Until you love

by MTraverAndujar

Love is not your weakness. It is your strength.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bill and Laura. They cannot belong to anyone besides each other.

This fic is for Julia and Claudia. For being smart, caring, determined, funny, brave, amazing women. And the kind of friends that make you love life.

Everything is going to be alright.

That is the first thought crossing his mind as soon as he is alone again. It has been his very first thought the moment Lieutenant Agathon has said the words aloud, barely holding back his emotion, hiding under his professional mask, the glint of a smile lighting up his features. The words Bill most needed to hear.

Colonel Tigh has set up a resistance body and awaits instructions to coordinate the rescue.

A wave of relief has washed over him head to toes. It is possibly a premature reaction taking into account the huge risk attached to the operation he intends to carry out. However, this is the first good news he hears in almost four months. Being able to restore communication with the surface, thus getting to learn that his friends, his collaborators, his family are alive and far from surrendering feels like a blow of mild breeze on his face, the first open door to the hope of seeing them all again. The magnitude of his relief is such that he suddenly cannot understand how he has managed to carry on for so many weeks ignoring the fate of the New Caprica settlers. Fearing the worst. All of a sudden, a fresh surge of energy floods his veins. For the first time in four agonizing months he feels truly capable of bringing them back.

Athena was right. He sees it now. Helo's words do not just mark the starting point of an almost suicide operation which has obfuscated Bill's mind and haunted his dreams for weeks. Those words are also the confirmation that there are actually people alive down there. People who have never given up all this time, people who have never lost hope. People who have refused to quit trusting he would come back. Learning his beloved family is not lost forever and has never stopped believing in him is what ultimately makes it possible for him to forgive himself. He cannot and will not let them down. He has made up his mind already and he feels free: he is ready to do what he has to do.

Just like he did four months ago. But back then, doing what he had to do had resulted in an atrocious penance.

He always has trouble making the appropriate decisions when his personal feelings are involved. When the cylons found them, it required Lee's stubbornness to open up his eyes and make him see crystal clear that they did not stand a chance: their only realistic alternative was to jump away. He himself delivered the order. All this time he has known deep down that it had been the right decision. However, he has not managed to get rid of the doubts and the guilt, not even for a second. How must all his people have felt seeing the cylons march down the lanes of their fragile tent camp, lifting their eyes to the sky just to find out Galactica was no longer there? Can any terror be worse than the cold fear that grips the human heart when the ones supposed to protect you from a sure death fly away leaving you defenseless at your enemy's mercy?

Of course there were people, mostly military, who knew about the existence of a contingency plan which would be activated immediately in the event that the cylons came back. People who had received precise instructions on how to carry out said plan. However, this fact has done nothing to calm down his tortured conscience. No, when he could not even know if those specific, reliable people were still alive. No, when his very own life does not seem to hold much meaning unless it remains linked to humanity's fate. Jumping away had meant saving a few hundreds while sacrificing several thousands on the surface of the planet, all of it for a bigger purpose: the survival of humanity as a species, not that of specific people. This purpose is what matters most to him but, at the same time, his war-weathered heart could not care less about it right now: except for his own son, everyone else he loves in the entire, vast universe they have spent years wandering through is currently down there.

Tigh. There is his frown, his harsh features, at the bottom of the glass of ambrosia whose content swirls between his fingers. Bill does not need to make any effort to remember the last time he saw him. It hurts. It hurts to think how he encouraged him to settle down there with Ellen, mere hours before the cylons invaded that mud rock. Thinking he was doing his friend a favor, believing he was granting him his last chance to enjoy a normal life, even a well- deserved retirement, he really sentenced him to the Gods only know which kind of grief and misery. Tigh resisted, that he did. He would want to hear nothing about leaving the ship. He was certain the threat was still out there, as invisible as imminent. Bill has lost count of the times he has wondered when exactly he himself stopped believing, deep down, that the cylons would be back. This is the only explanation he finds for his own recurrent insistence until his lifelong friend consented to go planetside. He had just been certain about one thing: he would be the last to settle when the moment would come. He would sacrifice his life so that others could enjoy theirs. There was still a long time ahead before he would allow himself to follow them. They are his children: that is a job you never retire from.

Who knows… maybe with this turn of the events, the fact that Tigh is down there proves to be a nice strategic asset after all.

Kara, he muses, and he smiles despite himself. If he knows her a little, she must have devoted her body and soul to kicking cylon asses and turning them into loads of scrap. He can almost see her, her expression triumphant, her eyes on fire, the battle cry always ready on her throat. It is like this he prefers to imagine her. He is just not ready to consider how her reckless, fighter spirit must have turned her into one of the main cylons' objectives. He cannot afford considering it. No, if he wants to have any chance of success in this mission. Kara is alive, alive and vibrant and stubborn and she alone is capable of leading the whole resistance army towards victory.

Bill drains the liquid in his glass in one long, last gulp and leaves it on the table. He pours one more finger from the bottle and leans back in the couch with a soft grunt. He lets his head fall back and closes his eyes. He is suddenly having trouble breathing.

Chief. He vividly remembers the moment he allowed him to join the settlers. The moment he gave him permission to love, to become a father. To build a future. To live. He does not cheat on himself: Chief might not forgive him. He might not be able to forgive himself in that situation. Of all his children, Chief is possibly the one who will clearly understand how it was Bill's wrong calculation, and not his own mistake, that left him at the horror's mercy. Bill remembers it was Laura who, the night before, convinced him there was nothing he could do. Nobody could blame all those people who had lost everything, who had carried a runaway existence for more than a year, for wanting to try and play life again.

Maybe she was right. Maybe there was nothing he could have done anyway.

Her. Laura. Too late to push her away: he has been here thinking for too long, letting his defenses down, now that the closeness of the mission uncovers the pain in his gut and lets it flow out like the steam of a pressure cooker. There is nothing he can do to stop it. Not now that he sees her in his mind like the last time they were together: smiling, glowing, wrapped in that red dress. A vision that took his breath away and made his pulse race, giving him more shivers than any threat in his extensive military career.

He deliberately ignores the lump in his throat. He wants to keep thinking about her.

If there is a thought he cannot stand at all it is the thought of Laura trapped down there, putting up with deprivation, cold, starvation. Maybe sick, stalked, in detention. Tortured. Bill presses his eyelids shut. He could kill anyone who hurts her with his own hands. He clenches his fists until his nails dig in his flesh, maybe to hold on a little longer, maybe to get ready to attack.

He should have been able to spare her such hell.

Yet it was Laura who decided to settle and he held back the urge to convince her to do otherwise. She had read his thoughts and smiled; she had looked at him with all the tenderness of the universe in her eyes and had lifted a hand to his cheek.

"I want to make myself useful, Bill. I know they might not deserve it but I want to keep doing something, being helpful somehow."

Her people. Just like him, Laura still feels responsible. She wants to do whatever she can for them, for those who have turned their backs to her, voting against her candidacy and in favor of the person who has betrayed her, and settling in that nasty place which represents her defeat, the loss of a dream, of a mission, the certainty of a resounding failure. Sacrificing herself once again.

Sacrificing him.

Bill stays silent. After a beat, he smiles back at her and nods faintly, certain that she will be able to read everything else in his eyes. And then, slowly, Laura winds her arms around his torso and hugs him. It takes him a split second to catch up with her. He holds her tight, running his fingers through her hair, feeling as if all his pieces are pulled together again, wondering if this hug is the final goodbye from this woman he does not want to lose for anything in the world. Or maybe… maybe it is the other way around and her sudden display of affection holds the promise of a future, an open door for their feelings even if they will be physically apart.

"Don't be a stranger."

Laura's voice sounds thick with tears. He pulls away a little just to be able to see her face and he finds it beaming and wet.

"I'll visit you. You won't be alone, Laura. I'll always be here. I'm always with you."

She bites her lower lip and nods.

"Please" she begs, voice shaking.

Bill holds her face between his hands and looks at her intensely. He comes closer slowly, to give her time to figure out his intentions and draw back if that is what she wants. But her pupils dance, and the corners of her mouth twitch upwards slightly and she tilts her face towards him and closes her eyes the moment their lips are close enough. Then he kisses her, softly first, deeper a few moments after, and he strokes her hair and sweeps her tears from her cheeks with his fingertips. As her lips welcome him, her fingers crawl up to the back of his neck and it is like the night she promoted him, but different: that night, her kiss was also a goodbye just like now. This time, however, maybe there can be something else for them: a future Laura can also be a part of, ready to welcome her, a future meant for her too.

It had been weeks before he had seen her again. At last, he had been given permission to go planetside for the groundbreaking ceremony. Laura had found him first. She had surprised him behind a tent, away from the core of the party. Eyes closed, happily receiving the caress of the sun rays on his face, enjoying this new warmth, his toes playing with the sand. She had greeted him and her voice behind his back had startled him: he had felt like a little boy caught plotting a prank, momentarily intimidated, and he had mused something about the alluvial deposits, just to hear her teasing tone a moment after and finally dare to look at her. To admire her, he must admit: his eyes had given him away by watching her intently, head to toes. Because Laura was glowing, literally. And he had read in her eyes that nothing had changed between them. He had known it instantly. If anything, they were freer now. Laura's hand stroking his arm a moment after had told him that much. Her contact had awakened his senses and comforted him at the same time. Bill had felt a deep peace and joy.

They had each other. They had time. The entire day.

"I had forgotten you can dance, Admiral."

"No problem, Madame President. Please just allow me to refresh your memory."

Laura cocks her head to the side and arches an eyebrow. With that gesture, she intends to disguise something she knows Bill can guess just the same: the usage of her former title, which she had so often regretted because of the distance it created between her and the others, has just become praise in Bill's lips. This is a trick of their shared, silent intimacy. Bill has done it on purpose and he does not try to hide it, either. He offers her his hand with the shadow of a smile dancing on his lips and Laura, apparently proud, deeply moved inside, lets him guide her to the dance floor. Let them watch if they want. Even Baltar: if that motherfrakker is going to grant Bill permission to come to the planet as seldom as possible, today he will have to put up with it because today is their day, hers and his, a day for them and them only. Nobody will rob them of this.

One of his hands holds Laura's softly, the other finds the small of her back. With every swing of the dance he pulls her closer, almost inadvertently, just for her to notice. He barely adjusts the position of his fingers, spreads them across her waist sweetly claiming her to him. Laura searches and finds his eyes and Bill knows what she sees in them when her pupils widen and a faint blush colors her cheeks. They could spend the whole day just like this, in this embrace, this posture which reflects so well the half- distance between affection and professional decorum they have gotten used to for so many months. They could stay like this forever, acknowledging the presence of something else between them, tasting it without haste, rocking to the beat of the music and the intimate happiness of being together again. And now it is Laura who adjusts the angle of her arm and leans on him a bit further, and her hair tickles his cheek, and her scent penetrates his nostrils, and his heart dances within his chest. When she lifts her head from his shoulder and glances at him again, Bill knows she is completely conscious of what she is doing, too. She is bold and purposeful. And he knows there is nothing more natural than this. There is no malice: this is what is meant to be.

A while later, drinks in hand, she tells him about her dreams. Those she has started harboring despite herself in this place whose mere existence she had cursed at first. And she glances at him intently over the rim of her glass while she takes a sip, and the glint in her eyes and the tone of her voice are inviting, tempting, and the foreign sun of this planet draws impossible nuances of auburn and red from her clothes and her hair and all of a sudden, Bill finds himself fantasizing about living down there, making up his mind and building a cabin with her, just for the two of them. Even if he feels the moment has not yet arrived, that he still cannot do it, he understands the only future he contemplates for himself includes Laura. She will be his only possible life once his mission is over. Whatever it is, it will not be without her.

When the night falls and they lie down on the pile of sandbags that shelter the back of her tent, he has not said any of this aloud yet. Part of him feels he should: Laura has a right to know and he does not think she would reject him. However, the other half of his mind tells him that this moment, this precise moment stargazing together, Laura's head resting on his shoulder, her long fingers tracing lazy circles on the thick fabric of his uniform jacket, her weight flooding his side with warmth, all of this is already an implicit admission of their mutual feelings. This instant is so precious and magical that it is just impossible that she is not feeling the same. This moment is already perfect just like it is.

Laura is quiet. She has been whispering for a while, speaking about the people's wishes, about their dreams, about the importance of living the moment because maybe, she says, this is all we will ever have. When she looks up at him with shining eyes and cuddles against his side even further, Bill knows she is also speaking for herself. After a while, she wriggles a little and he turns his head to her, afraid that she might be considering leaving. Laura props her head on her elbow, her face on the palm of her hand, and watches him with a dreamy smile. Bill just looks back at her, keeps the connection between their souls through the bridge of their eyes.

Then, she drops her lids and leans over him. Bill knows what she is about to do. The anticipation feels almost as sweet as the actual touch of Laura's lips on his. Her contact is soft like Caprican breeze and Bill lets her in, welcomes her, invites her, eagerly participates in the party she has just gotten started. It feels both intoxicating and so very natural. He lifts a hand to her hair which frames her face like a thick curtain and holds it back gently, and he sneaks his fingers on the nape of her neck and pulls her to him. And now it is him who decides how long their kiss lasts, and he strokes Laura's lips with his own, and rejoices in her mouth, and holds her head in place and lets her pull back just enough to draw breath, and keeps her there with soft and firm determination, and she smiles and hums, eyes closed, against his lips.

His other hand has been resting wrapped around Laura's waist. Now it comes alive and finds its way under her camisole until his fingers lay on her skin. That hand strokes her gently as it traces its way up her hip, and Bill never thought her skin could be so soft, and deep down he always knew it would be. Laura fails to stifle a gasp and that sound and that moment mark a point of no return. Just a few moments earlier, Bill would have been happy just enjoying this sweet intimacy with Laura, sharing this with her, quietly acknowledging the feelings beating between them. He would have settled for waiting a bit longer before letting his guard down, forgetting his responsibilities and allowing himself to obey his heart's dictates. But right now, in this exact moment when Laura kisses him and let him caress her and responds to his touch, in this precise moment when her throat casts a sound he has never heard before, Bill cannot think of any reason convincing enough to prolong a wait that has clearly been far too long already. He owes this to himself, if only because he was too close to losing her forever. He owes this to Laura, because she survived and she wants to be here with him, now. Bill cannot help being amazed by the fact that this woman seems to have chosen him but he does not have it in him to question her. He wraps his arms around her and rolls them over until she is lying on her back. Laura gazes at him from down there, eyes sparkling, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips and sweet anticipation flooding her features. Bill strokes her cheek.

"So beautiful" he whispers.

Laura blinks and he can tell her eyes have turned moist as if him admiring her qualities as a woman and not just as a president would be about as much as she could take without her walls breaking a little further. They glance at each other for a few seconds, both of them well aware of what will happen next. What they are about to make happen, at last. They have done nothing yet but they can no longer stop it. And they look at each other like sharing the secret, another one to add to the list of the secrets they keep between them, but this one is unique, it is special, it is meant for Laura and Bill only. The Admiral and the President have no business here.

Laura lifts her hand and mirrors his earlier gesture, laying it on his rough cheek, and her touch is both soft and electrifying. Slowly, Bill's lips and hands find cracks between the layers of her clothes and he slips his fingers through them and caresses her skin without leaving her exposed to the cold night air. Laura closes her eyes and lets him have his way with her and arches towards him, and Bill feels her slender fingers wrapped in his hair, stroking his back. He traces the line of her neck with his lips, then he opens an access to her belly and her breasts. He licks her belly button and she shudders violently. He treats every inch of her skin with equal measures of intensity and delicacy, like he always treats all of her. He holds Laura's wrists over her head with one hand. She quivers gently under his caresses and his body which leans more and more over hers. And Bill never thought that this, this was possible at all with her, with Laura; he never thought he could feel like this at his age. Maybe ever. When he was introduced to that naïve and annoying schoolteacher more than a year ago this is the last thing he thought would happen. He never imagined how amazing she was; he never imagined that he would end up loving her, that they would end up falling in love with each other.

Even that day when he kissed her, she was going to die. He never contemplated a future. Neither did she, he knows it full well.

The moment his hand sneaks under the elastic of her skirt, Laura pants and he instinctively holds her tighter, sealing her lips with his own.

"Sssshhh…"

Bill's hand insists, traces its way down, and dares to go further while his other hand keeps holding Laura's wrists over her head. She closes her eyes, arches her back and whimpers softly through half- parted lips. Bill watches her as she abandons herself to him and comes more and more undone. He has seen other women like this, but this is not any woman: this is Laura, and this fact fills him with astonishment as if the experience was entirely new for him.

As soon as he releases her hands, Laura holds on to him like a lifesaver while he keeps guiding her towards the peak of her pleasure. Laura's arms wrap tightly around his shoulders and she hides her face in the crook of his neck while her whole body tenses and trembles. Bill holds her against him. He will protect her. He will sustain her. He was born for nothing else than this.

"Bill…"

She barely gasps his name before reaching the peak of the wave and rolling down the other side. Bill keeps her tightly held against his own body while she shivers out of control, until he feels her start to relax and her breath becomes less ragged. Then he loosens the circle of his arms and lays her down on the ground. He watches her, spellbound. He never thought Laura could ever be more beautiful than he had already seen her, than she was earlier today. Laura is beautiful when she is angry, rage and determination lighting up her features. She is beautiful when she is lost in thought and her smartness twinkles in her eyes. She is beautiful when she is quiet watching what is going on around her, paying undivided attention to what others need to tell her. She is beautiful when she walks among her students' desks and leans over to review their work and lays a hand on their shoulders and encourages them, and comforts them (and even now, in this precise moment when Laura is his more than she ever was, more than anyone else's, Bill envies those kids so badly). She is beautiful when she is resting on his couch at the end of a long day, barefoot, sharing her worries and secrets with him, relaxed, exhausted, resolute, every inch his partner. But all these Lauras pale in comparison to the one undone before him now, abandoned, disheveled hair, shiny eyes, parted lips, just a woman, no less than her, giving herself to him, trusting his hands, accepting the pleasure he offers, letting him take her wherever he wants as long as it is with him.

Bill leans over and seals her lips again with a long kiss she welcomes and wraps herself with her own. Carefully, he smoothes Laura's shirt over her belly so that the cold does not get a chance to bite at her flesh. Then he kneels between her legs. He lifts the rim of her skirt gently, his fingertips caressing her legs in passing, those legs he has dreamed of touching much more often than he would have ever admitted before today. Laura's giggle is barely a whisper. And Bill smiles back at her sheepishly, knowing her laughter is her joy at his admiration, and her permission to go on, and the expression of her deep happiness.

Slowly, Bill finds his way until he enters her fully, and then she hugs him and lifts her head from the floor and kisses him, reassuring him, encouraging him. And again, he waits for a few seconds. He would like to be able to explain to her that he has stopped to allow her to get comfortable but also because he needs to grant himself a moment, because the sensation of being one with her is sweet and overwhelming. Then, Bill starts moving and she whimpers again and Bill wants this to be over and he wants it to never end. He wants to live in the illusion that he can stay like this forever, tangled with her. He slides his fingers under her shirt and finds her breast again and rocks it, and he feels its soft roundness, and he feels Laura pulling at him with her hands and pushing with her heels to bring him deeper.

"Gods, Laura…"

She smiles against his collarbone and lets out a broken moan and Bill understands that, just like him, she can no longer form any coherent thought. For a second, he wonders if someone might have heard or seen them, if someone might have passed close by, even right beside them. He cannot tell. He has not had eyes and ears for anything else than her, here, and now. Either way, it is too late to worry about it. He sharpens his ears: he hears the distant music from the party, screams, laughter. Nothing else. Laura's hands pull at his head softly. When she is certain he is back with her again, she smiles at him lovingly and holds him closer.

This time, Bill does not stop. Not until the end. His need for her is agonizing and makes his pace resolute, then harsh, then erratic. Laura moans in sweet desperation, surrenders to him, lets him take her up to the thin border where pleasure becomes pain. Her overload senses make her helpless. Whatever he does to her he will get away with it. She no longer belongs to herself.

And it is his undoing.

When everything is over, Laura clings to him in a desperate, impossibly tight embrace. He kisses her eyelids, her cheeks, her forehead, her lips. He could live with nothing more than this. He could do this over and over again until the day he dies.

He smoothes Laura's clothes again and wraps her in his arms, and he feels her relax against his body. He wonders if she lies when she says she is not cold: he would tell the same lie with no second thoughts so as to never remove himself from her side.

The next morning Bill wakes under some covers that were not here the night before. Laura must have gone get them at some point while he slept. A wave of apprehension hits him at the thought that she might have left. He tilts his head to the side and looks down. There she is: sound asleep, her head on his shoulder, her tangled hair spread across his jacket, her breathing even, her arm around his chest, resting quietly, confidently, as if she was not afraid of losing him yet. He strokes her side over her clothes, under the covers. He kisses her forehead. The substances they consumed last night have long been cleaned from his bloodstream but Bill does not regret a single thing.

Laura opens her eyes slowly. Bill watches her wake, mesmerized. Furtively silent, he enjoys the gift of getting to know her in that intimate, vulnerable, unguarded moment. He hears the hoarse sound at the back of her throat; he sees her lashes fall and rise several times while she tries to bring her sight back into focus. He waits for her to gain consciousness, to figure out where she is, and with whom. He waits for her to remember. When she finally does, Laura lifts her eyes to him. They light up from the inside with a green glow when she sees him there as if someone had set them ablaze. A dreamy, splendid smile spreads across her features and Bill immediately understands she does not regret it, either.

The memories are both sweet and agonizing. Bill opens his eyes and lifts his head from the back of the couch when he feels a tear rolling freely down his cheek. He lets it be. It is OK. Right now, all his ghosts are dancing wildly. All his fears, his regrets, his guilt, and the reality of Laura who could not be more present in the room if she had actually been there, flesh and bone. She is more real now than she ever was in all those nights he spent thinking of her in the darkness and loneliness of his rack until the exhaustion of his soul claimed him to sleep. More tangible than all the nights he has dreamed of her, asleep or otherwise, evoking her presence, the sound of her voice, her scent, her taste, her touch.

If he can feel her closer now, maybe she really is.

Maybe it is because he is going to find her and bring her back.

Bill sits up and stares at the wall in front of him absentmindedly. His gaze breaks through that wall and sees much farther, through the corridors of Galactica, across the vast universe, several faster-than-light jumps, until he reaches the surface of that mud hole and finds himself at the entrance of her tent.

He pushes the curtain aside. Laura is standing with her back towards him: she is placing a stack of notebooks on the table. She turns around, startled. The moment she sees him, her lips curve up in a warm smile and her beautiful face lights up. There are grey round shadows under her eyes, she looks messy and exhausted but he does not see any of it. He smiles back and walks towards her, and lays his hands on her shoulders while he watches her just a bit longer.

"Bill…" he hears her choked whisper.

He takes one step, maybe two. Their eyes lock, they hold their breathings. Then, slowly, they fall in each other's arms. Bill feels her cling to him as if she does not have anything else to hold on to in the whole universe. As if she could only afford the world falling apart as long as he is with her. And he holds her even tighter. He cannot say a word. Not even her name.

Bill blinks and gets out of his daydreaming. He grunts and pinches the bridge of his nose. No, it will not happen like that, he cannot afford the weakness of imagining their reunion when there are still so many things that could go wrong, and so many parts of the plan have to be carried out perfectly before he can actually see Laura again, before he can hold her in his arms once more.

The Admiral of the fleet should be focused, under control, not disturbed, lacking concentration, lost in his dreams.

And yet…

It is not enough to live. You need something to live for.

Maybe, just maybe, it is feeling what gives him strength. Maybe it is because he cares that all the people down there are going to have a chance at survival. And maybe it is Laura's image in his mind, her warm memories in his heart, the feel of her touch on his skin which he can recreate just half- closing his eyelids, maybe it is because he knows with such certainty what she would like him to do, maybe it is all this that will allow him to carry out this mission. If Laura was not trapped down there with everyone else, his chances at success might be much weaker. Because, no matter how hard you try to fulfil your duty, no game is won until the heart gets involved.

Until you love.

His entire body is tense like a panther about to jump. The wrinkles in his frown seem carved with the edge of a knife. His fists hold the cushion he is sitting over. His jaw is clenched like the gears of a stationed train. He lowers his gaze to his glass. It does not feel like the rest of amber liquid at its bottom holds any mystery he should fathom anymore. It does not seem to contain anything for him. He exhales the air he has been holding for a while. For far too long. And he closes his eyes.

His voice is a renewed promise, a deep longing, a prayer.

"Hang in there, Laura. I'm with you. I'm coming for you."

Just then, he knows he will see her again.

Thank you for reading and thank you to those who encourage me to keep writing!