Not a Friend
Pairing: Roslin/Adama
Rating: G
Spoilers: Acts of Contrition. This takes place before Starbuck's confession.
Commander Adama found the President of the Twelve Colonies curled up on his sofa sound asleep.
Granted, he had been late for their bi-daily meeting but that was nothing new. Most of the time one of them was late for these meetings, forcing the other to wait for sometimes as much as an hour. This time, though, he had been nearly two hours late; a record for either of them.
She didn't stir when he closed the door behind him, so he crossed the room to the sofa, unbuttoning his collar along the way.
"Madame President," he said in a normal tone of voice, but it had no effect.
Adama looked down at her. She was lying on her side, hands tucked under her chin, knees drawn up. He noted her shoes sitting off to the side of the sofa and her glasses resting on the table. Her lavender jacket lay across her lower legs and feet, leaving her in the soft, figure-hugging white shirt. Her dark hair fanned out over her shoulder and cheek as she slept.
He knelt carefully beside the sofa intent on waking her. But he didn't. Instead, he found himself just staring at her, musing on his feelings.
Adama was the first to admit that initially, he hadn't liked Laura Roslin. She was a little too polished for his taste and a bit pushy. After the attack and her ascent to the Presidency, he realized that he'd be forced to deal with her. Sure, on the surface, one would think that he held the power. He had all the guns. But civilians were a difficult lot to contend with. They tended not to be particularly amiable to idea of simply following orders as his soldiers did. Civilians asked questions and challenged authority and needed to feel like they were somehow in control of their own destiny even though they weren't. Adama had known from the moment they'd fled the Cylons with 50,000 civilians trailing behind, that imposing martial law would only be a temporary solution to a problem that could grow exponentially in surprisingly little time.
So he had to deal with Roslin. Yes, she was the Secretary of Education, but even Adama had to admit that she had shown a surprisingly strong ability to keep her head in a crisis. She had managed to save tens of thousands and had stood toe-to-toe against his own authority. Adama didn't like being challenged but her guts impressed him and at some point, he'd stopped thinking of her as a school teacher and started believing her to be the President.
But looking at her now as he was, not for the first time, he thought of her as a woman. It wasn't something that he dwelt on, nor was it a burning passion to possess her. It was more of an appreciation of her femininity. He found her to be beautiful. And she smelled good; like some type of unnamed flower. He could smell it now and Adama knew that one day, when she eventually ran out of whatever gave her that scent, he would miss it.
Unbidden, his fingers moved her hair from where it had fallen across her cheek. Still, she slept undisturbed.
Adama knew that she'd been to see Cottle today and though she had woven some tale about having allergies, he knew a lie when he heard it. Something was wrong, something serious. Adama could tell by the look of sadness he sometimes caught in her eyes. She was hiding it well, but he was an astute man and it had become his habit of late to observe her. Something was definitely wrong.
But he didn't have the kind of relationship with her where she would confide in him. Lee probably did but his son was fiercely loyal to his President. Adama knew better than to even ask.
He thought that maybe one day the two of them would find themselves friends and she'd start thinking of him as a man and not just the commander.
But that wasn't today.
Retrieving a blanket from his bed to cover her, Adama decided that he could wait.
The End.