Atmosphere

Exhaustion set in quickly, but not before Tory had rustled up a census list – delivering the news about Maya and Isis along with it in a broken voice. Afterward, they started assembling a list of supplies, and she conferred with Zarek several times on the wireless.

By the time everything had quieted down and she was once again left alone, she found herself unable to do anything but sit and stare out at the sight of Galactica flying to their right, a constant reassuring presence. She was banged up quite a bit, but the most beautiful thing Laura had seen in ages.

“Madame President.” Tory poked her head around the curtain that separated Laura’s quarters from her office.

“I told you, Tory – Zarek is the president.” Laura sighed as she spoke, and Tory grinned like an unrepentant child.

“For now. And you have a visitor.” She stepped back, and a moment later Bill stepped through the curtains.

She held her breath at the sight of him – so solidly real and unchanged. Tears burned the backs of her eyes and she stood without thought, almost tripping as she surged forward. “Oh my Gods, oh my Gods....” She collided into him, and the air escaped her lungs as she felt him under her hands, warm and so, so real. His arms came around her, pulling her impossibly closer in a bone-crushing hug. Her ribs – and almost every other part of her – protested, but she welcomed the ache, welcomed the twinges that let her know this was real, and he was there. “Bill.” She wasn’t sure if he heard her – his chest muffled her voice – but she didn’t care.

When his hold loosened and he moved back slightly, he was grinning down at her. “Laura....”

“You shaved.” Her hands were tracing his face, and she spoke without thinking, his laughter wrapping around her.

“That’s what you have to say?” He was still chuckling, and she flushed for a moment, looking down.

“Well I –” Tears sprang forth again, and she tried to choke back a sob and failed. She buried her face into his uniform, shaking with pent up emotion.

“Shh, Laura, come on. Please don’t – ” His own voice was rough and uneven, and when she finally managed to stop the shaking, she noticed his hands running along her back in a soothing motion.

She pulled back, looking up at him with a bright smile. He opened his mouth, but she didn’t wait for him to speak, instead pressing herself forward against him and capturing his lips with hers. Her hands moved up to cradle his face, and she pushed him back until they hit something and halted her progress. He responded willingly, his hands gripping her waist as she tried to consume him. When the need for oxygen won out, she gasped one deep breath, her hands running down his neck and chest even as she did so. She couldn’t stop touching him. Couldn’t stop reminding herself – this was real.

“Laura – ”

“Shut up,” she muttered in between kisses pressed against his jaw line and neck as her hands removed his uniform coat quickly and efficiently. When she divested him of the layers and finally felt his skin, warm beneath her hands and pulsating with the strength of his heartbeat, she let out a breath. She closed her eyes for a moment, not opening them again until she had counted fifteen beats in the silence.

“Laura – ” he tried to speak again, but she shook her head, pulling her own shirt over her head until her skin was against his and she could feel her heart echo his.

“Later.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

The silence descended like a blanket of white noise, silent and yet not silent at all. The ship hummed constantly, and Laura echoed its tune softly in the back of her throat as she lay wrapped in sheets and skin, with the sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear. She felt content and detached – cocooned in space in a place where they were completely untouchable.

His hand was tracing lazy circles along her back, and she shivered at the sensation, burrowing deeper into his shoulder. She wanted the silence to last forever – but questions and responsibilities hung in the air above them, adding a level of tension to the silence that she could not stand.

“What do I do now?” Her question was rhetorical, and yet she felt his sigh – a soft rise and fall of his chest and her head with it – as he contemplated how to answer the unanswerable.

“What do you want to do?” His voice was soft, a low rumble that stirred the hairs on her head where his lips were pressed, and she fought an internal battle. What did she want to do?

“Zarek wants me to take the Vice Presidency,” she finally said wryly as Bill’s chuckle rumbled against her eardrums, warm and soothing like a purring cat under her hand.

“Second in command?” The amusement in his tone spoke volumes about his opinion on the matter, and she wished she could be irritated, but felt only merriment instead. “You don’t like coming second, Laura.”

She laughed out loud at that, tilting her head to meet his eyes as she grinned. “If you wait to come second, you may not finish at all,” she pointed out, tongue-in-cheek and dissolving into giggles as the double entendre hit him and he glared at her. When she could catch her breath again, she sighed happily before propping her elbow on the bed so she could look at him properly. “He wants to have me instated as the Vice-President and then he’ll resign a few days later.”

“Well that sounds a damn sight better than having Zarek in charge,” Bill pointed out as he looked gravely up at her. She studied his face for a moment, her eyes wandering from his nose to his chin to his now-bare upper lip, studying him like she could etch him into her memory – indelibly.

“But to become President by default again, Bill...” She trailed off as she sighed, falling flat onto her back as the air left her lungs. This time he turned to her, pulling himself up slightly to study her. “I don’t know if I even want it again. I’m bitter, Bill. It’s petty and stupid, but I almost want to tell them all to sleep in the bed they made.”

“Laura – ” His voice was hesitant and unsure – a tone she wasn’t accustomed to hearing from him. She looked up at him with a small frown as he rubbed his free hand over his face with a sigh before meeting her gaze. “I don’t think that anyone but you can lead us to Earth.” His statement was quiet, yet profound, and silence snaked around them as his words died in the air.

“And where does that leave us, Bill? If I’m president again – ” She fell silent as the words got stuck in the back of her throat, strangled out of existence by too-tight vocal chords. It shouldn’t have been a concern – shouldn’t have even entered the equation. This was their survival, their very existence they were discussing. She knew she should step forward and accept her responsibilities gracefully. But that had been before. Before New Caprica, and before she’d had a taste of being just Laura for the first time in decades. No press, no need to hide anything. Just Laura. Only it wasn’t the lure of being just Laura that drew her. It was the lure of being LauraandBill, BillandLaura. A half of a whole – something she had never ever experienced before in her life. There had been men, of course – but never this heart-stopping feeling of rightness. Like she belonged right here, in this very spot within his arms.

“Laura – what’s between us is not going to change no matter what you do. We’ve – opened the box, and I cannot put this aside again.” His voice was strong in her ear, confident in a way that she secretly hugged to herself as a delighted joy rose through her chest, bubbling just below the surface and threatening to burst forth.

“The Fleet won’t like it – ”

“Frak the Fleet!” he responded quickly, practically cutting her off as he stared down at her. His hand came up and his fingers traced along the underside of her jaw softly. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself enjoy the sensation. “We deserve to live our lives, Laura.”

“It’s not enough to live; we need something to live for?” She repeated his words from long ago, letting them slip past her tongue and curl between the two of them like tendrils of smoke from some demon exorcised long ago. She sighed softly, her breath clearing the air as her hand reached up and held his in place. “Government and the military, Bill – ”

“I’m not living for Earth.” His hand tightened around hers, and she would have found the fierce determination in his eyes frightening had she not known what it was for. “I’m living for you. I don’t expect you to do the same but – ” Her eyes burned as she looked up at him, forgetting how to breathe for a moment at his words. She lifted her head, her other hand pulling him down until his mouth met hers and she stole whatever words he was going to speak next, slipping them off his tongue and onto hers, savouring the silence left behind.

When they finally parted, her breathing was uneven, and his hand still held hers tightly, nestled between her neck and shoulder. “You should expect it,” she finally murmured, breaking the cacophony of ragged breathing and thundering hearts.

“Are you going to take Zarek’s offer?”

She nodded slowly and tugged on his arm until he shifted even closer to her, the space between them shrinking from inches to centimetres. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t and we had another New Caprica.” She took a deep breath, the decision lifting some of the tension from her frame as she stared at him. “It’ll be difficult – I mean, we’ll have to be discreet, and I won’t be able to be with you nearly as much as I’d like to – but we’ll work it out.” She smiled as she spoke – the ease of that decision not causing her to falter at all. There was no other option – she couldn’t have pushed him away even if she had wanted to.

“So say we all.” He grinned and tugged her closer until no space existed between them at all, just his skin rough against hers, no room at all for anything except the vast universe of emotion she felt for the man next to her.

“Have you seen Saul?” She voiced the first random thought she could grasp, and he started momentarily in surprise.

“He seems fine,” he hedged, and she shook her head silently at the news. “Cottle hauled him down to sickbay once everyone had unloaded. His eye – ” Bill’s voice slid to a halt and she rolled toward him, squeezing his shoulder in sympathy.

“His eye will heal. His heart on the other hand.... Gods, Bill, he went through things no man should ever have to go through.” She slid her hand from his shoulder to his chest as she spoke, needing the constant assurance of his heart beating under her palm – a reassurance Saul Tigh would never feel again.

“You two friends now?”

“Hard to go through that and not be friends,” she pointed out in a stilted voice, and he fell quiet next to her. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” His response was quick and churlish. She sighed at the tone and looked at him seriously.

“I can practically hear the guilt from here, Bill. You saved us – ”

“Because I abandoned you in the first place.”

She felt her anger rise at his words, and her gaze sharpened into a glare. “I would never have forgiven you if you had of stayed in orbit and died defending us. I never – never once – doubted that you were out there doing everything possible to come back for us. Bill, we fought because we had to. We survived because we knew that wasn’t how it ended.”

Her voice was rising and she watched him intently as she spoke. He didn’t believe her, she knew. But then again, she couldn’t really hurl stones from her glass house, since she couldn’t count the number of times she had berated herself for not taking the election when she’d had the chance.

“You would have never forgiven me if I died?” He latched onto the innocuous in an attempt to break the mood, and she softened her glare and arched a brow at him.

“I still wouldn’t. I’d go search you out in my next life, just to have the satisfaction of kicking your ass.” He chuckled as she spoke, and she pouted at him playfully. He pulled her closer, brushing his lips against hers softly, lingering but not overwhelming, and she breathed in the scent of him in contentment.

“Duly noted.” His voice was amused, and she rolled her eyes at him with a huff. “Same goes for you.” His arms wrapped around her, and she laid her head back on his shoulder with a muffled giggle.

“How does that work? You can’t die and I can’t die so we what? Just live forever?”

“Thirty years from now, we can go to bed one evening, and lie like this and just never wake up. I could live with that.” His words were a low growl in her ear, and she smiled wistfully as she listened. Thirty years from now, if they were so lucky to be granted that... she closed her eyes tightly like a small child wishing. Please Gods.

“Me too,” she mumbled against the skin of his neck, soft and vulnerable against her lips. She felt tiny in his arms, like some small, fragile creature in need of protection. She knew she didn’t need him, not technically, and yet she was so happy to just let go for the moment and feel protected. Cared for. Loved. It wasn’t something she had ever allowed before, and she knew that he somehow just knew that.

Her eyes drifted over to the small porthole and the vast inky blackness of space beyond it. He had not asked her about the occupation – it was a question she knew he would never ask, not until she introduced the topic first. Star followed star as the ship slid through the fluid confines of space, her eyes followed each one until the soft light was enough to expel any fear she felt at the darkness. She had stared at nothing but blue sky, grey sky, clouds and atmosphere for the last year, and the empty void of space was comforting.

“We’ll be fine,” he reassured her softly, his arm tightening, and he gazed with her out the window as she marvelled that he could comfort her without even knowing she needed it.

“Is it wrong that I thank the Gods for this – for you? A holocaust became a miracle for me somehow, Bill, and I just feel – ” She paused and swallowed, her thoughts trailing one after the other, like the stars outside, warming her in the empty blackness that had become her soul.

“Both a blessing and a curse.” His voice whispered in the darkened room, and she closed her eyes to the sight of the vast nothingness surrounding them. She nodded, pressing her face into his neck until she could breathe only him, feel only him, survive the darkness with only him. “But then, love always is.”