Author: Regency

Title: Love Around the Corner

Spoilers: None

Pairing: Adama/Other; Adama/Roslin

Summary: A few years in the future, she knew where he would find his solace.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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She notices it in the way he looks into her eyes and speaks when they’re close.

She notices it in the way he gives her a brief touch in passing , a smile flitting across his lips before he passes out of sight.

She sees it in the way her holds her close, their bodies molding as if godsent to be one. The entire dance, he doesn’t release her from his hold. She wouldn’t leave if the gods themselves demanded it.

She senses it when their fingers brush or they share a private joke that no one else understands.

She’s the only one he lets in. He puts his soul into feeling when he’s with her. He’s not too old or worn to chase her around the room or carry her to bed when she’s ill, which is always.

He doesn’t hesitate to sing to her though he can’t carry a tune. He won’t wait to bathe her body in cool water when she is flushed with fever. He tells her the kinds of stories that his crew would snicker if they heard. He tells her of his childhood; his father and his own dreams that never quite managed to come true. But whenever he ends it, it always ends that she is the one thing that did. She is the one thing that came true.

Even if only for a few months.

She waits to tell him; she doesn’t want to break his heart, which he has so lovingly handed over. She doesn’t want to lose him, but death rears its dreary head and she has no choice anymore. She expects him to yell, to throw things, to leave, but he doesn’t.

He watches her with his fathomless eyes and he vows to be with her until her dying day, or his, whichever comes first. He can’t say he isn’t afraid, because he is, but he loves her and that’s all she’ll have to care about after this.

And so weeks pass, and the illness takes her. It happens little by little, weakness in her muscles, fatigue that worsens in moments. Before long, she can’t feed herself and becomes too exhausted even to sleep. She is in a constant fugue state, saying random things and giving orders that make no sense upon recollection. All along, he is there.

He changes as the Gods begin their gradual retrieval of the angel that is rightfully theirs. He loses a bit of his spirit, his fire; a large part of himself is dying with her.

When she dies, he’s holding her, telling her another of his stories and she smiles where appropriate having heard this particularly tale before, but doesn’t stay to listen for too long.

She tightens her pale fingers around his, signaling for him to be quiet. He is. She recites to him the lyrics of a song by a Geminon singer, LeAnn Rimes.

He knows the song and the singer; they’ve danced to it before, it’s meaning so often lost in their mixed emotions. He asks her of its significance and she struggles to look at him. She tells him that she wants him to find the love that’s right around the corner from him. He doesn’t understand, but promises at her insistence.

Knowing the fact that he is blind to, she can let go trusting that there will be one person to catch him before he hits bottom.

And when he stumbles out of their quarters into the corridor towards anywhere but where she is, he walks right into his savior. Unable to completely lock down his emotions, a sob rushes from his throat and without so much as a question she takes him into her arms.

The fight in his spirit flagging like a dying candlelight, he doesn’t put up much of a fight and collapses into her embrace. Under the strain of supporting their combined weight, her knees buckle, but he carries them carefully to the solid floor thrumming beneath them.

He doesn’t let go, and she doesn’t ask him to, dismissing her bewildered guards with a tip of her head. They rattle away, leaving them alone.

His breathing calms, but she continues to stroke his hair soothingly. His cheek is against her chest, his damp breath warming the valley between her breasts. After a while, she begins to rock him and he doesn’t stop her.

It’s all right, she tells him. He doesn’t believe that. She insists and he gives way to silence. It’s all right now. You’ll survive. He isn’t certain but, the longer she holds him the more clear his late wife’s words become to him. Love right around the corner.

His wife knew how he felt about Laura Roslin. But more importantly she knew how Laura Roslin felt about him.