Kara/Laura fic, etc etc
large sections of this fic are unpunctuated. there's no rhyme or reason to it. no consistency.
whoops.
that's just how i roll, y'all.
kara/laura, nc17, 4400 words, warnings for cancer stuff.
eta: clllaaareee i still don't know how you read version 1 of this, where there was literally ZERO punctuation
Their fight goes:
Get the fuck out of my house you ungrateful waste of a body You’re a disease You’re old You’re a baby You’re immature You’re irresponsible You can’t do the simplest things You never follow through I ask for tomatoes you get me oranges You’re a bitch a shit person a shit lover a shit excuse for a human I’m glad they’re dead How could you How fucking could you
Laura recoils and closes her eyes, like she thinks Kara might hit her, but Kara’s only grabbing her coat off the rack.
Kara’s face flashes with hurt, but she covers it quickly by turning away, then says, “I wouldn’t hurt you. Not ever. Is that really what you think of me? That I’d lay a finger on you?”
“I don’t know what to expect from you when you’re like this. I don’t know what you’re capable of when you’ve had this much to drink.” Laura says it like she thinks it’s true, even though she knows it’s not. There are some lines, just a few, that Kara has no trouble not crossing.
Laura’d not been shrinking back from fear of Kara, anyway, but from jittery reflexes-she’s so on edge lately, flinching at even the gentlest contact, because of the way that doctor had touched her, and the burning, aching, tender spot in her breast that refuses to be ignored, no matter the amount of Percocet Laura takes.
Kara goes to the door, stuffing her feet into her boots, still wet with melted ice.
“Get out,” Laura says.
“I am,” says Kara. Her hands are shaking, and Laura can see she’s having trouble tying her laces. She’s had too much to drink tonight, and some days she’s so hellbent on destroying herself, like she wants to beat the gods to the punch. Kara is young and healthy, but when she gets like this, she seems a billion years old, the weight of several lifetimes on her shoulders, and it doesn’t matter how much Laura tells her it’s okay, because they both know it’s not.
“Now. Get out.” Laura snaps.
“I said I fucking am.”
“Out, get out, leave now,” Laura tries to say, but she’s trembling now, and all that registers is the sickening discomfort that starts in her chest but radiates in all directions, the lump in her breast convexing inward.
Laura?
Laura?
Laura, jesus, what’s wrong?
Then there is Kara’s arms catching her as she falls.
*
What they’d been fighting about was a kid, how Laura wanted/needed to have one and Kara didn’t. Because fuck babies they’re stupid and they cry and their mothers beat them and tell them that they’re stupid and cancerous and that if they don’t behave or pray three times a day to Mars they get what they deserve, and every bad thing that happens to them is their fault, and crying out for help is useless because no one wants to help a piece of shit like them, this is not made up this is based on a true story
No babies. No babies ever.
And then Laura wouldn’t let Kara touch her. She pulled back and said she was tired. Kara touched Laura breasts, and she fucking winced, and Kara confirmed what she’d known all along, that she is reprehensible and worthless and repulsive.
And all Kara wanted was to lay gentle kisses on her body, to put two fingers inside her, where it was hot and clenching and pulsating and wet, and make Laura buck up, her pretences melting into nothing. And rub her clit. And have Laura rub Kara’s. And let her put a finger inside because even though Kara usually hates that, when it’s Laura it feels so good and she’s always so gentle and so patient and never expects Kara to just take it when she doesn’t want to take it.
And the way Laura always kisses Kara through it and speaks soft, dirty things into her ear like I love how I’m the only one who can make your legs open up like this It’s so fucking wrong how much I want you because you are too young and too beautiful and I am too old and too plain but I don’t care how many wrong things I have to do if it means having you like this laid out for me your thighs slick your hair wet your breasts rising and falling cause I’ve got you so out of breath Will you spread for me the way I always spread for you
That’s how it had been. Now, Laura said, No Maybe tomorrow Good night.
She said that for three weeks then four and she won’t tell Kara why.
“Is this still about the baby thing? I’m sorry, I’m just I’m not built that way,” Kara said.
“This isn’t about the fucking baby.”
Laura actually snapped. So Kara went out and got shitfaced as fuck then came back and Bill was there, fucking Bill.
“Are you frakking him?”
“No, gods, Kara no.”
“You’re frakking him, jesus.”
“We were talking, that’s all,” says Laura.
“Talking? Talking like you don’t talk to me? Not ever. Not anymore. What, you think I’m too stupid to handle it?”
Bill said, “Kara you’re not yourself. Calm down.”
Kara said, “Fuck you, how could you?”
And then Kara turned to Laura, all, “You want to know where I’ve been? Out frakking. I let a girl who’s barely legal yet finger me and go down on me and she was perfect and smooth and kind and gentle and warm,” (and this is so madeup where the fuck does Kara even get this shit?)
Bill said, “Kara you need to stop right now. You are being vile.”
And yes, Laura is coming apart in front of Kara, and she needs is to be held and kissed and laid down in the bed and tucked in. She looks so tired.
Laura asked Bill to leave, and he did, reluctantly, telling Kara she needed to pull it together and act like the woman he knew she was.
Skip ahead to Laura just fucking collapsing. Her eyes flutter shut and she crumples into Kara’s embrace, hands fisted in Kara’s shirt.
I’m okay
Baby you’re not okay What’s wrong Baby what’s wrong Are you hurting? You’re hurting Tell me please I deserve to know I’m going crazy here Tell me what I did and I’ll fix it I’ll undo it
and Kara is begging her. They’re on the floor, Kara sitting cross-legged, holding Laura’s head and upper body, stroking her hair.
So tired Laura says. Kara carries her to the bed, chews her fingernails, thumps the mattress over and over. Kara says Baby are you sick You don’t feel hot You’re sweating You’re heart’s beating so fast What is it What is it What is it
I don’t want you to worry
We are so past that Laura I am worried I am so worried I am pulling my hair out here
I’m fine just a little under the weather
This is not what under the weather looks like I’m not stupid Christ why can’t you tell me? What can you tell him that you can’t tell me? Is your opinion of me that low?
Kara no.
Then what fucking what.
And they’re both so teary-eyed they can’t make the other out. Kara’s eyes sting, her vision blurry, and she wipes her face clean with her shirt, incidentally already wet from Laura’s tears.
It’s what you mentioned before Laura says
You and Bill? You’re been together?
No not that
and she laughs, just a bit, before coughing.
Then what?
Laura says I’m sick That’s what it is I’m sick.
Like flu sick? Like food poisoning sick? Like-are you pregnant?
That elicits a fresh torrent of tears. I’m not pregnant she says. I have-Kara-I have cancer.
Baby listen to me it’s okay Laura says, grabbing Kara’s hand, but Kara pulls it away. Her breathing is too far ahead of her, and she can’t catch up, and her throats closing in on itself, and the room is too bright and the thermostat is set too low.
How long have you known Kara asks.
I want you to know that my prognosis is not bad. I have to have surgery to remove the-
How long have you known
Kara
How long
The doctor confirmed it about three weeks ago now.
And before that? You suspected something?
Baby-
And Bill knew?
Kara-
I got to go
Kara
I just I forgot something when I was out I can’t I got to go I got to go
*
She runs and she runs and she runs for miles until her feet blister and her knees feel like chalk and her hamstrings and ass and quadriceps and calves can’t be felt at all, the shin splints she had years ago flaring up so it’s like like a hammer going into her bone with each of her strides. Hyperbole. Her heart isn’t so much beating as vibrating.
5 miles then 7 then 10 then she barfs and barfs and barfs onto the side of the road and collapses and at the end of it all the facts are not any less true And as she hobbles back home hours later barely able to stand she wishes what her mum had said was true, that she was a cancer, because maybe then somehow she could crawl inside Laura and take her cancer out, beat it, the stronger cancer, the worst cancer, then retreat and leave Laura be. This is all wrong.
*
Laura’s too tired to pace. She feels it yes she feels it. It’s not like, she went to the doctor and surprise. It’s inside her, and she knows it and it hurts and drains her like the worst sort of parasite.
The cold makes Laura’s nipples swell, and she reaches for a shawl to cover herself. Low neckline, thin fabric, in this moment she almost believes she’s a real woman, like the ones in magazines and on television shows, glossy and radiant and well-dressed.
But soon, when they jab a scalpel into her flesh and carve out pieces of her, she will be just a body, just skin, just bones, just ducts and tissue and hormones. There is something entropic about the way the body seizes up on itself after a time, until the person is no longer the person.
The flatness of her mother’s chest, jagged with keloidal scars, had been its own kind of beauty. It was a testament to her survival, until it wasn’t. Metastasise is a deceptively gorgeous word.
Laura reaches for the phone, texts Kara: don’t hurt yourself. I am fine. I promise you. I swear it. I feel okay, better than that. And the doctor said he was optimistic.
It is all lies.
come home baby.
And she does, and she looks like shit, and it’s almost morning now, the sky pink orange blue something. Laura braces herself, for the I can’t do this, or the I didn’t sign up for this. Which is fine because Kara doesn’t deserve to go through it, and if Laura has to be, she will be the one to tell her to go.
There is no talking, just bodies crawling into bed. Kara weaves her fingers between Laura’s and squeezes, You can’t lie to me anymore, she says, You are the strong one I know you’re the strong one I know I’m weak but I promise I won’t let myself break I promise I’ll take care of you Okay As best I can Which might be shitty but there you go It’s a promise.
Laura is drifting to sleep though, can barely hear or form thoughts, so with her free hand, she unbuttons her night shirt, takes Kara’s fingers, and presses on the skin at the part of her breast nearest to her arm, but on the underside.
Feel it?
Kara’s breath hitches.
Kara asks Can you feel it?
I can feel it Laura says, which is an understatement.
Kara gets up and scurries out the bedroom, returns quickly.
What’s that?
Ice, and she wraps it inside a wet wash cloth, pushes it gently against Laura’s bare breast, refreshing and cool, then numbing.
I’m not sure why I haven’t thought of that Laura says, and she thinks, maybe tonight she’ll get some sleep, maybe the soreness will be manageable, if she can find a way to keep the ice on her.
She drifts off, wakes up later to find the lights off, Kara in her PJ’s, her head on Laura’s chest, hand propping up a bit of ice on Laura’s left breast, fresh and unmelted.
*
Some time in the very near future:
Kara makes herself sick Googling breast cancer, wishing she were smarter so she could comprehend the vocabulary, the biological processes, the treatments-when chemo is needed and when it isn’t, the typing system, estrogen receptors and inhibitors and what even in the frak, why don’t bodies just work like they’re supposed to? Each article sends her to another article, which in turn sends her to another article, and by the end of it she has pages of notes which she can’t read because her handwriting’s always been crap, words she’s looked up but still doesn’t understand, and a headache.
“Won’t you come to bed?”
Kara minimises the screens on her computer, shoves her notebook into a desk drawer.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” says Kara. She puts her things away, can’t look at Laura directly.
“You’re angry still,” Laura says. Her hair’s grown so long, nearly to the middle of her back now, and it’s tangled and dishevelled.
“I’m not angry,” says Kara, though the tenseness in her muscles suggests otherwise. Telling herself to relax, to breathe deeply, to count to ten or fifty or hundred or however high it takes, she closes her laptop and stands. “What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing, I don’t know.”
One night Laura gets to kissing Kara and touching her like maybe she wants to frak. The icepack she’s been using sits melting on the bedside table, and her night dress, practically see-through, feels soft against Kara’s skin. In only a sports bra and briefs, Kara can feel everything, the smoothness of Laura’s legs, the heat between her legs.
“You’re beautiful,” says Laura, her hand stroking against Kara’s side, then over her stomach.
Shrugging, Kara pulls away, turns off the table lamp. “Let’s get some sleep.” Kara scoots as far to the edge of the bed as she can without falling off, away from Laura, on her back.
“Kara?” asks Laura, from the other side of the mattress.
“What?”
“Something wrong?”
Kara pulls the sheets over herself, up to her stomach, folds her arms behind her head so she’s propped up on top of her hands. “Not feeling it tonight, sorry.”
There’s a crack in Laura’s voice as she responds, “All right, then,” but Kara ignores it. The physical distance between them may not be comfortable, but it is safer. Kara tries not to ache for Laura’s touch or the warmth of her body. Instead, she waits for the sound of her soft breathing, signifying sleep.
“Laura? You awake?” Kara whispers.
Not hearing a response, Kara reaches between her own legs, presses her fingers against her underwear, rubs herself off because she’s so fucking wet. Laura always does this to her. Her proximity sends Kara into fits. There is a part of Kara that will always want to fuck Laura, even when she’s too afraid of hurting her.
She thinks about the nights when their relationship straddled that line between unhealthy and abusive, the insults they hurled at one another, the makeup sex that left them both bruised and sated and sweaty. Push her up against a wall, drape one of her legs over Kara’s shoulder, lick her until her nails dig into Kara’s neck scratching and scraping. Nothing tastes better than her. There is no better feeling than her convulsing thighs. Buried between her legs, tongue on the delicate pink skin, breathing in the smell of her.
Kara cries out when she comes, her fingers twisted inside herself.
“I thought you said you weren’t in the mood,” says Laura, having woken up.
Kara sits up, wiping her fingers off on her briefs. “I wasn’t.”
“In the mood for me,” Laura says.
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? Tell me what it’s like?” Laura’s not crying, but she’s close to it. Her voice is throaty from sleep, but under that, there’s another tremor: uncertainty and sadness and fear.
“It’s just, I don’t know. It’s been a while since we did it,” says Kara.
“Are you punishing me then?”
“I just don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do, okay? You haven’t told me anything. Your poker face is too good. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to do the wrong thing. You didn’t tell me you-what if, were you ever planning on letting me know? This isn’t a fucking Solstice present. You can’t hide it. For a month I reached out to you and you said nothing, and here I was thinking I was disgusting, and maybe I still think it’s true. Now that I know though I’m not going to risk hurting you.”
Laura grabs Kara’s wrist, but Kara pulls away. “You are not disgusting.”
“I do want you,” Kara says. “I never don’t want you. But what if I make it grow?”
“Make what grow?” asks Laura, then adds, “The cancer?”
Shrugging, Kara tries to play it cool, because she knows she’s stupid.
“Sweetie, you’re not going to make the cancer grow,” says Laura. She scoots over and kisses Kara’s neck. “I want to do this, all right? We just have to take it a bit slow.”
Her tongue is soft against Kara’s neck, and she can’t refuse, her body already hypersensitive. They kiss each other’s lips. Kara repositions so that Laura is on her back, and Kara’s at her side, leaning over her. She slides a hand up Laura’s thigh, and she’s not got any knickers on. It’s just wet skin and hair and her soft, damp thighs.
Laura has her eyes on Kara as she removes her night dress. Kara’s got enough self control to leave the tender one be, but she touches Laura’s other breast softly, stroking her thumb along the side then over the nipple, which is hard and a beautiful washed-out pink. Kara darts her tongue against it, then encloses it with her mouth, Laura moaning and pulling her head down. Kara rubs Laura’s clit fast because as much as she wants this to last forever, she’s missed the sound of Laura’s voice when she comes.
Soon, Laura’s hands grab the skin of Kara’s back, hard, as she nears release. Kara keeps flicking her tongue against Laura’s nipple, massage her clit, anxious to do more but reminding herself that Laura had said to take it slow. Then Laura grows wetter, her breaths more rapid and uneven, until she’s rubbing her wet pussy into Kara’s hand, coming.
*
The surgery is in two and a half weeks, and they don’t talk about it.
In a misguided attempt at responsibility, Kara cooks the worst dinners. She’s not the lousiest cook in the Twelve Colonies, but damn near, and Laura doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she wouldn’t mind preparing their suppers if it meant they didn’t have to choke down burnt, over-salted, chalky, curry over undercooked rice, with a melange of vegetables that had no right being on the same plate as each other (corn, peas, spinach, baby carrots, sprouts, lima beans, asparagus, turnips all mashed together into a paste).
Laura keeps an icepack strapped to her chest with an Ace bandage at all times, and her sanity has gone up from about 1.5 to 7.
“Let me fix supper tonight,” Laura says.
“You sure? I don’t mind.” Kara looks so earnest, carrying in a fresh bag of groceries.
“I’m sure. I need something to busy my mind,” says Laura, even though she has plenty to think about.
Laura fixes something simple, fried fingerling potatoes with rosemary and sage, spicy pan-grilled pork, long beans.
They eat on the couch whilst watching Earth, a show about some alternative universe where the technology is surprisingly outdated and backwards considering the other advancements. It’s engrossing, if problematic at times.
“Whatever you want, I’ll do it,” Kara says randomly, as they finish one of the discs.
Laura says nothing, just cuddles into her side.
If she dies from this thing inside her, she is thankful to the gods for all the moments like this she’s been able to have. She grabs Kara’s hand and squeezes tight. She knows already what her last prayer will be, that Kara finds herself able to carry on.
*
They remove what seems like nearly a quarter of her breast.
Laura refuses to let anyone be there at the hospital: not Bill, not Lee, not Ellen, not Tory, not Elosha, not Maya, not Billy, not anyone. Only Kara, who sits with her as they watch television, waiting for the O.R. to clear so she can get this shit out of her body. Unable to drink or eat, the pain in Laura’s stomach rivals that inside her breast.
“Kara?” she says.
“Mmm?”
“You know, you’re allowed to eat, even if I’m not.”
Kara shrugs.
“Have you eaten today?”
Kara turns up the volume on the television.
“Or yesterday?”
“I’m fasting,” Kara says. “It’s been five days.”
“Why on gods-”
“The oracle said to do it, so I’m doing it. Thirty days.”
Laura hates that she hadn’t noticed sooner.
“Sweetie,” she says, but then the nurse and an orderly arrive to help wheel her out of the room.
“See you soon,” says Kara, then gives Laura a tight salute. She looks away quickly, up to the TV.
“See you soon,” Laura says, and sometimes she thinks there’s something pathologically wrong with the both of them, that they can’t seem to muster up the will to say the right words, those being, in this case, I love you.
*
Kara spends Laura’s surgery in and out of the toilet. She’s not had anything to eat but tea for the past week, but even that she can’t keep down.
Dee calls her to check in, saying, “I just want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Are you?”
“I am,” says Kara.
“She’s going to be absolutely fine. She has the best surgeons and the best oncologists.”
Kara can’t keep her knees from shaking, and she’s sure that in the middle of the waiting room she looks like a junkie like a worthless cunt like all the names her mother had called her and all the things Laura assured her she wasn’t. They’ve been through so much it’s hard to figure out sometimes where Laura ends and Kara begins, and if she goes-Kara can’t think about it.
“Thanks for checking in. I’m fine. She should be out in about an hour. I’ll text you or something, okay?”
Kara hangs up and closes her eyes and bows her head and hugs herself just thinking, Gods Gods Gods if you hurt her like this again, so help me, I will never believe in you again.
*
Laura cries when they take off the bandages and she sees how much they’ve taken. She screams and tells Kara to leave the room.
Kara goes. The good news is, Laura won’t need chemo, and they already did the necessary radiation. But the lumpectomy had turned into a quadrantectomy and Laura’s face when she gazed at herself in the mirror had been enough to keep her word to the gods. She is done with them, forever, and her only dogma now is making sure Laura understands that Kara will never leave, not even if they chopped her whole body to bits and sewed it back together wrong.
When Kara returns to the room, Laura doesn’t speak. She’s dozing in and out. “Got you some food,” Kara says.
“Is this like a consolation prize? They took away a whole piece of my body; here, have a hamburger instead?”
Kara doesn’t know what the fuck to say so she doesn’t say shit.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lash out,” says Laura.
Kara pushes a strand of Laura’s hair behind her ear. “Whatever you need to say, you can say it.”
But they are both silent, even though it feels like a million words have been exchanged between them.
*
The night is cold and they are on the beach This is how it’s supposed to be There is sand over every part of them and they are touching and the tide washes over their feet and no matter how many baptisms they submit to, they think they will never be as pure as the ocean, an endless salt bath that stretches miles deep.
Kara says Strip for me
Laura says No
You gonna leave me hanging? Kara asks, undressing, until she is naked, her silhouette perfect and godly.
Fine says Laura but note that I’m doing this under protest.
She unbuttons her jeans, pulls down her black knickers, and saves her shirt for last.
Kara says Here, let me, then unclasps Laura’s bra, fingers it off her shoulders and arms gently. Then she picks Laura and runs to the water, struggling through the wet sand, slowing when she reaches about knee-deep.
If you dunk me I will you kill you, Laura says.
So Kara just twirls her in the ocean under the starless night, her ankles and feet dipping into the ocean, the rest of her warm against Kara’s chest. They are skin to skin like two soft, melting things and their bodies fit together despite all that’s broken with them.
whoops.
that's just how i roll, y'all.
kara/laura, nc17, 4400 words, warnings for cancer stuff.
eta: clllaaareee i still don't know how you read version 1 of this, where there was literally ZERO punctuation
Their fight goes:
Get the fuck out of my house you ungrateful waste of a body You’re a disease You’re old You’re a baby You’re immature You’re irresponsible You can’t do the simplest things You never follow through I ask for tomatoes you get me oranges You’re a bitch a shit person a shit lover a shit excuse for a human I’m glad they’re dead How could you How fucking could you
Laura recoils and closes her eyes, like she thinks Kara might hit her, but Kara’s only grabbing her coat off the rack.
Kara’s face flashes with hurt, but she covers it quickly by turning away, then says, “I wouldn’t hurt you. Not ever. Is that really what you think of me? That I’d lay a finger on you?”
“I don’t know what to expect from you when you’re like this. I don’t know what you’re capable of when you’ve had this much to drink.” Laura says it like she thinks it’s true, even though she knows it’s not. There are some lines, just a few, that Kara has no trouble not crossing.
Laura’d not been shrinking back from fear of Kara, anyway, but from jittery reflexes-she’s so on edge lately, flinching at even the gentlest contact, because of the way that doctor had touched her, and the burning, aching, tender spot in her breast that refuses to be ignored, no matter the amount of Percocet Laura takes.
Kara goes to the door, stuffing her feet into her boots, still wet with melted ice.
“Get out,” Laura says.
“I am,” says Kara. Her hands are shaking, and Laura can see she’s having trouble tying her laces. She’s had too much to drink tonight, and some days she’s so hellbent on destroying herself, like she wants to beat the gods to the punch. Kara is young and healthy, but when she gets like this, she seems a billion years old, the weight of several lifetimes on her shoulders, and it doesn’t matter how much Laura tells her it’s okay, because they both know it’s not.
“Now. Get out.” Laura snaps.
“I said I fucking am.”
“Out, get out, leave now,” Laura tries to say, but she’s trembling now, and all that registers is the sickening discomfort that starts in her chest but radiates in all directions, the lump in her breast convexing inward.
Laura?
Laura?
Laura, jesus, what’s wrong?
Then there is Kara’s arms catching her as she falls.
*
What they’d been fighting about was a kid, how Laura wanted/needed to have one and Kara didn’t. Because fuck babies they’re stupid and they cry and their mothers beat them and tell them that they’re stupid and cancerous and that if they don’t behave or pray three times a day to Mars they get what they deserve, and every bad thing that happens to them is their fault, and crying out for help is useless because no one wants to help a piece of shit like them, this is not made up this is based on a true story
No babies. No babies ever.
And then Laura wouldn’t let Kara touch her. She pulled back and said she was tired. Kara touched Laura breasts, and she fucking winced, and Kara confirmed what she’d known all along, that she is reprehensible and worthless and repulsive.
And all Kara wanted was to lay gentle kisses on her body, to put two fingers inside her, where it was hot and clenching and pulsating and wet, and make Laura buck up, her pretences melting into nothing. And rub her clit. And have Laura rub Kara’s. And let her put a finger inside because even though Kara usually hates that, when it’s Laura it feels so good and she’s always so gentle and so patient and never expects Kara to just take it when she doesn’t want to take it.
And the way Laura always kisses Kara through it and speaks soft, dirty things into her ear like I love how I’m the only one who can make your legs open up like this It’s so fucking wrong how much I want you because you are too young and too beautiful and I am too old and too plain but I don’t care how many wrong things I have to do if it means having you like this laid out for me your thighs slick your hair wet your breasts rising and falling cause I’ve got you so out of breath Will you spread for me the way I always spread for you
That’s how it had been. Now, Laura said, No Maybe tomorrow Good night.
She said that for three weeks then four and she won’t tell Kara why.
“Is this still about the baby thing? I’m sorry, I’m just I’m not built that way,” Kara said.
“This isn’t about the fucking baby.”
Laura actually snapped. So Kara went out and got shitfaced as fuck then came back and Bill was there, fucking Bill.
“Are you frakking him?”
“No, gods, Kara no.”
“You’re frakking him, jesus.”
“We were talking, that’s all,” says Laura.
“Talking? Talking like you don’t talk to me? Not ever. Not anymore. What, you think I’m too stupid to handle it?”
Bill said, “Kara you’re not yourself. Calm down.”
Kara said, “Fuck you, how could you?”
And then Kara turned to Laura, all, “You want to know where I’ve been? Out frakking. I let a girl who’s barely legal yet finger me and go down on me and she was perfect and smooth and kind and gentle and warm,” (and this is so madeup where the fuck does Kara even get this shit?)
Bill said, “Kara you need to stop right now. You are being vile.”
And yes, Laura is coming apart in front of Kara, and she needs is to be held and kissed and laid down in the bed and tucked in. She looks so tired.
Laura asked Bill to leave, and he did, reluctantly, telling Kara she needed to pull it together and act like the woman he knew she was.
Skip ahead to Laura just fucking collapsing. Her eyes flutter shut and she crumples into Kara’s embrace, hands fisted in Kara’s shirt.
I’m okay
Baby you’re not okay What’s wrong Baby what’s wrong Are you hurting? You’re hurting Tell me please I deserve to know I’m going crazy here Tell me what I did and I’ll fix it I’ll undo it
and Kara is begging her. They’re on the floor, Kara sitting cross-legged, holding Laura’s head and upper body, stroking her hair.
So tired Laura says. Kara carries her to the bed, chews her fingernails, thumps the mattress over and over. Kara says Baby are you sick You don’t feel hot You’re sweating You’re heart’s beating so fast What is it What is it What is it
I don’t want you to worry
We are so past that Laura I am worried I am so worried I am pulling my hair out here
I’m fine just a little under the weather
This is not what under the weather looks like I’m not stupid Christ why can’t you tell me? What can you tell him that you can’t tell me? Is your opinion of me that low?
Kara no.
Then what fucking what.
And they’re both so teary-eyed they can’t make the other out. Kara’s eyes sting, her vision blurry, and she wipes her face clean with her shirt, incidentally already wet from Laura’s tears.
It’s what you mentioned before Laura says
You and Bill? You’re been together?
No not that
and she laughs, just a bit, before coughing.
Then what?
Laura says I’m sick That’s what it is I’m sick.
Like flu sick? Like food poisoning sick? Like-are you pregnant?
That elicits a fresh torrent of tears. I’m not pregnant she says. I have-Kara-I have cancer.
Baby listen to me it’s okay Laura says, grabbing Kara’s hand, but Kara pulls it away. Her breathing is too far ahead of her, and she can’t catch up, and her throats closing in on itself, and the room is too bright and the thermostat is set too low.
How long have you known Kara asks.
I want you to know that my prognosis is not bad. I have to have surgery to remove the-
How long have you known
Kara
How long
The doctor confirmed it about three weeks ago now.
And before that? You suspected something?
Baby-
And Bill knew?
Kara-
I got to go
Kara
I just I forgot something when I was out I can’t I got to go I got to go
*
She runs and she runs and she runs for miles until her feet blister and her knees feel like chalk and her hamstrings and ass and quadriceps and calves can’t be felt at all, the shin splints she had years ago flaring up so it’s like like a hammer going into her bone with each of her strides. Hyperbole. Her heart isn’t so much beating as vibrating.
5 miles then 7 then 10 then she barfs and barfs and barfs onto the side of the road and collapses and at the end of it all the facts are not any less true And as she hobbles back home hours later barely able to stand she wishes what her mum had said was true, that she was a cancer, because maybe then somehow she could crawl inside Laura and take her cancer out, beat it, the stronger cancer, the worst cancer, then retreat and leave Laura be. This is all wrong.
*
Laura’s too tired to pace. She feels it yes she feels it. It’s not like, she went to the doctor and surprise. It’s inside her, and she knows it and it hurts and drains her like the worst sort of parasite.
The cold makes Laura’s nipples swell, and she reaches for a shawl to cover herself. Low neckline, thin fabric, in this moment she almost believes she’s a real woman, like the ones in magazines and on television shows, glossy and radiant and well-dressed.
But soon, when they jab a scalpel into her flesh and carve out pieces of her, she will be just a body, just skin, just bones, just ducts and tissue and hormones. There is something entropic about the way the body seizes up on itself after a time, until the person is no longer the person.
The flatness of her mother’s chest, jagged with keloidal scars, had been its own kind of beauty. It was a testament to her survival, until it wasn’t. Metastasise is a deceptively gorgeous word.
Laura reaches for the phone, texts Kara: don’t hurt yourself. I am fine. I promise you. I swear it. I feel okay, better than that. And the doctor said he was optimistic.
It is all lies.
come home baby.
And she does, and she looks like shit, and it’s almost morning now, the sky pink orange blue something. Laura braces herself, for the I can’t do this, or the I didn’t sign up for this. Which is fine because Kara doesn’t deserve to go through it, and if Laura has to be, she will be the one to tell her to go.
There is no talking, just bodies crawling into bed. Kara weaves her fingers between Laura’s and squeezes, You can’t lie to me anymore, she says, You are the strong one I know you’re the strong one I know I’m weak but I promise I won’t let myself break I promise I’ll take care of you Okay As best I can Which might be shitty but there you go It’s a promise.
Laura is drifting to sleep though, can barely hear or form thoughts, so with her free hand, she unbuttons her night shirt, takes Kara’s fingers, and presses on the skin at the part of her breast nearest to her arm, but on the underside.
Feel it?
Kara’s breath hitches.
Kara asks Can you feel it?
I can feel it Laura says, which is an understatement.
Kara gets up and scurries out the bedroom, returns quickly.
What’s that?
Ice, and she wraps it inside a wet wash cloth, pushes it gently against Laura’s bare breast, refreshing and cool, then numbing.
I’m not sure why I haven’t thought of that Laura says, and she thinks, maybe tonight she’ll get some sleep, maybe the soreness will be manageable, if she can find a way to keep the ice on her.
She drifts off, wakes up later to find the lights off, Kara in her PJ’s, her head on Laura’s chest, hand propping up a bit of ice on Laura’s left breast, fresh and unmelted.
*
Some time in the very near future:
Kara makes herself sick Googling breast cancer, wishing she were smarter so she could comprehend the vocabulary, the biological processes, the treatments-when chemo is needed and when it isn’t, the typing system, estrogen receptors and inhibitors and what even in the frak, why don’t bodies just work like they’re supposed to? Each article sends her to another article, which in turn sends her to another article, and by the end of it she has pages of notes which she can’t read because her handwriting’s always been crap, words she’s looked up but still doesn’t understand, and a headache.
“Won’t you come to bed?”
Kara minimises the screens on her computer, shoves her notebook into a desk drawer.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” says Kara. She puts her things away, can’t look at Laura directly.
“You’re angry still,” Laura says. Her hair’s grown so long, nearly to the middle of her back now, and it’s tangled and dishevelled.
“I’m not angry,” says Kara, though the tenseness in her muscles suggests otherwise. Telling herself to relax, to breathe deeply, to count to ten or fifty or hundred or however high it takes, she closes her laptop and stands. “What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing, I don’t know.”
One night Laura gets to kissing Kara and touching her like maybe she wants to frak. The icepack she’s been using sits melting on the bedside table, and her night dress, practically see-through, feels soft against Kara’s skin. In only a sports bra and briefs, Kara can feel everything, the smoothness of Laura’s legs, the heat between her legs.
“You’re beautiful,” says Laura, her hand stroking against Kara’s side, then over her stomach.
Shrugging, Kara pulls away, turns off the table lamp. “Let’s get some sleep.” Kara scoots as far to the edge of the bed as she can without falling off, away from Laura, on her back.
“Kara?” asks Laura, from the other side of the mattress.
“What?”
“Something wrong?”
Kara pulls the sheets over herself, up to her stomach, folds her arms behind her head so she’s propped up on top of her hands. “Not feeling it tonight, sorry.”
There’s a crack in Laura’s voice as she responds, “All right, then,” but Kara ignores it. The physical distance between them may not be comfortable, but it is safer. Kara tries not to ache for Laura’s touch or the warmth of her body. Instead, she waits for the sound of her soft breathing, signifying sleep.
“Laura? You awake?” Kara whispers.
Not hearing a response, Kara reaches between her own legs, presses her fingers against her underwear, rubs herself off because she’s so fucking wet. Laura always does this to her. Her proximity sends Kara into fits. There is a part of Kara that will always want to fuck Laura, even when she’s too afraid of hurting her.
She thinks about the nights when their relationship straddled that line between unhealthy and abusive, the insults they hurled at one another, the makeup sex that left them both bruised and sated and sweaty. Push her up against a wall, drape one of her legs over Kara’s shoulder, lick her until her nails dig into Kara’s neck scratching and scraping. Nothing tastes better than her. There is no better feeling than her convulsing thighs. Buried between her legs, tongue on the delicate pink skin, breathing in the smell of her.
Kara cries out when she comes, her fingers twisted inside herself.
“I thought you said you weren’t in the mood,” says Laura, having woken up.
Kara sits up, wiping her fingers off on her briefs. “I wasn’t.”
“In the mood for me,” Laura says.
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? Tell me what it’s like?” Laura’s not crying, but she’s close to it. Her voice is throaty from sleep, but under that, there’s another tremor: uncertainty and sadness and fear.
“It’s just, I don’t know. It’s been a while since we did it,” says Kara.
“Are you punishing me then?”
“I just don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do, okay? You haven’t told me anything. Your poker face is too good. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to do the wrong thing. You didn’t tell me you-what if, were you ever planning on letting me know? This isn’t a fucking Solstice present. You can’t hide it. For a month I reached out to you and you said nothing, and here I was thinking I was disgusting, and maybe I still think it’s true. Now that I know though I’m not going to risk hurting you.”
Laura grabs Kara’s wrist, but Kara pulls away. “You are not disgusting.”
“I do want you,” Kara says. “I never don’t want you. But what if I make it grow?”
“Make what grow?” asks Laura, then adds, “The cancer?”
Shrugging, Kara tries to play it cool, because she knows she’s stupid.
“Sweetie, you’re not going to make the cancer grow,” says Laura. She scoots over and kisses Kara’s neck. “I want to do this, all right? We just have to take it a bit slow.”
Her tongue is soft against Kara’s neck, and she can’t refuse, her body already hypersensitive. They kiss each other’s lips. Kara repositions so that Laura is on her back, and Kara’s at her side, leaning over her. She slides a hand up Laura’s thigh, and she’s not got any knickers on. It’s just wet skin and hair and her soft, damp thighs.
Laura has her eyes on Kara as she removes her night dress. Kara’s got enough self control to leave the tender one be, but she touches Laura’s other breast softly, stroking her thumb along the side then over the nipple, which is hard and a beautiful washed-out pink. Kara darts her tongue against it, then encloses it with her mouth, Laura moaning and pulling her head down. Kara rubs Laura’s clit fast because as much as she wants this to last forever, she’s missed the sound of Laura’s voice when she comes.
Soon, Laura’s hands grab the skin of Kara’s back, hard, as she nears release. Kara keeps flicking her tongue against Laura’s nipple, massage her clit, anxious to do more but reminding herself that Laura had said to take it slow. Then Laura grows wetter, her breaths more rapid and uneven, until she’s rubbing her wet pussy into Kara’s hand, coming.
*
The surgery is in two and a half weeks, and they don’t talk about it.
In a misguided attempt at responsibility, Kara cooks the worst dinners. She’s not the lousiest cook in the Twelve Colonies, but damn near, and Laura doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she wouldn’t mind preparing their suppers if it meant they didn’t have to choke down burnt, over-salted, chalky, curry over undercooked rice, with a melange of vegetables that had no right being on the same plate as each other (corn, peas, spinach, baby carrots, sprouts, lima beans, asparagus, turnips all mashed together into a paste).
Laura keeps an icepack strapped to her chest with an Ace bandage at all times, and her sanity has gone up from about 1.5 to 7.
“Let me fix supper tonight,” Laura says.
“You sure? I don’t mind.” Kara looks so earnest, carrying in a fresh bag of groceries.
“I’m sure. I need something to busy my mind,” says Laura, even though she has plenty to think about.
Laura fixes something simple, fried fingerling potatoes with rosemary and sage, spicy pan-grilled pork, long beans.
They eat on the couch whilst watching Earth, a show about some alternative universe where the technology is surprisingly outdated and backwards considering the other advancements. It’s engrossing, if problematic at times.
“Whatever you want, I’ll do it,” Kara says randomly, as they finish one of the discs.
Laura says nothing, just cuddles into her side.
If she dies from this thing inside her, she is thankful to the gods for all the moments like this she’s been able to have. She grabs Kara’s hand and squeezes tight. She knows already what her last prayer will be, that Kara finds herself able to carry on.
*
They remove what seems like nearly a quarter of her breast.
Laura refuses to let anyone be there at the hospital: not Bill, not Lee, not Ellen, not Tory, not Elosha, not Maya, not Billy, not anyone. Only Kara, who sits with her as they watch television, waiting for the O.R. to clear so she can get this shit out of her body. Unable to drink or eat, the pain in Laura’s stomach rivals that inside her breast.
“Kara?” she says.
“Mmm?”
“You know, you’re allowed to eat, even if I’m not.”
Kara shrugs.
“Have you eaten today?”
Kara turns up the volume on the television.
“Or yesterday?”
“I’m fasting,” Kara says. “It’s been five days.”
“Why on gods-”
“The oracle said to do it, so I’m doing it. Thirty days.”
Laura hates that she hadn’t noticed sooner.
“Sweetie,” she says, but then the nurse and an orderly arrive to help wheel her out of the room.
“See you soon,” says Kara, then gives Laura a tight salute. She looks away quickly, up to the TV.
“See you soon,” Laura says, and sometimes she thinks there’s something pathologically wrong with the both of them, that they can’t seem to muster up the will to say the right words, those being, in this case, I love you.
*
Kara spends Laura’s surgery in and out of the toilet. She’s not had anything to eat but tea for the past week, but even that she can’t keep down.
Dee calls her to check in, saying, “I just want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Are you?”
“I am,” says Kara.
“She’s going to be absolutely fine. She has the best surgeons and the best oncologists.”
Kara can’t keep her knees from shaking, and she’s sure that in the middle of the waiting room she looks like a junkie like a worthless cunt like all the names her mother had called her and all the things Laura assured her she wasn’t. They’ve been through so much it’s hard to figure out sometimes where Laura ends and Kara begins, and if she goes-Kara can’t think about it.
“Thanks for checking in. I’m fine. She should be out in about an hour. I’ll text you or something, okay?”
Kara hangs up and closes her eyes and bows her head and hugs herself just thinking, Gods Gods Gods if you hurt her like this again, so help me, I will never believe in you again.
*
Laura cries when they take off the bandages and she sees how much they’ve taken. She screams and tells Kara to leave the room.
Kara goes. The good news is, Laura won’t need chemo, and they already did the necessary radiation. But the lumpectomy had turned into a quadrantectomy and Laura’s face when she gazed at herself in the mirror had been enough to keep her word to the gods. She is done with them, forever, and her only dogma now is making sure Laura understands that Kara will never leave, not even if they chopped her whole body to bits and sewed it back together wrong.
When Kara returns to the room, Laura doesn’t speak. She’s dozing in and out. “Got you some food,” Kara says.
“Is this like a consolation prize? They took away a whole piece of my body; here, have a hamburger instead?”
Kara doesn’t know what the fuck to say so she doesn’t say shit.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lash out,” says Laura.
Kara pushes a strand of Laura’s hair behind her ear. “Whatever you need to say, you can say it.”
But they are both silent, even though it feels like a million words have been exchanged between them.
*
The night is cold and they are on the beach This is how it’s supposed to be There is sand over every part of them and they are touching and the tide washes over their feet and no matter how many baptisms they submit to, they think they will never be as pure as the ocean, an endless salt bath that stretches miles deep.
Kara says Strip for me
Laura says No
You gonna leave me hanging? Kara asks, undressing, until she is naked, her silhouette perfect and godly.
Fine says Laura but note that I’m doing this under protest.
She unbuttons her jeans, pulls down her black knickers, and saves her shirt for last.
Kara says Here, let me, then unclasps Laura’s bra, fingers it off her shoulders and arms gently. Then she picks Laura and runs to the water, struggling through the wet sand, slowing when she reaches about knee-deep.
If you dunk me I will you kill you, Laura says.
So Kara just twirls her in the ocean under the starless night, her ankles and feet dipping into the ocean, the rest of her warm against Kara’s chest. They are skin to skin like two soft, melting things and their bodies fit together despite all that’s broken with them.