"I think you should take my shirt off, Bill."
His hands, his traitorous hands, thought this was the best idea they had ever heard. They immediately reached for her and had almost attained their goal of curved hips before Bill snatched them back to his person. He clenched a fist near his lips and flexed the other hand near the ground. He closed his eyes to escape her glare. And he resumed trembling, which was becoming the hallmark of his internal battle.
She still stood before him, hands on her hips, sure of what was going to happen, and torn between feeling sorry for the obvious struggle that was going on in his proud mind and telling him to grow up and snap the hell out of it. She tried smiling at him and coaxing him to speak to her as she would a young child.
"Bill?" her voice was soft and had the effect of a million tiny needles all over his skin. They were pleasurable, alluring needles that were trying to convince him that her touch would cure him of every ill he had ever and would ever receive. He resisted further and the trembling reached comic proportions. "Bill, how long has this been going on?"
His eyes were still closed and though he tried to ignore her question, feeling that his control would best be helped by ignoring her altogether, he answered involuntarily, seemingly unable to fight even her implied demands.
"The first day," he snapped. He clamped his mouth shut on his villainous tongue.
Her hands slowly dropped from her hips to her sides and incredulity spread across her face.
"The…first…day." She shook her head. "So when we were all listening to Cottle tell us about what was happening, you were sitting there, already…"
"Yes! But I'm fine," he looked at her now, her slight smile a perceived insult to his lack of control over the situation. "Look, would you please go? I'm going to get over it," he made as if to stand up, but he was unable to complete the act because she did not move at all from her position in front of him. If he stood up, he would be touching the entire front of her body with the entire front of his body and then he would be totally and completely lost. It was untenable. She, being one of the smartest people he had ever known, picked up on this immediately and smiled wider, seeming to plant herself even more firmly into the deck before him, though she hadn't moved.
"I'm not going anywhere, Bill. Unless you'd like to move me yourself?" she cocked her head to the side, obviously having a grand time at his expense, he thought. She reached tenderly for the side of his face, intent on running her fingers through his hair, but he flinched away again and withdrew further back into the couch. He saw the look on her face as pity; it was almost worse than the crushing grip of agonies in which he had found himself housed these past two weeks.
His mutinous hands were trying to tell him things: 'Hey, Bill," they said, 'She had a great idea! We can just move her for you. Just put us on her hips right there, (you know that's the most reasonable place to move a woman, Bill). We'll just move her the side and you can get up and leave. We won't do anything bad, we promise!'
Frakking liars, thought Bill.
They twitched at his sides where they were currently imprisoned. "No, no, you're right,'they said, 'Her shoulders would be better. We'll move her out of your way by her shoulders! Safer, right? No cause for concern there! We'll just gently press our fingers into the soft, curvy skin on her perfectly sloped, sculpted should-' Traitors! He yelled to them in his mind.
It was really too bad, he thought. He'd lived this long and had been through so much, and now he was going insane. Any moment now, he was sure she'd reach for him again and he knew he wouldn't be able to hold out much longer. He slumped his shoulders in defeat and pointed one of his trembling hands to the drink cart.
"Would you," he swallowed and looked up at her with defeat on his face, "would you please help me with a drink?" he held his palm up to her to indicate the trembling that would prevent him from reasonably holding a glass, let alone pouring himself one.
Imagining herself at his side with her arm wrapped around him, helping him take a calming drink was more than alluring. She gave him an understanding smile. He took it to be patronizing, and not exactly tops on his list of faces he wanted to see on her. He waited until she was at the drink cart with her back to him and made an embarrassingly undignified attempt at retreat.
He bolted for the hatch.
The only reason he didn't make it in time was the fact that retreats were made especially difficult when one had a raging hard-on. This had been Bill's sad predicament ever since the shirt remark.
She blocked him effectively as he was almost to the hatch and looked at him disbelievingly.
"Are you serious, Bill? Is this how it's going to go? Me chasing you around your quarters? Because I suppose I could let you go out there and explain your condition to the Marines." Gods damn her, she was still smiling! His face was all frustration and rage. He looked down at himself briefly and knew her point was a valid one. Damn it! Being panicky and trapped in a corner didn't lend itself well to making well-planned escapes.
"I don't even know how you made it this long!" she went on, trying to soothe him with her tone of voice. "Everyone who's had this hasn't been able to concentrate on anything at all until they've taken care of it. Let me help you, Bill," her plea was soft and heartfelt.
He thought of all the restless nights, having to relieve himself countless times just to get some sleep. It had never done any good for more than an hour or two. The last few weeks had seen him excusing himself from CIC very frequently. And that was just the problem today. With the training exercises going on, he'd only been able to get away twice, and that was no help at all. She had no idea what she was doing to him. Her voice was all sympathy and understanding. And it was the absolute, godsdamn, frakking last thing he wanted from her.
He finally let loose with the anger and frustration he'd been bottling up since he walked in his quarters.
"This is not going to happen, do you hear me?!" he was shouting. She flinched at the sheer volume. "I am not some," he searched for the words, "drunk, out of control nugget who can't resist even the simplest of urges!"
"It's not-" she started toward him.
"NO!" he yelled, taking a step back and holding up his hands. "Get the hell out of here!" He took a shaky breath and continued, "Can't you see what it would be like for me?" At her look of confusion, he went on, "Afterward? Having to see you and look you in the eye every damn day?!"
She recoiled at the verbal slap he'd just given her. She knew that a part of him didn't really want her, but this overt admission of revulsion at having to even look at her after being forced to be with her was cruel.
He saw exactly what she was thinking and was a hair's breadth away from allowing her to think it and letting her leave. But Bill wasn't a cruel man and he couldn't let her suffer for his own gain.
"No, no, damn it! That's not what I meant!" he rubbed his hands wearily over his face. She looked at him, her face a mask of hurt disbelief. "I know you would never do this if 'this' hadn't happened to me. I'm just the Old Man, and you're," he gave a huff of despair, "you. I can't stand the idea of you pitying me and helping me!" He shook his head in disgust. "It's hard enough to resist you when everything is normal." He rolled his eyes at the word 'normal' as if there were such a thing anymore.
"Can't you try to understand what it would be like to see you every day and know, knowwhat you feel like beneath me, know the sounds you make when I make love to you,know what your skin feels like under my hands?!" He had started looking down at his spread hands at the mention of her skin as though he were imagining the feel of her body. "This, right now," he still looked down, "is torture. But that, after, would be the end of me. I wouldn't be able to stand seeing you every day and know you didn't want me."
She had been standing there, listening to this remarkable speech, and since he had been looking down, he couldn't have seen the slow trickle of tears at the corners of her eyes. She closed the two steps between them, barely aware of what she was doing through the haze of disbelief that was clouding her brain at this unexpected turn of events. She firmly and quickly placed herself in the haven of his arms, wrapping her own arms around him and pressing her open lips to his.
There never was a more heartfelt groan in the universe than the one Bill Adama gave as Laura Roslin placed her perfect lips on what he thought to be his highly undeserving ones. He enfolded her in his arms and gave what little effort he had left to not weeping as she whispered into his open mouth, "I do want you Bill. I want you." Her voice was so soft as it tried to navigate out through her tears. The sound of it mended all the broken pieces of soul Bill had left in his body.
And then, concluding that following her orders until the day he died would be his best possible fate, he followed the order she had given what seemed like hours ago. He lovingly, but expeditiously, took off her shirt.