(no subject)
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica 2003
Pairing: Roslin/Zarek
Rating: adult for sexuality, violence and general grossness
Distribution: How much do I owe you for hauling it off?
Spoilers: Up to and including KLG2
Email: exfilia at livejournal dot com
Disclaimer: if I owned them, they'd have a lot more fun
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Disfunctionality
by Exfilia
She held her head high and strode out of the improvised studio, trailing her entourage, but once she was safely out of sight she stopped and groped for Zarek's arm. They were around her in an instant, Tom and Billy and her Apollo all hovering until she thought she might suffocate.
"Madame President?"
"I think I overdid it," she said. That was putting it mildly. Her knees wobbled, her world had spun itself into a psychedelic blur, and her breakfast was threatening to yield to centripetal force.
"Want to lie down for a while?" Apollo asked.
She nodded, and he slid his arm through hers and they strolled through the corridors with Billy dancing ahead of them to open doors until she was safe in her own rooms. She wondered briefly when Zarek's quarters had become her home before she bolted in the direction of the toilet.
When she opened the door, a cool washcloth held against her face, Tom was sitting on the edge of their bed, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
"Where'd everybody go?" she asked.
"I told them," he said, "that you probably didn't want anyone to see you like this. Do you?"
"I don't even want you to see me like this. Lords, I hope I didn't ruin the suit."
"Come here," he said, but instead he stood up and came to her. Firm fingers unfastened buttons and shucked the garments off her, but there was no passion in them, not even affection. She'd known he was probably faking his half of their affair--white knights rescued adolescent princesses, not grandmotherly heads of state, and they were rewarded with kingdoms of their own, not the chance to play second fiddle--but she hadn't expected the relationship to end quite so abruptly. It surprised her that she craved his touch, craved the warmth of him in her bed in the morning. She would miss him. She watched him inspect the lovely suit for damage and then put it away. He even had a feel for her weaknesses. She so missed pretty clothes. He picked up her shoes, wiped off an imaginary speck of dust and placed them in the cupboard, still without speaking to her.
"Tom?" she said. "I don't think I can walk...."
"You had a big day," he said, but there was no warmth in his voice, or in his touch when he supported her to the bed and peeled off her undergarments.
"Breakfast was a mistake," she said.
"You seem to have rectified that one," he observed, sliding one of his undershirts over her head. He bent close, and she thought he would finally hold her, but he wrinkled his nose and pulled away. "Do you want to wash that out of your hair before you lie down?"
"I don't think I can," she said. "How bad is it?"
He took the washcloth and wiped, refolded it and wiped again.
"That'll do," he said. He left her sitting on the bed while he rinsed the cloth, and when he reappeared she could hardly see him through her tears. "What's wrong?" he demanded.
"Nothing." She knew she should talk to him, defuse the tension that seethed under his skin, but she didn't have the energy. She let herself slip sideways until her head lay on the pillow, but her legs had grown far too heavy to raise to the bed. The room swam when Tom lifted her long enough to pull down the blankets. He tucked her into bed, but his gestures were mechanical, and he didn't meet her eyes.
"I'll get your boys to sit with you," he said. "I've got some things to take care of."
"Don't go." Gods, she sounded like a soap opera clinging vine. Her ex-husband would be crowing right now. His last words to her--actually his last roar--had been that one day she would need a man and wish he were there. She wasn't that far gone yet, but Tom was useful, and he made a better consort than he would a captor. "Please don't go," she said. "I need you."
"For what?" In the depths of his blank voice she heard bitterness. Well, she certainly wasn't anyone's dream lover, particularly not now. Not earlier, either, for her interview had been about her government's relationship with the military that nominally worked for her. Her new Sagittaron power base had hardly been mentioned, and none of the reporters spoke to Tom at all.
"At breakfast," she told him, "I couldn't have done that... your people wouldn't have listened to me if you hadn't been there. They accepted me because I'm yours."
"Bullshit." He sat down beside her and dabbed at her face with the cloth. "They've been in prison for years, decades, some of them. They'd have loved anything in a skirt."
"They'd have loved a five-horned demon out of the Book if it'd been on your arm, much less a sick old woman. I don't know why you put up with me."
"Five-horned demons are kind of scarce around here," he said, "and these guys have better taste than that. They never went crazy...."
"There was someone...?" Holy Lords, how had he had time? All she needed was a jealous lover making lewd remarks in the more sensational press markets....
"You didn't know? Guys in prison...."
"Oh." That was better, but not by much. Tom Zarek's displaced homosexual lover on the late night talk shows... she shuddered. "What happened to him?"
"He moved in with an exotic dancer on the Rising Star."
"I'm sorry?"
"We weren't gay, either of us. It was just that he was small and kind of pretty, and he wasn't actually a criminal--he was a doctor, and he treated a couple of guys out of the resistance. I don't even think he knew who they were. Anyway, the first week he was inside he was raped twice. The guards put him in my cell until he healed--they figured nobody would disturb me by dragging him out in the corridor for a little fun--and he just stayed."
"And you...?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I let him prostitute himself for protection. I exploited him, all right? What do you expect? I'm a criminal."
She touched his hair, then his face, and found tears beading on his cheeks.
"I don't think that," she said. "I think he felt safe and warm, and very glad to have found a friend where he least expected it. No one could blame him for finding you attractive."
"Don't patronize me."
"How long were you together?"
"Fifteen years."
"And you just let him go?"
"He didn't want me, and there was no reason to keep him."
Her heart did a little skip at the thought that he might keep someone if there were a reason, whether he was wanted or not. Still, that was better than if he decided she wasn't useful. She thought he was probably too smart a politician to do anything overt, but the fact remained that he no longer needed any elaborate plan to assassinate the president. Now it could be a pillow over her face followed by a sorrowful announcement that she had succumbed to her disease, and she wasn't sure that wasn't the least unpleasant alternative left to her.
She was panicking. Unreasoned fear came with the visions, although she failed to understand why she feared anything in the objective world when there were fat scaly dreamsnakes in her bed and her bath and once in her underwear drawer. Fear of Zarek might be more rational than fear of snakes, but only slightly. It also discounted what Billy and Apollo would do to him if she so much as developed a hangnail. Still, it wouldn't hurt to keep him happy, she thought, and then laughed at herself. It wasn't any fear of the consequences that drove her. It was that she didn't want Tom not to want her. She craved the sensation of his lips against her skin, and that need paralyzed any remnant of good sense that she still had.
She couldn't find the words she wanted, but she slipped her fingers into his hand. He looked down at her, and the cogitation behind his eyes was almost audible. Her stomach did flip-flops that had nothing to do with her disease. What to do?
What else? She let her fingers drift from his hand to his thigh and leaned close to whisper in his ear.
"Come hold me." He had so far been horribly considerate when she was ill, but more than peace and rest now she needed to know she could still depend on him. "Hold me close."
He glared down at her, and she wondered if he didn't know exactly what she was trying to do. Then in a blur he tossed the coverlet aside and landed on top of her. Hard, punishing kisses burned across her face. One rough hand probed inside her and the other mauled at her breast, heedless of the traitorous tumor it harbored. It was as if a storm was breaking against her. If she'd been well she'd have gloried in it, relished the sheer power of the man in her arms. Even now his touch warmed her, released reserves of energy she hadn't known she had and stirred them into a vortex of need. She heard his zipper, and felt his trousers slide away, and then... nothing.
His equipment wasn't cooperating.
He kept trying for a while, rubbing the nonfunctional appendage against her while she stroked his face and hair and the steely muscles in his back. Finally he collapsed on top of her, his angry tears soaking their pillow. By then, though, she had another problem. She set one hand on his shoulder and pushed.
"Move," she whispered. He pulled her closer to him, muffling his sobs against her hair. "Tom, you need to get off me, right now, please." He did, and she rolled away just in time to throw up over the side of the bed.
When she finished he was himself again. He moved her to a chair and gave her the washcloth, then mopped up the mess and changed the bed.
"Come on," he said when he was done. "You do need a shower now."
He got in with her and supported her with one arm around her waist while he ran a sponge over her skin and worked shampoo into her hair. She rested her head against his broad chest and ran her hands over prison-hardened muscles, and when she looked up he was smiling.
"I love you," he said. "I'm sorry...."
She pressed her index finger against his lips.
"I do need you," she said. "I need you..." She forced her balky brain to concentrate, to decide how much to tell him to get his mind on the task without convincing him she had rounded the bend into total insanity. "When Lieutenant Thrace gets back, I'm going to have to go down to the surface. I need you to arrange it."
"Laura, you have enough problems getting down the hall!"
"It's not optional."
"What, are you going to walk?"
"You said you'd give us a shuttle to anywhere we wanted, whenever we wanted."
She had rarely seen Tom at a loss for words, but now he was visibly groping for anything that would dissuade her from what must seem like suicide.
"They haven't found your vice president yet," he ventured. "You want to go down to Kobol too?"
"I have to go."
"But not until the girl shows up again, right? You can let me take care of you for that long?"
She looked up at him, and he seemed genuinely concerned.
"I'll always let you take care of me," she told him. He smiled and kissed her forehead.
"I really do love you," he said.
"I love you, too," she told him. Perhaps he actually believed it. She neither knew nor cared. She let him rinse her hair and dry them both off, and then he carried her to bed and slid in beside her.
"Don't ever let me hurt you," he whispered at the very edge of audibility. "Please, promise me?"
"You couldn't if you tried," she told him, and then slipped into blissful unconsciousness.
The End