AN: Okay, so originally this chapter was meant to be the last of part three of The Ex-President but, let's face it, I really screwed up the posting of this story! It was meant to be one four-chapter story but nobody seemed to want to read a 10,000+ word chapter, so I bowed to popular demand and split them into more manageable chunks. Unfortunately I was too attached to the four chapter idea (and the neat names and quotes I'd thought so perfect) to realise how much harder it would make it for the readers to continue to follow this story by splitting it the way I did. What I should have done was just lump them all together. What can I say, I don't adapt to change well! Sorry to anyone this has been a problem for. The rest of the story will continue from here - all the way to the end!

Fate

Chapter IV

'Thank the gods,' Laura groaned, locking the hatch for good measure just in case the Tighes decided to come back and slumping against it for a moment. Lee and Cottle had bid their adieus too so it was just her and Bill now, company she enjoyed rather than endured. Not that Lee and the doctor were bad company per se, she just couldn't help playing the role they expected of her. She had been president for the better part of the last year, she hadn't had the liberty of just being herself with many people, really only one since Billy's death.

She paused to kick Bill softly in the shin before stepping over his feet and taking the seat next to him on the couch, tucking her legs up under her.

'What was that for?'

'Not letting me help Ellen leave the ship,' she said, raising an eyebrow at him as she sipped her drink. 'And, oh yeah,' she switched her glass to the hand resting on the back of the sofa so she could punch him in the arm. 'That was for Boyd.'

Bill began to laugh. 'Poor kid.'

'Poor me!' she protested, hitting him again and nearly slopping her drink down his neck. 'I was blind-sided! I mean, the kid can't be more than twenty!'

'Must be the sexy school-teacher thing.' Shit. He hadn't meant to insert 'sexy' into that sentence; talk about your Freudian slips.

Fortunately Laura was laughing rather than looking horrified. 'I suppose it wouldn't be the first time,' she said, giving Bill the impression that there was a story there, one he was never going to hear.

'What?' he asked when her expression sobered a moment later.

She shook her head a little. 'I was just thinking, everyone I ever slept with is dead now…'

Bill had never thought of it that way, but it sobered him now as it had done with Laura. It lent such a sadness to the memories. Even those girls on Picon they'd been laughing about not so long ago. Gone now.

'You were never 'close' to any of the crew?' asked Laura curiously.

He shifted sideways a little so he could see her better. 'Never with a subordinate,' he answered honestly, trying to ignore the fact that his leg was now touching her knee. 'Always had a thing for the boss.'

He didn't realise how easily that statement could apply to Laura until it was already out. He wished he could blame the alcohol but he hadn't had enough to justify two slip-ups in one night. No, it was all on Laura; if she were only being her usual prickly self he wouldn't be feeling so damned comfortable right now. 'I'm not the only one,' he added, in an effort to distract from his own admission.

Laura definitely caught the implication in his words, narrowing her eyes at him a little with that dip of the head, as if she were looking over the top of the glasses she wasn't wearing.

'You and Adar, right?' he stated baldly. Well if he was being honest, she could be too.

She shook her head and smiled a little, dropping her gaze, which was all the confirmation Bill needed.

'So when the worlds ended-?'

Laura shook her head, 'No. No, it was over by then. Well, it ended that day actually,' she admitted, sipping her whisky. 'He asked me to resign.'

This was a surprise to Bill. Adar had been trying to push her out and she had ended up with his job? The gods had a sick sense of humour. It suddenly occurred to him to ask (though the thought alone made him angry) if Adar had known about her cancer at the time. Had Laura? They'd never talked about it.

Laura laughed. Not because it was funny, it was just that she still wasn't sure how she'd still been standing at the end of that day. 'No, I'd just found out myself that morning and Richard, well, he wasn't exactly inviting confidences at the time.'

'So you found out you had cancer, broke up with the president, got fired, and still came to Galactica to make a speech?' he asked incredulously, summing up one of the worst days of her life pretty succinctly.

'You don't get fired in politics, you get asked to resign,' she corrected. 'Which I had no intention of doing. Don't look at me like that, Bill,' she said, placing her glass on the bookshelf. 'It's old news.'

'Not today,' he said, chest heavy with the thought of what she'd been through. How different things would have been if he'd only known then what he knew now.

'If it hadn't been for all the shocks I'd already been through that day I probably wouldn't have handled the attacks as well as I did,' she said thoughtfully.

'Yeah, you didn't do bad,' he said, knowing this was a gross understatement. Where would they all be now if she hadn't gathered her flock and convinced him to guard it? Repeatedly. 'For a school-teacher,' he added, remembering his remarks to Lee once upon a time. It was meant to be a joke, but somehow it didn't seem so funny once he'd said it out loud. He'd been incredibly dismissive of her in the beginning. 'Laura -'

'Don't,' she said, reading his mind and shaking her head slightly. 'We may not have started out on the right foot but we've been through too much together for regrets. Whatever happened back then, I know I can count on you now. I know that.' She smiled a little, trying, he knew, to convince him that she meant what she said.

What she couldn't possibly know was how much it meant to him to hear her say that. The sand had shifted under her feet so often, he liked the thought of being something solid she could depend on, probably a whole lot more than was healthy given that Laura was not the type of woman to avail herself of help from anyone.

He smiled back, picking up her hand on a sudden whim and kissing it with all the admiration and affection he couldn't put into words. What followed was one of those moments that seemed to exist outside of time itself, where it seemed like every other living thing on the ship - in the galaxy - must be holding its breath too, waiting. He'd given himself away, he knew it, and as Laura realised it they both froze, eyes locked, her hand still clasped in his, as suspended as the moment.

Their smiles, which had been wide a moment ago, faded into pensive anticipation and Bill was afraid to move lest he break the spell. Laura, however, did not appear to be hindered by any such fear, even if she felt it, too.

The hand which had been resting on the sofa behind his shoulder, shifted, lifted, dream-like. She trailed the back of her fingers down his cheek, across his jaw, her uncensored gaze twisting his gut into a tight knot of want, so that he had to close his eyes and swallow to keep from gasping. She looked at him as if she'd never truly seen him before, eyes following her fingers as they brushed oh so softly down his other cheek and across his bottom lip and chin, and when she finally looked into his eyes again he knew that they both wanted the same thing, in this moment at least.

Mutual gravity drew them closer together, had perhaps been drawing them together for much longer than either realised. Seconds? Minutes? Bill had no idea how long that slow-motion collision stretched out, only that her lips, her scent, the knee that pressed deeper into his thigh as she leaned toward him and her fingertips sliding through his hair as he did the same, were all he could think of, all he could feel, all he wanted to know of the universe in this instant.

Her kiss was soft, lingering, over too quickly. No sooner was it broken than Bill captured another, sliding his fingers into her thick, silky hair. How many times had he dreamed of doing this very thing? How pale did those dreams seem now he had the real article in his hands? And rather than shrinking from the increased intensity of his embrace Laura encouraged it, her incendiary little groan lighting fireworks low in the pit of his belly, nimble fingers slipping down the back of the open collar of his jacket, under his tanks, where her nails traced a fire brand over the bare flesh of his shoulder.

He almost wanted to stop her when she began to push his jacket off his shoulders, to ask her if she was sure, but he was afraid that if he questioned this it would evaporate. And Laura was a big girl, he told himself, she knew what she was doing. So he didn't stop her from divesting him of his jacket and soon forgot any doubts he might harbour as their kisses deepened and Laura's hand traced an exploratory path from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder, and by the time her hand slid down to rest over his heart there was hardly room for it he had pulled her so close against him. He wanted to touch her, too, to run his hands over her in ways he could only dream of till now.

Since she was already halfway in his lap he had no trouble shifting her the rest of the way. Hands on her hips, fingers ruching the material of her dress, his mouth began to burn a slow trail down her throat, eliciting another groan. One hand slid up her side and around her waist, the other cut an expansive path over her ribs to cup and weigh a breast, and when she arched into his touch he dropped his mouth to kiss the soft swell. The lacy top of her black slip came visible as her wrap-around dress lost its skin-tight adherence under his roving hands. Laura loosed the belt with a single deft tug, inviting his lips lower, fingernails raking through his hair and down the back of his neck, cradling his head against her when he slipped a finger into her bra, tugging it down to torment the exposed flesh with a practiced and eager tongue.

'Bill,' she gasped, high, breathless, needy, triggering a surge of blood to his groin. She was so beautiful, so sexy and, gods, she smelled fantastic. He found himself wishing he had a four poster bed and satin sheets to throw her down on instead of the cramped bunk with its military issue bedding as he pulled her flush against him and slid her dress off, tossing it into the corner of the sofa. She reached behind her, unfastening her bra and slipping it out from under her chemise and Bill's hands seemed to have a mind of their own as they massaged her breasts through the thin, satiny material, lifting them, tweaking the stiffening nipples with a moan on both their parts.

Laura's hand was clamped on Bill's wrist, the other gripping the back of the sofa for support. He could feel her hot breath down the side of his face though his hands held his fascination. She began to nuzzle his ear, tracing the tip of her tongue around the edge before sucking and nibbling the lobe with a roll of her hips that might have ended the night early if he'd been twenty years younger. He relinquished his claim on her breasts in order to give her room to work, his hands sliding down to knead her ass instead, a compromise he could more than live with as Laura kissed her way down his neck until she met tanks. She peeled them off him with a fluid yank, his dog tags clinking as they fell back against his chest.

And then she was kissing him again, his jaw, his cheeks, his eyes, his brow and finally his mouth, with a fierceness and need that surprised but inflamed him. Her hand slipped down between them, stroking him through the suddenly extremely constricting material of his dress-trousers. She didn't need his strangled moan to tell her that his desire was peaking. She began to fumble with his belt, mouth still hungrily devouring his, while his hands touched any and every part of her he could reach.

'Oh Laura,' he panted, breaking their kiss when she plunged her fingers into his boxers, taking his rock solid hard-on in hand. His fingertips dug into her thighs with a spasm of pleasure. 'Shit.' The sight of her sitting astride him, rocking with every stroke of her hand in his trousers, her lips hovering tantalisingly over his, was almost too much to bear.

Laura seemed to realise his predicament, slowly releasing him and claiming one last, slow kiss before sliding off his lap. 'Bed,' she said in answer to his questioning look, her gaze smouldering as she held out her hand for his, but a sudden flash of inspiration made him pull her back down on the sofa.

'Hold that thought,' he murmured against her ear.

AN: I do believe I may have finally earned the rating on this story! My first attempt at smut so for fraks sake, please be kind or you'll never see the next chapter... And review!

*runs away and hides behind the sofa*