In Between Days.
title: In Between Days
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Flashbacks in Daybreak, otherwise: nothing!
pairings: kara/zak, lee
overall fic rating: PG
total word count: 2,500
notes: Written in response to the prompt "She's three days late" by kag523. Originally posted here in
the_applecart.
When Kara doesn’t answer his knocking at her front door, he tries the knob. It’s unlocked, not exactly a strange occurrence despite some of the unsavory tenants she shares the building with. With the door ajar, he knocks again for good measure, his head peeking in at the dark stairway that leads down to the livable space. She invited him over, but that doesn’t make him feel any less like he’s intruding when he lets himself in.
“Kara?” Lee calls and finally shuts the door behind him, this time flipping over the deadbolt and hooking the chain in its slot. She may be okay with allowing anyone to wander in unannounced, but Lee’s always needed the reassurance otherwise. Though the stairs were dark, the living room and kitchen aren’t, the overhead lighting set to on. Both his nose and his ears alert him to the fact that something’s on the stove before he even sees the pan there, crackling, popping, and sizzling at whatever is on the burner. He sets his bag on one of the kitchen chairs, pulling his coat off to drape it over the back of the well-worn wooden seats she undoubtedly got at a second-hand shop. There’s paint dried and staining over them, chips in the finish, and he’s been there enough to know that each and every one of them wobbles from the uneven legs, creaking with the lack of strength that came with age.
“Kara? Your food’s burning.” His voice is raised but he doesn’t yell, instead Lee’s quick on his feet as he goes to the stove and tries to push away the frying pan. The metal handle’s hot though, and he pulls back on instinct, cursing quietly to himself before he grabs at a potholder of questionable cleanliness and uses it to shove the pan to one of the cold burners. He turns the heat off completely before returning to his search for her, and he can already smell the slight stink of whatever had once been food in his clothing. That stench will be with him all night.
His first stop is the bedroom and Lee proceeds with even more hesitance than he did her front door. He knows he’s early and it’s been some inward and unspoken fear of his that one of these days he’ll let himself in and catch Kara and his brother in the middle of something he never wants to see. That, Lee knows, would be too much. His knuckles rap on the door and just as before, there’s no response. He weighs the decision, face contorting into a grimace as he finally opens it just a crack. She’s not there either.
The only place it leaves is the bathroom, unless she’s disappeared all together from the apartment, and that very idea starts to tick up his anxiety as he heads for the bathroom door. What would have been so urgent that she would have left her place unlocked and the stove still on? From the char of the food, it’s been ten minutes, give or take, since she last checked on it. He starts to prepare for the worst, eyes scanning the apartment like he’ll find evidence of a struggle or an intruder, but it’s all just business as usual. Kara’s clutter, a dirty dish, some of her outerwear strewn over a couch and her favorite boots at the bottom of the staircase.
With a heavy breath, Lee finally knocks on the bathroom door and though there’s no reply, he can hear her-or someone-inside. “Kara, you okay?” He’s gentler now, the relief evident in his voice, although he knows he shouldn’t be counting his blessings just yet. “Open up.” There’s a rustling from inside and what he thinks sounds like someone in the final stretch of a good cry, sniffles and a croak voice all that remains. Lee goes for the door handle, jiggling it when he finds it locked.
“I’ll be-” She starts and stops, flushes the toilet, runs the faucet, all an illusion of the usual bathroom process. “Give me a minute.”
He doesn’t want to listen, Lee wants to push and persist, but he follows her words and backs off from the door. Just barely.
When Kara finally does appear, her cheeks still damp from water recently splashed, she nearly jumps at the sight of him so close. She hadn’t expected him to linger, and in her rush to pull herself together, she didn’t bother listening for the tell-tale sound of his shoes moving away from his prior position. “Gods,” her head shakes and she steps around him, moving quick. “Heard of personal space, Lee? You should try it some time.”
It’s something she would say at any other time, but the difference is she isn’t laughing or joking when she gets her words out. No, Lee immediately knows something is wrong. He follows her back to the kitchen where she’s tossing the remains of dinner into the trash, working a million miles a minute, like if she stops she’ll give herself away.
“You okay?”
“Of course,” she barely gets out, pushing her fingers through her hair.
She does everything but look at him, and there’s only so much of it Lee can take before he has to stop her. He grabs her arm as she tries to cross him back to the living room, halting her in her place. Their eyes meet, a force of habit for Kara as she lets her guard down for not more than a second. The damage is done in that instant, Lee can see the tears, the redness of irritated veins in her eyes. “You called me here for a reason.” He prompts her, his head dipping down in a show of intimacy, closeness, and his sincerity.
It says a lot that Kara doesn’t even try to pull her arm away from him, just lets it hang there, his gentle but firm grasp around her bicep. And in a moment of untold openness, she actually speaks. “I’m late.”
It isn’t like in the movies or television, where the person hearing the words comically doesn’t understand and always asks ‘Late for what?’ No, Lee knows exactly what she means and as the words hit their full recognition, he grips her a little looser and finally lets go of her all together. “How late?”
“A few days?” She offers quietly, but irritably, like he should somehow know these things. “I don’t know, I should have gotten it at the start of the week and it’s never happened… ever.”
He watches, unable to take his eyes off her face even when she looks away from him. “Did you tell Zak?”
Kara answers quickly, nearly cutting his words off. “No. Of course not.”
“Before you worry… or do anything, you should go get one of those tests, right? Unless you already did?” The entire situation’s new territory for him. Like the carefulness he’s applied to the other areas of his life, Lee’s never been on the receiving ends of those words before. There’s no protocol for this, least of all when the woman in question isn’t even his.
“I realized I was late, called you, and here we are. That’s pretty much been my entire thought process since then.” Kara leans against the arm of the couch, shoulders slumped and defeated. “Lee, I can’t, I can’t have a baby.” Her head shakes and her arms raise, gesticulating along with her words. “I’ll get put on leave, they’ll never let me back on a battlestar. I’ll be stuck on a base for the rest of my life.” Her words speed up the more she goes on, a stream of consciousness from her anxiety-plagued mind. “I can’t even afford this place as it is, but a kid? I’m not cut out for it. My parents frakked me up so much, Lee, I just can’t. I don’t even know how this happened. I’m careful, we were careful. I’ve never missed a shot, not even a day later than I should’ve had it.”
“Kara.” He says her name, hoping to stall her, but she continues on. He tries again a moment later, this time louder than before, and it does the trick, her eyes on him as her mouth shuts. “You don’t even know if you are. This just happens sometimes, right? It’s probably nothing.” There’s a stirring of some unidentifiable emotion in his stomach, his head swimming with thought while his gut burns with nausea at the prospect of what she’s saying. Kara’s pregnant, or possibly so, and suddenly the rest of his world feels ten time smaller than it had not a moment ago.
“And Zak-” She draws her hands to her face, covering over her nose and mouth as her head shakes side to side, eyes on the floor. “If anyone found out-”
He tries to level out his breathing, losing focus on her voice as the sound of blood rushing drowns it out. “Just take a test. Go to the doctor.”
“-It’ll ruin my career and his. Flight instructor frakking her student and gets pregnant before the term’s even over. I’d be ruining his life. I couldn’t even have it, he’d never be able to claim it as his because of what it would mean. And if I got rid of it-you know your brother, it would kill him.”
Lee knows now what that feeling in his stomach is. It isn’t fear for her or his brother, the implications of their affair coming out after months of keeping it quiet, or the reaction his parents would have at learning their youngest son was to be a father before he even became an officer. Lee knows what it is and it’s jealousy. By no means is he ready to be a father, if he ever will be, but that doesn’t stop the ache at knowing his brother has Kara Thrace in yet another way he never will. It surprises him and pains him all at once, and for a brief second, he lets that jealousy and grief wash him over as he stares across at her, tears welling up in her eyes in a show of emotion she’s never had in front of him before.
He takes a seat finally, relaxing into the couch cushions and not a moment later Kara’s beside him, her body curled up into him. Jealousy filters out and soon guilt takes its place. She called him because she trusts him, trusts him enough to confess what she fears, and all he can think about is how much he irrationally wishes the potential child in her stomach is his. Lee recalls that night months ago on the table and now he wishes he’d gone through with it. Maybe they would have been caught by Zak and he would have to face his feelings out loud rather than bury them underneath everything he is each and every day.
Lee puts his arm around her and pulls her in close. He feels the wetness of tears against his neck, the shake of her body as she cries without sound. Never in a million years did he expect the woman known as Starbuck would ever give so much away to another human being, especially not one she wasn’t bedding on a regular basis.
“Zak… he’d be happy to give everything up for you, no matter the consequences.” It hurts him to say it but he does. He wants to portray his brother as everything Zak isn’t: mean, abandoning, vindictive. Lee wants to drive them apart and take her for his own, but he knows it isn’t something he’s ever meant to have. She’s not meant for him in the end, and what kind of bastard would he be if he preyed on her worst fears to his own advantage? That deep buried, darker part of himself goes back into hiding and Lee rubs his other hand to her arm, soothing into her skin, savoring the feel of her warmth. This is all he’ll ever have. “Give it a few days and if nothing changes, then tell him.” He nudges her chin with the back of his fingers and Kara doesn’t fight, lifting her head to meet his gaze. “He’ll be happy.”
She doesn’t acknowledge what his words do for her, but they comfort just the same while she’s lost in her own head, not able to suss out her own logical thoughts on the issue she’s in the center of. Kara pulls herself back against him and tells herself that the safety his arms bring around her is only because they feel so much like Zak’s. That, and nothing more.
--
He sees her again a few days later when his brother calls to invite him to watch the pyramid game. Lee brings beer because he always does, but he isn’t sure if it’s putting Kara at risk of having to avoid drinking the stuff, and Lee curses as he carries the six pack up the flights of stairs to her floor. Zak greets him with a hug and Lee plays cool and polite while trying to figure out if Kara has told him already and he’s merely just trying to hide it. He decides Zak doesn’t know, he’s never been a good liar, at least not to his brother. Both of them make their way to the kitchen, the television already playing the pre-game show at something next to a deafening volume.
Lee watches as Zak hugs her from behind, the sound of her electric laugh even louder than the TV set. She turns in his arms, kissing Zak in the playful manner he’s seen a million times before in that very apartment, in a few bars downtown, even at the park after a pick-up pyramid game. He averts his eyes, not for their privacy, but for his own sanity. When his peripheral vision picks up that they’ve separated, at least enough to not have their mouths all over each other, he raises his brow to Kara, a furtive glance given in the direction of his brother, occupied with filling a large bowl with a salty snack.
Kara smiles and follows his line of sight, biting over her lower lip in the way that Lee’s been dying to see her do when she looks at him. When her eyes are back on Lee, Kara simply shakes her head, that same grin still holding. He knows what she means by it, that it isn’t a ‘No, I haven’t told him,’ but instead indicates that something’s changed since they last spoke. It had been nothing after all.
He isn’t sure of the relief she felt when she found out herself, but he knows his own, and as Lee watches his brother tug her by the wrist towards the couch, Lee lets the jealousy go. Maybe he still has a shot.
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Flashbacks in Daybreak, otherwise: nothing!
pairings: kara/zak, lee
overall fic rating: PG
total word count: 2,500
notes: Written in response to the prompt "She's three days late" by kag523. Originally posted here in
the_applecart.
When Kara doesn’t answer his knocking at her front door, he tries the knob. It’s unlocked, not exactly a strange occurrence despite some of the unsavory tenants she shares the building with. With the door ajar, he knocks again for good measure, his head peeking in at the dark stairway that leads down to the livable space. She invited him over, but that doesn’t make him feel any less like he’s intruding when he lets himself in.
“Kara?” Lee calls and finally shuts the door behind him, this time flipping over the deadbolt and hooking the chain in its slot. She may be okay with allowing anyone to wander in unannounced, but Lee’s always needed the reassurance otherwise. Though the stairs were dark, the living room and kitchen aren’t, the overhead lighting set to on. Both his nose and his ears alert him to the fact that something’s on the stove before he even sees the pan there, crackling, popping, and sizzling at whatever is on the burner. He sets his bag on one of the kitchen chairs, pulling his coat off to drape it over the back of the well-worn wooden seats she undoubtedly got at a second-hand shop. There’s paint dried and staining over them, chips in the finish, and he’s been there enough to know that each and every one of them wobbles from the uneven legs, creaking with the lack of strength that came with age.
“Kara? Your food’s burning.” His voice is raised but he doesn’t yell, instead Lee’s quick on his feet as he goes to the stove and tries to push away the frying pan. The metal handle’s hot though, and he pulls back on instinct, cursing quietly to himself before he grabs at a potholder of questionable cleanliness and uses it to shove the pan to one of the cold burners. He turns the heat off completely before returning to his search for her, and he can already smell the slight stink of whatever had once been food in his clothing. That stench will be with him all night.
His first stop is the bedroom and Lee proceeds with even more hesitance than he did her front door. He knows he’s early and it’s been some inward and unspoken fear of his that one of these days he’ll let himself in and catch Kara and his brother in the middle of something he never wants to see. That, Lee knows, would be too much. His knuckles rap on the door and just as before, there’s no response. He weighs the decision, face contorting into a grimace as he finally opens it just a crack. She’s not there either.
The only place it leaves is the bathroom, unless she’s disappeared all together from the apartment, and that very idea starts to tick up his anxiety as he heads for the bathroom door. What would have been so urgent that she would have left her place unlocked and the stove still on? From the char of the food, it’s been ten minutes, give or take, since she last checked on it. He starts to prepare for the worst, eyes scanning the apartment like he’ll find evidence of a struggle or an intruder, but it’s all just business as usual. Kara’s clutter, a dirty dish, some of her outerwear strewn over a couch and her favorite boots at the bottom of the staircase.
With a heavy breath, Lee finally knocks on the bathroom door and though there’s no reply, he can hear her-or someone-inside. “Kara, you okay?” He’s gentler now, the relief evident in his voice, although he knows he shouldn’t be counting his blessings just yet. “Open up.” There’s a rustling from inside and what he thinks sounds like someone in the final stretch of a good cry, sniffles and a croak voice all that remains. Lee goes for the door handle, jiggling it when he finds it locked.
“I’ll be-” She starts and stops, flushes the toilet, runs the faucet, all an illusion of the usual bathroom process. “Give me a minute.”
He doesn’t want to listen, Lee wants to push and persist, but he follows her words and backs off from the door. Just barely.
When Kara finally does appear, her cheeks still damp from water recently splashed, she nearly jumps at the sight of him so close. She hadn’t expected him to linger, and in her rush to pull herself together, she didn’t bother listening for the tell-tale sound of his shoes moving away from his prior position. “Gods,” her head shakes and she steps around him, moving quick. “Heard of personal space, Lee? You should try it some time.”
It’s something she would say at any other time, but the difference is she isn’t laughing or joking when she gets her words out. No, Lee immediately knows something is wrong. He follows her back to the kitchen where she’s tossing the remains of dinner into the trash, working a million miles a minute, like if she stops she’ll give herself away.
“You okay?”
“Of course,” she barely gets out, pushing her fingers through her hair.
She does everything but look at him, and there’s only so much of it Lee can take before he has to stop her. He grabs her arm as she tries to cross him back to the living room, halting her in her place. Their eyes meet, a force of habit for Kara as she lets her guard down for not more than a second. The damage is done in that instant, Lee can see the tears, the redness of irritated veins in her eyes. “You called me here for a reason.” He prompts her, his head dipping down in a show of intimacy, closeness, and his sincerity.
It says a lot that Kara doesn’t even try to pull her arm away from him, just lets it hang there, his gentle but firm grasp around her bicep. And in a moment of untold openness, she actually speaks. “I’m late.”
It isn’t like in the movies or television, where the person hearing the words comically doesn’t understand and always asks ‘Late for what?’ No, Lee knows exactly what she means and as the words hit their full recognition, he grips her a little looser and finally lets go of her all together. “How late?”
“A few days?” She offers quietly, but irritably, like he should somehow know these things. “I don’t know, I should have gotten it at the start of the week and it’s never happened… ever.”
He watches, unable to take his eyes off her face even when she looks away from him. “Did you tell Zak?”
Kara answers quickly, nearly cutting his words off. “No. Of course not.”
“Before you worry… or do anything, you should go get one of those tests, right? Unless you already did?” The entire situation’s new territory for him. Like the carefulness he’s applied to the other areas of his life, Lee’s never been on the receiving ends of those words before. There’s no protocol for this, least of all when the woman in question isn’t even his.
“I realized I was late, called you, and here we are. That’s pretty much been my entire thought process since then.” Kara leans against the arm of the couch, shoulders slumped and defeated. “Lee, I can’t, I can’t have a baby.” Her head shakes and her arms raise, gesticulating along with her words. “I’ll get put on leave, they’ll never let me back on a battlestar. I’ll be stuck on a base for the rest of my life.” Her words speed up the more she goes on, a stream of consciousness from her anxiety-plagued mind. “I can’t even afford this place as it is, but a kid? I’m not cut out for it. My parents frakked me up so much, Lee, I just can’t. I don’t even know how this happened. I’m careful, we were careful. I’ve never missed a shot, not even a day later than I should’ve had it.”
“Kara.” He says her name, hoping to stall her, but she continues on. He tries again a moment later, this time louder than before, and it does the trick, her eyes on him as her mouth shuts. “You don’t even know if you are. This just happens sometimes, right? It’s probably nothing.” There’s a stirring of some unidentifiable emotion in his stomach, his head swimming with thought while his gut burns with nausea at the prospect of what she’s saying. Kara’s pregnant, or possibly so, and suddenly the rest of his world feels ten time smaller than it had not a moment ago.
“And Zak-” She draws her hands to her face, covering over her nose and mouth as her head shakes side to side, eyes on the floor. “If anyone found out-”
He tries to level out his breathing, losing focus on her voice as the sound of blood rushing drowns it out. “Just take a test. Go to the doctor.”
“-It’ll ruin my career and his. Flight instructor frakking her student and gets pregnant before the term’s even over. I’d be ruining his life. I couldn’t even have it, he’d never be able to claim it as his because of what it would mean. And if I got rid of it-you know your brother, it would kill him.”
Lee knows now what that feeling in his stomach is. It isn’t fear for her or his brother, the implications of their affair coming out after months of keeping it quiet, or the reaction his parents would have at learning their youngest son was to be a father before he even became an officer. Lee knows what it is and it’s jealousy. By no means is he ready to be a father, if he ever will be, but that doesn’t stop the ache at knowing his brother has Kara Thrace in yet another way he never will. It surprises him and pains him all at once, and for a brief second, he lets that jealousy and grief wash him over as he stares across at her, tears welling up in her eyes in a show of emotion she’s never had in front of him before.
He takes a seat finally, relaxing into the couch cushions and not a moment later Kara’s beside him, her body curled up into him. Jealousy filters out and soon guilt takes its place. She called him because she trusts him, trusts him enough to confess what she fears, and all he can think about is how much he irrationally wishes the potential child in her stomach is his. Lee recalls that night months ago on the table and now he wishes he’d gone through with it. Maybe they would have been caught by Zak and he would have to face his feelings out loud rather than bury them underneath everything he is each and every day.
Lee puts his arm around her and pulls her in close. He feels the wetness of tears against his neck, the shake of her body as she cries without sound. Never in a million years did he expect the woman known as Starbuck would ever give so much away to another human being, especially not one she wasn’t bedding on a regular basis.
“Zak… he’d be happy to give everything up for you, no matter the consequences.” It hurts him to say it but he does. He wants to portray his brother as everything Zak isn’t: mean, abandoning, vindictive. Lee wants to drive them apart and take her for his own, but he knows it isn’t something he’s ever meant to have. She’s not meant for him in the end, and what kind of bastard would he be if he preyed on her worst fears to his own advantage? That deep buried, darker part of himself goes back into hiding and Lee rubs his other hand to her arm, soothing into her skin, savoring the feel of her warmth. This is all he’ll ever have. “Give it a few days and if nothing changes, then tell him.” He nudges her chin with the back of his fingers and Kara doesn’t fight, lifting her head to meet his gaze. “He’ll be happy.”
She doesn’t acknowledge what his words do for her, but they comfort just the same while she’s lost in her own head, not able to suss out her own logical thoughts on the issue she’s in the center of. Kara pulls herself back against him and tells herself that the safety his arms bring around her is only because they feel so much like Zak’s. That, and nothing more.
--
He sees her again a few days later when his brother calls to invite him to watch the pyramid game. Lee brings beer because he always does, but he isn’t sure if it’s putting Kara at risk of having to avoid drinking the stuff, and Lee curses as he carries the six pack up the flights of stairs to her floor. Zak greets him with a hug and Lee plays cool and polite while trying to figure out if Kara has told him already and he’s merely just trying to hide it. He decides Zak doesn’t know, he’s never been a good liar, at least not to his brother. Both of them make their way to the kitchen, the television already playing the pre-game show at something next to a deafening volume.
Lee watches as Zak hugs her from behind, the sound of her electric laugh even louder than the TV set. She turns in his arms, kissing Zak in the playful manner he’s seen a million times before in that very apartment, in a few bars downtown, even at the park after a pick-up pyramid game. He averts his eyes, not for their privacy, but for his own sanity. When his peripheral vision picks up that they’ve separated, at least enough to not have their mouths all over each other, he raises his brow to Kara, a furtive glance given in the direction of his brother, occupied with filling a large bowl with a salty snack.
Kara smiles and follows his line of sight, biting over her lower lip in the way that Lee’s been dying to see her do when she looks at him. When her eyes are back on Lee, Kara simply shakes her head, that same grin still holding. He knows what she means by it, that it isn’t a ‘No, I haven’t told him,’ but instead indicates that something’s changed since they last spoke. It had been nothing after all.
He isn’t sure of the relief she felt when she found out herself, but he knows his own, and as Lee watches his brother tug her by the wrist towards the couch, Lee lets the jealousy go. Maybe he still has a shot.