Counting Up
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So he finally asked her.

"Are you flirting with me, ma'am?" Lee Adama wasn't exactly joking. But he wasn't sure how he'd feel about the answer to the question.

Laura Roslin half-smiled at him, "Would that bother you, Captain Apollo?"

Shifting in his seat, Lee tried to decide, and suddenly realized the answer. He admired her for her strength and competence, and ability to take on anyone and anything and not back down while still being a woman. "No. No it wouldn't."

"Then we're agreed." She picked up her stylus and began making notations again. "Now, was there something else you needed?"

"No, ma'am. That was all."

She looked up at him over the rims of her glasses, "Then thank you for your assistance, Captain Apollo."

"You're welcome." Feeling dismissed, he moved towards the door. He turned back before he reached the knob. "I'll see you tomorrow, at this time?"

"Of course, Captain." The smile touched her lips again. "You are my ten o'clock."

--

Lee wasn't sure when it changed from innocent to something else. Looking back, he couldn't even be sure when he first realized how much he looked forward to these little meetings.

He could, however, pinpoint the first time he went down on the President while she bit into her wrist to keep from making a sound. It hadn't been planned, but there'd been something frustrated about her, something that rubbed him the wrong way, and he found himself catching her wrists and then kneeling in front of her, urging her pants down.

When she came, he held on, riding out the orgasm and coaxing two more from her before finally letting go.

They didn't speak about it, but she did look more relaxed for several days.

He didn't kiss her until the fifth time he'd 'relaxed' her. That's what he had to call it in his head, because this wasn't a relationship. He, Lee Adama, was not frakking the President of the 12 Colonies of Kobol.

Except that he was.

There were probably rules about it, he thought as he slid into her for the first time (and his hand was clapped across her mouth, just in case, and she bit him ten seconds before he fell apart while buried inside of her). Rules and regulations that prohibit that sort of relationship (she once said something about making babies). The CAG was not supposed to be frakking the President.

He found her puking, on the third week into their affair, and it scared him. He remained cordial and collected and oh-so diplomatic for four weeks before he broke past his own fear, and held her again.

When her mouth found his, he let it. When she sank onto him, he let her. When she came around him, back arching, hands grabbing, nails digging into his skin, he let her.

This was her right. He sometimes thought it should have been different.

Kara called him on it, once, demanding to know who he was sleeping with. Why he didn't seem to be as frustrated as some of the others. Considering the racks were beginning to fill with pilots who were either holding massive orgies, or trying not to kill each other (frakking came into it, maybe), he wasn't surprised.

The explanation he gave wove rings around a web of lies, and Kara simply snorted at him, called him a damned liar. And stopped pressing.

The President (even in his own mind, he couldn't call her Laura), got steadily worse. He could feel the bones beneath her skin when she lay against him. Five months into the affair, she fainted during the beginning of their appointment. As it was an actual business meeting, he didn't feel embarrassed to call the medic.

Within six days, every rumor was running rampant through the fleet. She'd live, or she'd die, or she had infected everyone with a deadly sickness spread by the Cylons. You just had to know the right person to ask to get all the scuttlebutt.

Lee saw her once more before she was too sick to do more than stare up at the ceiling of her cabin.

She told him to remember that life was more than fighting and dying.

He could barely bring himself to look at the once vibrant woman laying on her deathbed.

"Captain Apollo, promise me something." Her words were halting, her voice and breath struggling with the weight on her chest that seemed to be pressing her into oblivion.

"Anything." Wondering why he couldn't feel any tears, Lee touched her hand, then slowly held it in his.

"Don't regret us."

The words made him look away. He wondered if she understood what she was asking, but then, she did know him inside and out. Lee always used to think of himself as such a simple man. "If we, if I -- Madame President --"

"Laura. My name..."

Then it hurt. Swallowing against something he didn't want to name, Lee leaned forward, "I regret nothing, Laura."

She was smiling as he kissed her.

-f-

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