned Saul, taking in her panda-eyes and mussed-up hair, which seemed to grow redder with her annoyance. 'How's your head?' he asked, obviously way louder than necessary as far as Laura was concerned.

'Frak off,' she said grumpily, pulling the blanket up over her head with a groan and for the briefest moment Saul could have sworn he had seen her flipping him off.

He raised his eyebrows at Bill as he entered his office, 'Charming.'

'Why do you think I didn't wake her?' he said quietly. Very quietly. 'So I guess Ellen decided to let you live.'

'That's because she's thinking up something worse than death,' said Tigh, no doubt speaking from experience. 'So what did you two get up to after we left?'

'Not much. We went to sleep not long after you left,' said Bill, putting his shoes on behind his desk.

'Must have been pretty wasted to not make it back to her own room,' he said, given that her room was less than fifteen metres down the corridor.

'As if you're one to talk about getting 'pretty wasted', Colonel,' said Laura frostily behind him, swathed in her blanket, having peeled herself off the leather couch. Damn she was stealthy.

'Never said I was,' he remarked, with entirely too much enjoyment as she winced again at his volume.

'Maybe it would be better if you said nothing at all,' suggested Laura, rubbing her temple as she made her way into the bathroom and closed the door carefully behind her.

'What crawled up her ass?' asked Tigh.

'Three-quarters of a bottle of whisky,' said Bill, though he knew the hangover was probably only half to blame - if that. He pulled on his uniform jacket.

'That why you're in such a hurry to get out of here?' asked Saul, looking faintly amused.

'Worry about yourself,' he warned, secretly pleased to see someone else get it in the neck from Laura for a change. Suddenly he wasn't in nearly as much of a rush to leave. He might even stay for breakfast if there was going to be a floor show.

'I've had my fill of moody women for one morning,' said Saul. 'Maybe I'll meet you in CIC.'

'Might be wise,' said Bill, chuckling a little as he clocked the bruise on Saul's forehead. 'I won't be long.'

'I bet you won't,' said Saul, quickly adopting an expression of innocence as the bathroom door opened again and Laura stuck her head out.

She ignored Saul, holding a bottle of pills up so Bill could see them. 'Painkillers,' he confirmed and she retrieved the glass of water Bill had abandoned on the drinks-cart last night before disappearing back into the bathroom.

Saul tilted his head as if to say 'good luck' and made a swift getaway while he could. Bill looked around for his glasses. They weren't where he usually left them before bed and now he was trying to remember when he'd last had them. Certainly during the triad game. He checked the table and then around and along the top of the sofas (in case Laura had found them and put them out of the way) and was in the process of feeling down the sides of the cushions when Laura finished in the bathroom.

'Lost something?' she asked, the blanket now folded in her arms, not quite obscuring the black vest he had been surreptitiously admiring the night before. Okay, maybe not the vest itself but in his defence he hadn't had an ungenerous amount to drink himself.

'Glasses,' he said, slowly straightening up as he realised where they might have vanished to. There was every possibility that he had been so busy ogling Laura in that top while he was bending over to get her bedding out last night that he had failed to notice his glasses slip out of his breast pocket. He opened the trunk and, sure enough, after a few seconds of probing amongst the spare blankets he had his hands on his glasses. He might have spent a very long time looking for them and serve him right for losing them in so wicked an activity.

Laura looked mystified, 'How did you-?'

'Lucky guess,' he said quickly, taking the blanket she offered him and dropping it into the open trunk before looking determinedly at her face, which she had taken the opportunity to wash.

He was about to ask her if she was staying for breakfast when the phone started to buzz and Laura cringed, putting her hands over her ears and creating some distance between herself and the deliberately abrasive noise, which didn't help her much as it was coming from the direction of his office too. Picking up the receiver by the door, Bill soon found himself having trouble concentrating on what Dee was telling him about a drifting transport shuttle as Laura, rather than gathering her things to leave, climbed into his bunk and slid beneath the covers with a sigh. He was further distracted when, after a protracted bout of wriggling, she dropped her trousers out from under said covers. His covers. On his bunk. Laura was in his bunk in that top with no trousers on…

He swallowed. 'Launch the rescue bird,' he said to Dee, hanging up without knowing if there had been more and moving cautiously towards his office. He needed a couple of files off his desk. Honestly.

'I'm stealing your bunk for a few hours,' she said, her pale arms and shoulders above the covers, the rest of her sadly hidden.

Just be cool, Bill. 'I'd say help yourself but you already have.'

'Would you like me to get out?' she asked, propping her head up on her arm and looking far cuter than a middle-aged woman should after a night of heavy drinking.

Bill glanced at the crumpled trousers on the floor but somehow managed to say without a hint of innuendo, 'Stay as long as you want.'

'Thanks,' she said, settling down again. 'Thank the gods I wasn't in my room when that frakking music went off today. I think my head might have exploded.' She shuddered at the thought.

'It wouldn't have. I had it switched off yesterday afternoon,' he said, picking up the files. He thought she'd earned it. After all the point had been to get her out of her room and, well, she definitely wasn't in her room anymore. 'I'll let you get back to sleep.'

'Thank you, Bill,' she said and he gave a mental sigh. He'd fantasised about having Laura Roslin in his bed many times and in none of those fantasies had he been leaving. Life was cruel.