Curtain Call

Bill part 1

Despite the fact that the entire crew knew she had been staying in his quarters the past few months, usually when walking down the corridors they made some effort to separate themselves to be at least somewhat discreet. Not that it mattered anymore. No doubt his little display in the secondary storage bay had set at least one tongue wagging, but it wasn't as if they needed to wait for Baltar's next wireless address to disclose that information to the fleet. Laura's response to Zarek's lies wasn't likely to have left any doubt about their relationship for those listening – and considering that the exchange had been broadcast over an unsecured line while the basestar and the battlestar had been facing off with weapons locked, you could be fairly confident that everyone in the fleet had been listening.

He knew that she loved him – of that he had had no doubts. But there was a part of him that had always known that he loved her more than she loved him. She kept her heart well fortified against intruders. He couldn't fault her for that. Life's losses had taught her that lesson long ago.

They had had a transmitter with them as they headed for the CIC to retake it. Hearing her words to Zarek, discovering the true depth of her emotions for him had been something of a revelation.

She had sounded so strong, so determined over the com. All that adrenalin had left her now. Walking arm in arm with her from the ladder, he was keenly aware that he was supporting her more than just emotionally.

It had been hours since he had retaken control of the CIC. The long wait to be reunited had taken its toll on her. While Laura had immediately wanted to return to the Galactica upon hearing his voice, he had refused her shuttle permission to leave the basestar dock until he could be certain every part of his ship was secure and all those involved in the mutiny had been transferred to the Astral Queen. All those except Zarek and Gaeta.

Against all odds, them both having made it this far relatively unscathed, he wasn't about to lose her to a final desperate act on the part of some cornered mutineer or vengeful Zarek crony.

What had their worlds come to when he thought her safer on a cylon basestar than his own ship?

He moved his arm to her waist to better support her.

At the juncture, he found her pulling in the wrong direction. "Laura, everyone is assembled at the airlock."

She nodded without looking in his direction. "So you've said."

Still, she tried to lead him down the wrong path.

He assured her. "This will only take a few minutes then we can head back to our quarters."

"I just need a minute."

"They're waiting for our arrival, Laura."

"Just five minutes. Then I'll go with you." She squeezed his arm. "I promise."

He relented.

Closing the hatch to his quarters, he turned to find her slowly making her way across the room. She stopped by the desk and leaned against it.

"I need you."

He smiled. "I need you too."

She gave a light laugh as one of her hands reached to unclasp her pants. "I mean, I need you now. I need to feel you inside of me."

He couldn't think of what to say.

Zarek and Gaeta were waiting at that very moment for them to go witness their executions. They were already in the airlock.

She was starting to shake again. Moving closer, with not nearly the effort it should take, he lifted her on to the desk.

"No time for that." She reminded him as he leaned down to kiss her bare legs.

"We'll make time for it."

"Bill …" she yanked him by his hair with a force she didn't at the moment look to possess. "… I want – I need to feel you inside of me. I need to feel you alive inside of me."

Bill nodded. He understood that this wasn't about pleasure, but confirmation. One hand caressed her face as he kissed her lips. The other hand worked his buckle and pant fastenings. A reach of her hand and a few caresses that could hardly even be considered strokes had him hard enough to enter her. He tried to test the waters, to enter slowly, but pulling him towards her, she wouldn't have it. She wanted it all and she wanted it without any delay however necessary.

She flinched at the pain of her body's unpreparedness for him, but offered no other complaint. Not wanting to add to her discomfort, he held himself still inside her as he caressed her back through her blouse.

She rested her head against his chin. "Tom said you were …" she couldn't finish the words.

"He lied." Bill kissed a trail after the lone tear that escaped. It led him to her lips and he went willingly.

At the urging of her hips, he began to move inside her. They couldn't seem to get on the same rhythm. He tried to follow hers, but there was no regularity to it.

She broke the kiss by pulling her head back slightly. She was, he realized, having trouble catching her breath. He started to stop to let her recover, but she reprimanded him. "Not so slow."

He knew that since the return of her illness starting anything and being unable to complete it infuriated her. Being unable to complete this act, all the more so.

"You're very demanding today." He kissed the side of her face, her neck, her hand as it reached up to touch his face, anywhere he could reach on her.

"When aren't I?"

So true.

"I love frakking on desks. Did I ever tell you that was why I decided to become a teacher? So many desks all in one place."

He knew she was lying, about all of it, but he laughed for her anyway. They were using the desk because she certainly didn't have the stamina to be on top and her delicate frame couldn't support his girth for even a short time. Not that it mattered. What they were currently doing would be more accurately described as clinging to one another rather than frakking or even lovemaking.

She spoke directly into his ear. "Finish for me."

It was an easy enough command to follow. All he had to do was stop fighting with himself. Whenever he was inside her he found himself struggling to prolong her pleasure and not to lose control like a twelve year old.

After, with his arms still around her and a part of him inside her, she said it again. "Bill, I need you to finish this for me."

He started to protest. "Laura, you should be there."

Still holding herself against him, her head gave the slightest of shakes. "It needs to be done, but I don't need to see it."

"Laura, you're the President. You should –"

Her anguished tone put a stop to his pressing. "Tom and I … we used to …"

Trying not to show his apprehension, he waited for her to finish her revelation. Not that he wasn't thankful, but a small part of his mind still wondered how it came to be that at the start of the mutiny the guards outside his quarters were taken, but Laura was left inside unharmed. He realized that them both managing to survive the mutiny was no matter of divine intervention. The first order of business when overthrowing a government is to kill the old leaders so they can't attempt to regain control. Zarek was no fool. He knew that. Yet while Bill had been spared an immediate execution by the tattered remnants of Gaeta's once staunch sense of honor what had spared Laura?

Bill was many things, but blind wasn't one of them. He had seen the way Zarek had always looked at Laura – the anger and frustration at her professionally tinged with desire and an entirely different kind of frustration at her personally. Had Zarek spared her out of a sense of nostalgia for shared times past or in woefully mistaken hopes of a future?

If she had been involved with Zarek at one point – on New Caprica or shortly after the exodus when Bill had been still attempting to push her away it wouldn't exactly stun him. From what he knew of her past lovers, it seemed Laura's choice in men ranged from the slightly inappropriate to the wholly inappropriate – with Bill as no exception. If she had frakked Zarek, he was past caring about such petty things. She was here with him and alive. He would eagerly accept that as the cost.

" … We used to joke about the Quorum. I once, when they were being particularly unruly, suggested locking them in the room and letting them fight it out gladiator style until only one was left standing." As she squeezed her eyelids shut, a tear made its way out. "Tom said but that would still leave one. Let's just send in the marines and be done with them all."

With a sharp intake of air, she asked. "How did I not see this coming?"

"None of us did."

After another moment of holding her, he tried again. "We should get going."

"Yes, you should."

He made one final attempt. "You said you would come. You gave me your word."

She smiled ruefully. "Bill, I lied. I said what I had to to get what I wanted. I do that a lot. You really should have started to pick up on it by now."

She reached up with one hand to remove her wig. The hand shook and she couldn't seem to raise it high enough. As she started to just tug at some of the strands to pull the whole thing off, he reached up to properly remove the wig for her.

"We should take you to go see Cottle."

Starting to unbutton her blouse, she dismissed the idea. "Not tonight. I'm too tired to do this tonight."

He had to agree, she looked beyond exhausted and the doloxan treatments took so much out of her. Better to let her get a night's rest first. He helped her out of the rest of her clothes before more than half carrying her to their rack.

As he finished tucking her in, after having done most of the work of dressing her for bed himself, she did something she never did. She apologized. "I'm sorry, Bill. I really frakked things up this time."

"No you didn't, Laura. This wasn't your fault."

He could hear that she didn't believe him. He had never been as accomplished a liar as her. "If I had addressed the fleet sooner, if I hadn't just shut down maybe things wouldn't have gotten this far, but Earth hurt, Bill. I couldn't believe how much it hurt."

He knew what she meant. Neither had ever come right out and said it, but he knew they had both been hoping to find something on Earth – and that something wasn't a home for the fleet.

"This wasn't your fault, Laura. This was Zarek's doing."

"I put Tom Zarek in the vice presidency. I put him in the position to do this."

"We've both known since the beginning that Tom would do something like this sooner or later. Vice president or not, he would have tried it. You put him where you could keep him close and watch him."

"And then I stopped watching him." She grimaced.

"This isn't all Zarek's doing. Gaeta and the others had a choice."

"Did they Bill? When is the last time that any of us really had a choice?

"We asked too much too soon of people who have already been asked to give too much for too long. The cylons wiped out our civilization, our entire way of life. We've spent the last four years running from them to survive. Suddenly we're forming an alliance? Embracing their technology? Your pilots who have spent the last four years living in fear for their lives daily, watching their friends get blown out of the sky, are now being told to fly along side them? Have them watch their backs? We should have expected more resistance. I should have handled it better."

She sighed. "Maybe I would have if I had more time, but everything is running out Bill – food, water, fuel, everything, even time. Ships are breaking down. We need to find a place to settle and we needed a way to get the cylons to let us settle."

"I know. You're right." He understood that – he understood it better than her. She was referring to civilian ships in the fleet breaking down. He hadn't yet told her about the structural wear Tyrol had discovered in the FTL drive room. But he also understood that he wasn't the one in the room that she was trying so desperately to convince with her words.

He picked up her hand to press a kiss to it – her hand felt so cold. "I'll be back soon."

She squeezed his hand. "Tell Lee I'll need to see him tomorrow first thing."

He rubbed her hand, trying to warm it. "Tomorrow first thing we need to see Cottle. You've been off the doloxan too long already. We can't give the cancer a chance to regroup." Any more than it already had.

He tried to catch her eyes with his, but she closed hers.

"After Lee. I promise."