Prompt: "Quick! Hide behind the sofa!"
Set: during the Bill/Saul drinking scene in Deadlock
Saul's the one who says it, snorted over the top of his glass when she walks in unexpectedly (coming back for a forgotten briefing book, she'd told Lee, but really aching for a moment of rest, of quiet, for a place to curl up, just for a little while, just until the pain behind her eyes recedes) but Bill's the one who stumbles back against his desk laughing, his movements loose and liquid, the sharp scent of the ambrosia coming off him like waves, like the disappointment and irritation she can feel (he can feel) radiating from the tight line of her mouth and the tense set of her shoulders.
Sometimes she thinks that there will never be enough time, that she would do anything, pay any price, to have had more: one more week, one more night, one more chapter. (Laura has been down this particular road before, can see the abyss up ahead. There is no more time, not for her, not for them.)
Sometimes, when their quarters smell like sweat and bile, when she can't remember the last night she spent with Bill, and not Bill and a bottle, when talking to him is like banging her head against a wall of denials and excuses and wishful thinking, when she misses the ease of hanging up the phone, of going back to her ship, of her bed on Colonial One…
Laura would like more from Bill, yes. But the President needs more from the Admiral, and it's a dangerous combination, their weariness and irritation and resentment (he may never forgive her for giving up on her treatment; she may not forgive him for giving up now) charging the air.
"Gentlemen," she says, her tone cool, dismissive, as she moves between them to collect her briefing book.
(That she will not stay is a foregone conclusion, that she will be back equally so. The hand that clutches the bottle now is also the hand that tucked the blanket around her this morning, and she does not forget that, even now.)
Saul sits up in his chair (she is still the President to him), but Bill, busy refilling his glass, doesn't react.
She will be gone soon (very soon, the weight on her chest whispers), and he will have to carry on without her (without her, Laura, and her, the President). She does not envy him that. When she thinks about that moment—the voice over the wireless, It's over, Laura, the howling vacuum where her heart used to be—she is not sure she could face it.
But she's here now, and he is the one who's gone.
On her way out, she brushes past him. (Physical distance is not what's between them, not anymore.) When their eyes meet, his glazed-over grief finding her impatience, her sorrow, her need, it hurts them both, and when he looks away, she's sorry…and relieved.
They both hurt enough.
As she's walking out, he's already pouring another round.