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"We have certain responsibilities," he said, watching Laura’s smile freeze a little. He was the one who had started this conversation about New Caprica, and he was the one shutting it down again.
Oh Bill, you can be such a coward, the voice of his long-dead ex-wife taunted him.
"I'll be back in a few days,” Laura told him. “If you'd like, we can talk more about that night."
It was as much of an opening as there ever was, or would be. Bill desperately wanted to take her up on it, but in all likelihood, a few days would pass, and they would fall back into their roles, the moment forgotten, like others were before.
Does she really think you'll want to talk? Carolanne continued. She doesn't know you. You don't even talk to your son.
What would he say to Laura? That he's thought about that night more than anything else. About the kiss they shared, about touching her skin while the music played back at the party, and about the other times, about losing himself in her with the foolish hope it would never end. But it did. No, they couldn't afford distractions from their respective roles, they had responsibilities.
There we are. Go ahead, put your duty before all else yet again. That worked out for you so well the first time.
I loved you, he told the voice in his head.
That was never enough for us. And now you love her more than you’ve ever loved me. But what can the great Adama do with that? You’ll stay at a distance, and you’ll let her go. You’re good at leaving, you always were.
“Bill?” Laura had walked to the door behind him, so he turned around to look at her again now. “I absolutely would have built the cabin.”
He asked her, and she gave him the answer. The answer is yes. Yes, she meant all the words she said down there; she stood by all her actions. Yes, she would have built a life there, if he would share it with her. Yes, it meant everything to her. And it might be hypothetical, yet it wasn’t.
You never–
Stop it!
"Laura," he called her back. He owed her an answer too, his heart starting to thump hard in his chest. If the Cylons hadn’t come back?
Laura halted her movements, watching him walk to her and step into her personal space with curious apprehension.
“I would have settled.” He almost had to force the words out, and was repaid tenfold when Laura’s eyes sparkled. “With you.”
With deliberate slowness, Bill brought his hand to cup Laura’s jaw, his thumb stroking the soft skin, and watched her eyelashes flutter, her teeth softly digging into her lower lip. Gently, he pressed his mouth to hers, bringing the past of those times on New Caprica, and the present in the same room. It wasn’t a deep kiss, not the kind of passionate kisses they’d shared down on the planet that he still felt in his bones. Not one of those yet. But it was a statement, another form of answer that Laura seemed to receive loud and clear.
"You wanted to talk more about that night…” he trailed off, not really asking, but asking all the same.
“In your quarters?" Laura suggested, giving him a smile, secret, coy and bright, that felt like he was looking into the heart of a star.
And suddenly, the voice in his head was gone again.