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Just...ask her to dinner. What's the worst that can happen? She says no? She throws you out? She airlocks you? She might say yes.
This internal monologue and you are old friends by now. You meet every day, talk things over in well-rehearsed words and part with the same disgruntled feelings –and the promise to convene again soon. (You almost wave affectionately in your mind at the words as they walk by, reacquainting themselves with this patch of your thoughts.)
But this time the words refuse to leave. They are staging an intervention. You either act now or you will part ways for good. There is something in this ultimatum handed to you from yourself that causes you to gather your courage. You see it in your mind and wrap your hands around this bravery in chunks. (Fists closing around it, balling it into an arsenal with which to take aim, no longer abstract you almost feel it in the palm of your hand. You can do this.)
So you hang back as the meeting ends, busying yourself with shuffling papers and pretending to read over a sheet, acting as innocuous as possible as she tidies her own desk. She does not speak (but then neither do you). Notes into briefcase, thoughts scribbled down (a strand of hair tucked behind her ear, her fingers are so delicate for a woman that holds a fleet together with her bare hands).
You squeeze the courage in your hands and inhale deeply, preparing to exhale the invitation.
But Tory interrupts, her words blowing past your own. "Madame President?" (Your fists loosen as slivers of daring escape your grasp.)
Laura looks up as her aide nods towards the phone, quirks an eyebrow as she lifts the receiver. She has (barely) noticed that you are still in the room. (Tory casts you a questioning glance as she leaves again.) Your gaze flickers back to her, to Laura. She smiles briefly (and you convince yourself that it is not tightly) in your general direction and you think your knees might buckle.
She presses the phone to her ear.
Her face, her stance, her being, softens, relaxes. You hear only one side of the conversation.
"Hello... hi, yeah just finished... hmmm... later this evening... I know (she laughs and you could live happily shrouded in only that sound)... no, no. I should be home in an hour... Racetrack... Your glasses? Oh! They might be on the sink... because I might have mistaken them for mine this morning... (she laughs again and you feel alive right until...)… we'll see about that, Admiral..."
A race of questions tear off in your mind (leaving you dying in their dusty wake):
How long has Colonial One no longer been the home of Laura Roslin?
Have they been sharing ships, quarters, glasses, all of this time?
Which of the pilots is Racetrack?
Was her laugh always so infectious?
Adama? Really?
Your run of thoughts is disrupted by the reappearance of another delegate and by her attention now focused in his direction. "Oh wait, Lee's here."
(Lee, not Delegate or Mr Adama. Your fists go slack.)
"I only need a minute Madame Pre...."
She holds the phone in his direction "Talk to your father for 5 minutes, he hasn't seen you all week."
Lee does not say it, there is no need, the "But Moooom" fairly vibrates the air throughout the room. (How strange and yet unsurprising you find it that she can seamlessly switch from treating him as nothing more than the junior delegate he is to the son he is clearly becoming.)
Lee takes the phone and it is then, as she reaches for a file on the table that she truly registers your presence.
"Mr Bagot, was there something you wanted?"
You, you think but do not say. You think it would have been better if you hadn't stayed back, if you hadn't balled up courage in your hands and readied your aim, poised with your target in sight. At least before... you had possibility, that second before you fire your shot and take your chance (that moment when everything is still and calm and about to be). Now you see, you know. You no longer have that, you never really did. (You should have known, with Laura Roslin – the air is never still, always crackling around her.)
Roslin and Adama. (For all you know it could be Roslin-Adama by now.)
You flash resentment for a pulse but it is gone by the next. Who could resent two people for finding each other?
"Mr Bagot?"
"What? Oh. No, nothing. There was nothing, Madam President." You pull your briefcase from under her curious gaze and turn to leave. "Have a safe trip home."
You say it and mean it and hope to Gods that Adama knows what a lucky frakking bastard he is.