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When he slipped through the curtains, Bill found her on the deck next to her infirmary bed, sprawled on her back, one hand still tangled in the tube tying her to the bed, as if she had tried to pull herself up with it, the frakking woman. There was no need to check her pulse, the fierce set of her jaw held all the clues he needed, even if she had her eyes closed.
“Laura?” He knelt down beside her and raised her chin with his index finger.
She exhaled a frustrated sigh before her eyes flicked open and she caught him in her best presidential glare. As if he’d fall for it.
“Either you stop this, or I’ll stay here until Cottle releases you,” he said. He’d leave the fleet to Tigh and Baltar, and he meant it, because he knew that if he didn’t mean it she’d just ignore him and would try walking before she could stand again.
She grunted something that would not have been misplaced in Tigh’s vocabulary and he couldn’t help laughing.
“What?” she snarled.
“You,” he said. She didn’t weigh much, and didn’t protest when he lifted her up. She wrapped her arms around his neck in an easy familiarity that had him pausing and smiling for a moment. The warmth of her body seeped through his uniform. Her mouth was close. He hesitated and stilled.
“What?”
“You.” How could he stop her from hurting herself when she demanded too much of her body too soon? He took a deep breath to voice his concerns, but she raised a finger to his lips.
“Let’s not fight,” she said. Her hand slipped from his neck to the back of his head and pulled it toward her.
He bent his head willingly and let her lips catch his. They opened for him, as he knew they would, and for a moment he forgot he was angry with her, just because she snuggled close as if she trusted him, as if he wasn’t the man who confined her to Sick Bay for her own good. When she released him, they both panted.
Ready to tuck her in, he let her down on the bed, hoping she would at least sleep until the end of the night shift, but she struggled against him until she sat up again, her legs dangling over the side of the bed, and pulled him toward her, between her knees.
Had he closed the curtain? Before he could look over his shoulder, she was kissing him, tongue and all, and he couldn’t help kissing back, and lost track of his thoughts as his hands weaved patterns in her hair and he felt her hands unbutton his uniform.
“Laura?” He caught her hand, stopping her.
“If I can frak, then surely I can walk,” she told him - as if it was a scientific fact and a regular medical test, instead of the most outrageous bribe he could think of.
He rolled his eyes at her, realizing he shouldn’t have kept his arms around her, but she snuggled enticingly against his chest, wrapping her legs around his hips, pulling him close, her heat so near his cock responded to it. His breath caught in his throat, and his resolve crashed against the deck, scattering at his feet.
“Prove it,” he whispered.
She pushed his jacket from his shoulders and slipped a warm hand under the shirt he was wearing, exploring his back.
“Here?” he asked, suddenly aware the curtains provided no soundproofing whatsoever.
She chuckled, a hand roaming his pelvis. His hips bucked against it.
“It’s not as if you can show yourself outside, anytime soon.” She removed her panties, pulled him close again, undulating against him, leaving, he was certain, a nasty wet spot all over his crotch. He shed his pants to preclude further damage.
“That one too,” she pointed at his boxers.
Who was he to disobey a direct order from the president, when she was sitting with her nightgown riding high around her hips, her sex exposed, and, he noticed as he moved a finger through her folds, wet for him. She responded with a moan, closing her eyes and stretching her spine, which almost stopped him from stepping out of his boxers, but he managed to kick them off and he allowed her hands to take hold of his ears and lead his mouth to her mound.
“Please,” she murmured.
He ran his tongue through the slickness of her and felt her vibrate against him. Her fingernails crawled through his hair, racking the skin of his head. He found her clit, slipped his tongue around it, never quite touching it, until he realized her moans could easily be heard in the bed next to them. So, he sucked her abrasively, hoping to shut her up and not at all anticipating the shiver with which she fell backward on the bed, groping for him, trying to pull him with her by his ears, but losing her grip.
He rose, looking down on her, her spread legs dangling over the side of the bed, her fingers slickly taking up the movements his tongue had abandoned, her other hand begging for him, trying to pull him close. He didn’t want to grip his dick, but the sight – he shivered, shucked off his jacket and his shirt, pushed her onto the bed properly and crawled between her open legs, his dick aching for the promise of her.
He entered her slowly, trying not to lose himself, letting her warmth welcome him and her breathy moans guide him in deeper, until there was no more to go.
She caught his gaze, one hand wrapping around his neck, pulling him into a kiss as her hips set a rhythm against him.
Each stifled their moans in the other’s mouth. He bucked into her with short constricted thrusts, in and out of her, the friction unrelenting, gratifying. The bed groaned beneath them but he was unable to stop, and she angled her hips as if she knew the friction would lift him to an upsurge he would not be able to resist for long.
He turned them so she was on top of him, slipped a hand between them, and was gratified by the curving of her spine, the way her hips bucked in impossible intervals until she contracted around him, pulling him with her, allowing him to come in her while she melted against him like a blanket, spent and shivering and undulating against him as if still coming.
His eye was pulled to the white form standing in the opening of the curtain, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes a stormy speech on the brink of bursting forth. Bill held up a hand to stop him from speaking, not the Admiral to the Major, but one man to the other, in a situation he hoped Cottle could empathize with, and he knew he would gladly offer up one of his last packs of cigarettes for Cottle’s silence.
“Don’t you think I stood the test?” Laura murmured against Bill’s neck.
“Hmm,” Bill said, his tone noncommittal, his eye on Cottle.
She swatted him. “You said so, yourself. If I can frak, then surely I can walk.”
Cottle’s left brow rose.
“You said that,” Bill corrected her gently.
“You said, 'Prove it'.”
Cottle’s other brow rose too.
Bill opened his hands. What could he have done?
Cottle rolled his eyes, turned and left, blessedly closing the curtain behind him.
It would be two packs of cigarettes. At least.