Final chapter, I'll try and get the first one of part three up real soon. In fact, I'm gonna start writing it right now.
Reviews are love.
Chapter 5: Tact and Subtlety
"Where is she?"
Edric stood outside the doors of the hanger deck and shifted from foot to foot in a way that might have been construed as nervously had he not been an Adama. Adamas didn't get nervous, remember?
"She said she'd be here." Laura tried to soothe him. They had been waiting for the better part of ten minutes for Colton to show her face. Lee was up doing his politician thing (even though he still looked like he was playing dress up in Laura's opinion) and they still had a few minutes before he had to really begin stalling. She was nervous about the whole affair herself, it likely being the public execution of her political career because, President or not, all people were going to hear today was 'Cylon hybrid'. Either way, focusing on Edric's nerves distracted her from her own and she was fine with that.
"Yeah, well, she didn't tell you how much she hates public speaking. I wouldn't put it past her to 'forget' that she was supposed to be here." Edric looked down the corridor with a scowl on his face. They were alone out here. The guard were at opposite ends of the corridor and it was just her and Edric. Bill was talking something over with Tigh, who had better things to do than show up at a Press Conference.
"She wouldn't do that." Laura said. She wasn't sure if she was stating a fact or asking a question but she hoped for the former. She straightened the fit of her jacket (she was wearing That Suit) and tried to breathe deep and think calming thoughts. "She's not as callus as you think. She'll do what she said she would." Laura might have been an idiot for putting such trust in a woman she'd only known for slightly longer than a week, but she read people well, had to in her line of work, and Colton wouldn't let her down.
"You haven't known her as long as I have." Edric gritted from between clenched teeth, still looking down the corridor.
"Doesn't mean that you know her better." Laura returned smoothly, snagging Edric's attention enough so that he turned to look at her and very nearly shrieked when Colton appeared behind him and did something that Laura couldn't see but could make a good guess at.
Edric stepped away from the grinning scientist, brushing the back of his trousers and looking a trifle violated.
"Talking about somebody I know?" Colton smirked knowingly at them and turned to catch Edric's ogling. "Do I have a stain somewhere, sweetheart?" Colton ran a hand down the side of her body and then back up to prop it in the curve of her waist.
She was dressed to kill.
Her hair was spooled up into a sleek and uncharacteristically neat knot on top of her head, her glasses were a new red lens pair that she had no doubt bartered for that morning and her clothes were obviously what Edric had tailored for her the night before. Though Laura doubted, judging by the look on his face, that he hadn't known that she would wear them in such a fashion. Colton wore her obligatory white lab coat, but not one that would be seen in any real lab anywhere. It covered her from neck to ankle and only Colton could have found a way to make something like that indecent. Colton had obviously been in such a hurry to make her appointment that she had only managed to fasten three of the black side buttons on the coat so it hung open at the neck over her chest in a bright coloured flag of the deep red lining. She was toeing the line of public decency by leaving the lower buttons free of their moorings so that the skirt of the coat was split clean to the hip. Black leather gloves covered her hands from fingertip to elbow and the only garments she wore under the coat were her black heels and stockings held up with a red garter.
Laura needed to find out where the woman got all this fabulous underwear.
"Um, uh…no?" Edric blinked. A lot.
"Well, try not to look too gormless, I think the Third is about to introduce us." Colton nodded to where Lee was standing speaking animatedly on the podium in front of the assembled press core.
"Am I late?" Bill rounded the corner, glanced over Colton, took a lot longer to look at Laura and then frowned at Edric's pole-axed expression. "What's with him?"
"Colton force trauma to the libido." Laura muttered and he smirked.
Colton grinned like she'd just been given an award for scientific achievement.
Lee was winding up his introduction of the two newest members of the fleet.
"Now remember, darling," Colton turned to Edric, pulled at his jaw until he was completely focused on her and began to fuss with his uniform. "You can kill everyone in there without leaving a mark on their bodies, I'm going to do the talking and, if all else fails, picture me naked."
Edric choked on the last and Lee swept an arm towards the doors where they were loitering.
"Come on then!" Colton said cheerfully, looped her arm through Edric's and towed him into the applause of the slightly confused Press Core.
To his credit, he recovered gamely and managed to put some military starch in his spine for ascending the steps to the stage. Colton released him to shake hands with Lee and Tom Zarek. She took the podium like a veteran and opened with a joke that managed to be wry instead of insulting.
Laura breathed a small sigh of relief.
"I told you she'd be fine." She smiled up at Bill and it faltered slightly when she saw the look of intense scrutiny on his face. He was standing very, very, close to her. "What?" Her voice came out a lot smaller than she had intended.
"You're pale." She didn't know if he was concerned or accusing.
"Well…"
"Have you eaten today?"
"What's that got to do with…?"
"You're nervous then."
"Well, my political career is about to not so much crash and burn as explode in the hanger, so I think I'm entitled to a bout of nerves."
"Hmm…" He draped his hands behind his back and turned eyes front. Laura didn't know if she should feel bereft or not.
They watched one of the aides come to stand by the hanger doors and wait to draw back the curtain there in time for their introduction. Laura shifted her hand to her waist and her weight from one hip to the other. She tossed her hair and let out a long calming breath.
"Gods, I want to frak you."
Laura choked on her calming breath.
"Excuse me?!" She looked up into black eyes that burned into her and over her. Sliding all the way down her body and then clambering all the way back up again.
"You heard." His voice was a deep rumble and Laura gulped audibly. He smiled faintly.
"Yes, I…what about the press conference?" She grasped for whatever straws she had and found none.
"Frak it. I want you. Right here, right now." He stepped in closer to her, just behind her, throwing heat against her body and rumbling directly into her ear. "Up against that bulkhead right there, my hands in your hair and your fantastic legs tight around me."
Laura shivered.
"Maybe not against the bulkhead. How about in the middle of that hangar out there for everyone to see? Let them all know right off that you're mine."
"Yours? I belong to no one but myself."
"Wrong." He wasn't touching her. Gods, he was doing everything but touch her and it was driving her crazy.
"You'd never abandon your responsibilities." Her voice shook with the effort of forcing it out of her constricting throat.
"Wrong again."
"Huh, prove it." She felt him stiffen behind her (oh, bad choice of words, Laura).
"I will, and when I do, I'll tear that skirt when I pushed it up out of the way. It's far too tight for public decency, it has to go." His fingers brushed over her hips and her lips parted on a silent gasp. "I'll remove your underwear with my teeth." He leaned right in, his teeth scraping against the sensitive shell of her ear in the barest caress.
"Not wearing any." The whispered words tumbled from her on a rush. Oh Gods. She did NOT just say that.
He bit back a growl but a moan leaked through his gritted teeth.
"The skirt is very tight." Yes, she DID just say that and now she was compounding matters. Gods, she wanted him. He smelled fantastic. She could hear the booming thump of his rapid heartbeat. Feel the heat arcing between them. "Wouldn't, uh…wouldn't want to ruin the lines if it." Come on, Laura, remember to breathe. Passing out isn't very sexy.
"No." His breath gusted hot against her ear. "Couldn't have that." He inhaled deeply. "Want you."
Two words and a world of feeling injected into them. Just that hint of a growling groan just underlining them, it was enough to make her insides melt.
She was incredibly aware of the fact that there was someone just beyond that curtain and two cadres of guards at either end of the hallway who would definitely hear them if Laura gave in to what Bill wanted to do to her. What she wanted him to do to her. This wasn't the time and it certainly wasn't the place for it, but…but…
All she had to do was take a step back.
Not even an entire step, half a step, if that. Her back would hit his chest. Connection would spark, electricity would fly. The sensation was almost prescient. Her breath hitched. Do it, the little voice commanded. She tried to think of a reason she shouldn't. A thousand leapt to mind but not one of them held as much weight as the one reason that she should. Because she wanted to. She could say it was the Nanotech. Raging hormones. Shock from what she had been through. Survivor's insanity from a near death experience and then miraculously being cured of cancer but the simple fact of the matter was that she wanted to jump the Admiral of the Fleet and Gods damn it if he didn't want to jump her too.
Laura stepped back.
All the breath left his lungs on a whoosh and his chest heaved. They leant in towards each other.
"Laura, you're not helping with my control here."
"Frak your control." She murmured her hand reaching back to touch the scalding heat of his thigh, the muscles there bunched under her fingers until they felt rock hard and she couldn't resist a little feminine shudder at all that hot male strength trembling under her fingers. She turned her head so that she could see him out of the corner of her eye. His hand splayed low on her stomach and he pressed subtly, dragging her closer to him so they were flush together. His breath washed warm over her cheek and her lashes fluttered.
His grip on her tightened, hand sliding around her hip to tug her around to face him. She shifted her weight to spin on one heel. Nothing but the thought of getting into his arms in her head and then…
And then the curtains flew back and they were introduced to the entire mass of the Colonial Fleet's Press Core and a great deal of its military might.
They were frozen for a long moment, the thunder of applause crashing into their sensitive ears like a solid wall of sound.
Laura reacted first, the last four years of cutthroat politics teaching her how to react intelligently without thinking too much about it. She stepped back and to the side, sliding around Bill, looped her arm through his and dragged his slightly stupefied form out into the storm of flashbulbs and shouts from the Press.
As soon as they stepped out into the hangar proper, as soon as they came into view the applause died. It wasn't a sudden cessation of sound, rather a limping stunned petering off of numb hands falling to stillness.
Everything stopped.
The Press subsided into silence, their calls for pictures and hollers of questions grumbling to nothing in their throats. Cameras slid from shoulders and hung limp at their sides. Microphones drooped towards the floor, no longer intent on catching the next words that the leaders of humanity had to say.
The only sounds to be heard were a pair of military dress shoes and a set of red frak-me heels clipping softly across the hangar deck and a thousand necks creaking as they turned to follow Bill and Laura's every move.
Laura gave absolutely no indication of her discomfort, used to thinking and feeling one thing and looking like something entirely different. Bill retreated behind his emotionless military mask and the ascended the stairs to the stage, standing shoulder to shoulder with Colton and Edric. Colton stepped back from her place at the podium and allowed Laura to step forward. She smoothed her hands down over the front of That Suit and cleared her throat into the multitude of microphones set up to catch her every syllable. The sound boomed out across the hangar deck, echoed off bare walls and around the drafty support beams vaulted overhead. Laura tossed her head and shook out her hair, speaking clearly and bracing herself for the storm.
"Any questions?"
The Press core exploded.
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"Gods, what a day."
Laura flopped down onto the sofa in Bill's private quarters and looked up at the assembled throng in the room. It was finally just her, Bill, Colton and Edric. Laura gave a slight frown when she realised that she had so quickly widened her inner circle to include the two 'Hybrid Survivors' -as the Press had dubbed them- and trusted them quite sufficiently. Nowhere near as much as she trusted Billy or Bill, she was too old (hah!) and paranoid for that, but she found herself turning to Colton and Edric to ask advice for things that she wouldn't have done a few days previously. She supposed that being locked in a room with the three of them was bound to bring them all closer to together…either that or drive them all insane. Well, Colton had been like that to begin with, so she didn't count.
"I think it went rather well." Colton smiled congenially and Edric shot her a glance.
"You what?"
"No loss of life, was there?" Colton peeled her long leather gloves off her arms and flexed her fingers, she had been in her 'Sexy Scientist' suit all day and, while the effect it had on Edric was rather pleasing, it wasn't half uncomfortable after a while.
"Heh, define 'life'." Laura muttered darkly.
"And only due to swift intervention of the guard." Bill grumbled into his tumbler of Ambrosia, throwing it back, pouring himself another while pouring the other three their first. He passed them around Edric took his and Colton's as he spoke.
"It could have been worse. She could have actually answered that Sagiterran's question about whether or not she was a punishment from the Gods." He frowned a little when Colton shook her head at the offered drink and pushed it away before picking up a pair of sweats and military tanks and disappearing through to the sleeping quarters.
"Didn't see the point, it's not the first time someone's accused me of same." Her voice was muffled by the rustling of clothes being yanked over her head.
"Since when did you not drink?" Edric had moved to stand in the doorway so he could see her. He went very still when he realised exactly how much of her he was seeing.
Laura smirked and sipped on her own drink as Bill handed it to her. He sat on the opposite end of the couch and drew her feet onto his lap, removing her heels and rubbing soothing circles over the sensitive skin there. Nanotech enhanced or not, her heels were determined to kill her. Laura shivered a little at his touch and watched him over the rim of her glass. This was not a new thing for him to do. He had done it before, though would have denied petting the President's feet if ever asked, but now…she was just so much more aware of everywhere he touched and how he was doing it.
One side of his mouth was tugged up into a crooked smirk.
The bastard was well aware of what he was doing.
She narrowed her eyes at him but allowed her attention to be dragged away to spat number 6,784 between Colton and Edric.
"I don't have to drink." Colton appeared in the doorway, lab coat slung over one shoulder dressed in her borrowed tanks and pants and her hands hitched on her waist.
"You're a Geminon from the North and you're turning down a drink when it's freely offered. Something's not right." Edric gestured at her with the glass.
"You're right, it could have been worse." Bill murmured. "They could have been speaking to one another up there." He jerked his head at them and Laura shared his smile.
"All things considered, it's the best conference I've ever been to in which the phrase 'I may be a hybrid but you'll always be stupid' has been used and no blood has been drawn." Laura settled deeper into the couch and allowed herself to be soothed by the merry hell his fingers were playing on her feet. "Political or otherwise."
"They found out you're part Cylon and you're still the President. The world didn't end -again- and no Cylons turned up to activate us as glowing red eyed sleeper agents." Bill agreed.
"Always a win in my book." Laura raised her glass and then drank deeply if a little sardonically.
"It's not like it's a sign of the apocalypse, Edric. That's already happened." Colton brushed past Edric and back into the room. She dropped the lab coat over the back of a chair and reached up to start unwinding her hair from its knot on top of her head. Everyone was mildly surprised when it unravelled to its full length and fell to her waist. She scrunched her fingers through it at her scalp and appeared to work to hold back her temper.
"It's out of character, that's all I'm saying." Edric tried to offer her the glass again. She relented on a sigh and took it from him. "See! Now you're humouring me. You never humour ANYONE."
Colton's jaw clenched and she levelled the glass at him threateningly. "If this wasn't the last drink in the galaxy you'd be wearing it!" She slapped the glass down on the table and hissed an irritated breath out through her teeth. "I'm going to my lab and those guards had better not bloody follow me!" She moved to the hatch and threw it open with a flick of her wrist. Storming down the corridor with her irritated snap at the guards echoing behind her.
Edric sighed, set his glass down and moved to the hatch.
"Excuse us." He said with exaggerated manners and shut the hatch quietly behind him.
"Well…just in case we were ever in danger of a quiet life." Laura mused.
"Hmm," Bill stroked a little higher up her legs, just past her ankles now, working up towards the tense muscle of her calf. "Alone at last."
"Bill…"
"Laura." He returned to her sardonically.
"We shouldn't." She tried to remind him.
"We want to."
"You can't always get what you want."
"No, but I'm pretty sure we can get what we need." He tightened his hold on her legs and dragged her a little closer, leaning forward to close the distance between them even further.
"Need is it?" She had to stop flirting with him. She really did. She sat up too, inches apart now. She blindly put the glass down on the table, never breaking eye contact with him. It should have been uncomfortable, holding his gaze like this, but it wasn't. They were swimming in each other's eyes. Blending together and enjoying the immersion. They had been resonating along the same wavelength for quite some time now and the time had come to acknowledge it. Maybe they would have gotten around to it eventually had the nanotech never happened, Laura doubted it though, it would have taken intervention of a Scripture sort in order to get them to say it out loud.
But the nanotech had happened and now they weren't skirting around it or denying it anymore. If that curtain hadn't drawn back when it had, if they had been left alone in the dim light for even a few seconds longer…Laura liked to think that she would have moved them to a more secluded spot, but she wasn't sure.
"Need." He nodded at her, his hand coming up and sliding around her neck, dragging her closer still. "Definitely need."
No, no, no, no, no…
Laura was up and off the couch and pacing about the room like a caged tiger.
"We can't!"
Bill heaved a sigh and flopped back down onto the couch onto his back. He growled at the ceiling and made an abbreviated twisting motion with his hands when Laura's back was turned. He drew himself up on his elbows and turned to her in time to see her wringing her hands and looking anywhere but at him.
"I assure you that I am fully functional." He drawled and she shot him a narrow eyed look. "Even before the nanotech." He grinned a wide and wolfish grin.
He received The Look in reply.
He sighed and swung his feet onto the floor. Pursing his lips and pondering how best to talk her into bed. He supposed he could just pick her up and carry her there, but she'd fight him and then there would be shrieking involved and he'd have to stifle her with…hot and steamy kisses.
He wasn't seeing a downside so far. He got to his feet and a wicked smirk appeared over his mouth. Her eyes widened and she backed off several feet.
"Oooooh no." She told him sharply.
"Ooooh yes." He prowled towards her, stepping up and over the coffee table instead of bothering with going around.
"Now, Bill, let's think about what's going on here." Laura held up her hands to ward him off. It felt a lot like she was playing to an audience that wasn't there, but a token effort was called for she thought.
"Tired of thinking. " He growled low in his throat and stalked towards her. She shimmied backwards rapidly on bare feet and his smile widened when her back hit the wall and she had nowhere else to go. He walked right up to her and planted a hand on either side of her head, caging her in his arms. "I really want to be doing."
"Anyone in particular?" Laura shut her eyes. She did NOT just say that.
He growled. A real and proper growl that would have put a lion to shame.
Apparently she had just said that.
"You know who. I want you." His fingers flexed against the steel bulkhead and his body arched towards hers before he reined himself in and managed to draw back a few inches. If this was going to work, he'd be damned if he was making the first move. "Now kiss me."
"Excuse you?"
"You heard. Kiss me." He lowered his head so their lips were barely an inch apart. "Take the step, Laura. I'm right here."
The decision stretched taught between them.
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Colton strode along the hallway. The bulkheads and corridors splitting off and blurring in front of her vision. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked faster. She felt cold. She felt sick.
She felt trapped.
She needed to go.
Somewhere. Anywhere. She didn't know. She just needed to get off Galactica right now. The walls were closing in on her. The people babbling at her. She could hear them all. Everywhere. She had to get out.
She had to get out right now!
Colton stopped in the corridor a wild look in her eyes and she swallowed hard. Her eyes caught on something. A sign painted on the bulkhead in helpful white block capitols.
LAUNCH BAY à
If she wanted off. Colton thought that a shuttle would be a really good place to start. She looked behind her. She could sense Edric storming down the corridor. They always knew where the other was. It was a thing.
But everything had to have a range.
She had to hurry.
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"Well?" Every cell in Bill's body was straining towards the woman pinned between his arms. He knew it wasn't one sided but she was doing a very good impression that it was.
"Don't rush me." She hedged.
"Rush you?" His hands fisted against the wall. He wanted to slam his hand through it. "It's been three years. Three LOOOONG years. I've wanted you since the first moment I clapped eyes on your annoying Presidential tush and you want to make me wait?"
"Annoying?" Laura frowned at him.
"You're avoiding the issue."
"Oh, I'm an issue now?"
"Very much so." He growled at her.
"I think you might have issues but they're ALL your own." She tried to fold her arms over her chest. Couldn't, because her suit was too tight and his chest was in the way, so she flapped them about and then dropped them to her side again.
"You're going to make me do it, aren't you?"
"Do wh-umf!" Laura clattered back against the wall, pinned there by Bill's mouth and the full length of his body. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her spine arched in pleasure and…
Her ears screamed in pain when the wail of the ship's siren pierced them like a hot blade.
Cylon contact.
Fantastic.
Dun-de-dun-DUN!!!
To be continued…
