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She wasn’t sure when she first looked at Bill Adama and saw a man rather than a uniform, but at some point, in the turn of one minute to the next, she found herself daydreaming about what it might be like to kiss him.
For a while, it was a nice guilty pleasure. Laura had never been attracted to men of his type. She preferred them tall and lean, cerebral and powerful. At first, Adama seemed only to have the last thing in common with anyone she’d slept with; as commander of the human fleet at the end of the world, he was more powerful than even Richard had been. And he wore his power lightly. He knew his word was law and he didn’t have to bully or yell or intimidate to get what he wanted. There was something very seductive about that.
But her daydreams didn’t seem to focus on that at all; rather they started with his hands. Richard’s hands had been smooth with long, clever fingers. But Bill touched her with broad, rough hands, thick, blunt fingers that wrapped around her elbow to help her up or down from her Raptor. His hands were strong and she knew the damage they could surely do; the man was a career fighter, after all. With her, no matter how they might have fought in their meeting just prior, how much they disagreed that day, his hands were gentle and always warm, like a brand on her skin.
From his hands on her elbows, it was an easy jump to imagine them elsewhere on her broken, failing body, how they might cradle her treacherous breasts and make them feel like part of her again. How those thick fingers might fill her, distract her from just about frakking everything for a little while.
At the Colonial Ball, she cursed her ridiculous naivety that it would stop with his hands, cursed the simple base elements of herself that turned her head at the sight of a man in a uniform. Especially as all Bill ever wore was uniforms. She’d even seen the dress uniform before. But something about the half-light, the way that he sidled up to her side just as she was watching the couples and wondering if she’d ever dance again, caught her off-guard. The dark grey of the uniform suited him better than the blue, complementing his greying hair, and the sash across his chest made him look broader. Strong.
When he asked her to dance, like was reading her mind, how could she say no? It was new, to have a dance partner she could look in the eye, and Laura found that she liked it, liked the way his eyes flickered over her face when he thought she was looking at something else. She liked the feel of his hand at the small of her back, respectful but firm, holding her close enough that she could feel the heat from him, not so firm that they made a scene. This was a man used to dancing and she dared to allow her fingers to curl into the thick wool of his uniform.
His body, it turned out, was just as desirable as his hands.
She didn’t have to like the man to think he was attractive. Her unfaithful body didn’t care. It didn’t care he’d thrown her in jail, overthrew her government. Got himself shot and put Saul goddsdamn Tigh in charge of everything. It didn’t care. In fact, her anger fuelled her and she imagined taking him in hand, making him beg for her forgiveness. It was easy to imagine Bill Adama on his knees.
She was only in trouble, real trouble, after Kobol, when they made peace with one another. Bill Adama and Laura Roslin, hashing it out in a rain-soaked tent, talking all night, returned from that planet a united front. She was in trouble then because she knew, finally understood, what it was to be one of Bill’s people. The fierceness of his devotion and how he showed it. The way that he looked at her over their paperwork, as though every word she said had worth to him, as though she was the only person in the universe at that moment. She knew then why his crew loved him, why they’d do anything for him, why he could lead them to hell and they’d bang on the gates. To be caught in that gaze was everything.
It didn’t really matter much if she let herself daydream about Bill, when she had a precious moment to herself. She didn’t have long left; Doc Cottle had been telling her for weeks that she needed to start preparing. She’d been putting him off – she didn’t have time to die – but in the end, of course, Cottle was right.
She woke from her first real frakking sex dream ten minutes before Bill came to Colonial One for his surprise promotion and the man chose that day to kiss her, as though he knew exactly what he was doing to her.
It wasn’t anything really; just a gentle press of his lips to hers, a thank you kiss and nothing more, except they both knew the implication of it. She was dying, actively, looking so terrible that she had dared not glance at the mirror for days. It was Bill’s small gesture, an acknowledgment of how far they’d come, how maybe in another life there could have been something between them.
Or maybe she was even more delusional than she thought; he just felt pity for her. But sick as she was, Bill’s smile, unreserved and shy, did something to the part of her still recovering from the dream she’d enjoyed. She never imagined his face was even capable of such a smile. It was a privilege to have it directed towards her, and if that smile, the press of his fingers and the touch of his lips was all he’d ever be able to give her, she’d cherish the memories for as long as she could hold them.