Fic: The Body Stops Here
YES, YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY. I HAVE WRITTEN FIC.
Title: The Body Stops Here
Disclaimer: not mine
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: The other K/L (aka Kara/Laura)
Warnings: cancer and sadness
Word Count: ~1200
Notes: I wrote this for a challenge at twelvecolonies ... and it was too long so this is the full version. letterstonorah made a lovely graphic for it but I'll let her share that with you if she wants. Also the poem Kara reads is from Eamon Grennan's "The Quick of It."
~~~
The first time Laura had to go in for a treatment, Kara almost didn’t show up. Laura hadn’t asked her exactly-not in as many words, but the want had been there all the same. Kara had read it in the slight quiver of Laura’s voice as she whispered good night, in the gentle, aching slope of her forehead pressing into the curve of Kara’s shoulder, and in the way her hands had clutched at Kara’s hips even after her breathing slipped into the soft cadence of sleep.
It was important, Kara knew. It wasn’t every day your whatever Laura was got her first radiation treatment. And Kara-whatever she was, whatever this was-really ought to be there and hold her hand and read to her and sit with her until she fell asleep.
But.
Since when did Kara do what she ought to do?
So that morning she slipped out of bed while Laura was still asleep, and tried to concentrate on flight evals and her latest batch of fresh-faced cadets rather than the lines around Laura’s mouth and the way her hair fell against the pillow.
She went through her day and pretended everything was fine, situation normal. If she made the nuggets cower a little more than usual, well, that was just for fun. Anyway, they needed it, and by the end of the day she was pretty sure three or four of them - at least - would be praying at the altar of Starbuck for the rest of the course.
Which was all well and good. But.
But in the moments of quiet, of calm, that was when she felt shattered. She got in her truck with every intention of heading to the nearest bar and getting drunk off her ass because she couldn’t stand to be alone tonight.
That was the idea, anyway.
~~~
Laura was asleep when she walked into the small, curtained-off “room” and slid the chair over to the bed. Kara didn’t think she’d made any noise, but Laura’s eyes flickered open when Kara settled into the seat by her bedside.
“Hey you,” Laura whispered, voice strained but pleased.
Kara smiled despite herself. “Hey yourself.”
Laura held out the hand without the IV, and Kara wrapped it in her own. The bones felt brittle under her fingers, but their grip was strong - and that was Laura, wasn’t it?
~~~
Kara came to the hospital for every treatment after that. It wasn’t easy; she still had a full-time job (as Laura wouldn’t let her take leave just for this, insisted that Kara would need that time off for when Laura was feeling better and the two of them could go to the shore together). So Kara went to the base and then drove over to the hospital as soon as she was off duty. She chafed against the restrictive visiting hours, as the staff insisted that Kara wasn’t family and had no claim to Laura, that the invisible marks they’d left on each other didn’t count.
Still, they managed.
And if Kara tossed and turned at night, plagued by dreams of her mother in Laura’s hospital bed, or Laura in her mother’s coffin, well … that was a small price to pay for Laura’s succor.
Sometimes she read to Laura …
[because the body stops here because you can only reach out so far because the pointed blade of the headache maps the landscape inside the skull and the rising peaks with their roots behind your eyes their summits among the wrinkles of your brow]
… but sometimes her vision blurred and her throat closed up, trapping the words there unuttered.
[because the sweat comes weeping from your hands and knotted nipples because your tears keep kissing your cheek and your cheek feels like the tip of another’s tongue testing your tears]
When that happened, she held the book in hands that didn’t shake and stared at the pages until the letters resolved themselves once more into words, words that held meaning, yes, but still only words, and she could pretend that they were not hers.
But sometimes she couldn’t pretend, or didn’t want to, and sometimes Laura said she was sick of reading (and Kara absolutely did not notice the way Laura’s voice hitched on the word sick because it was only a word, only a word, only a word).
One evening, when Kara had been stuck working late and arrived with only 47 minutes before the end of visiting hours, Laura was asleep when she got there, and she looked so tired that Kara couldn’t bear the thought of waking her, so she simply leaned back in the stiff plastic chair and looked at Laura until, quite of their own volition, her eyes slipped shut, and she drifted in some place between sleeping and waking for a time. A hand slipped around hers though, and Kara realized that she’d been humming softly. She opened her eyes to the sight of Laura’s smile.
“I like that,” Laura said. “What song is it?”
“I don’t know,” Kara said. “Nothing.”
Laura’s smile softened. “It’s not nothing.”
~~~
One night, Laura kept laughing and running the pads of her fingers over Kara’s knuckles in a way that drove her mad. Somehow Kara ended up scrunched in against Laura’s side, the bedrail digging into her back. They were kissing and laughing, Kara’s thumb caressing Laura’s collarbone, when Laura’s breath hitched in that way and Kara realized she was crying.
“Laura,” she said.
Laura grabbed Kara’s hand and moved it lower. “Please.”
“Laura,” she said again, softer this time, because she knew no other words.
“Please. Please, Kara.” Laura’s hand was insistent, showing Kara how she wanted to be touched. Soon, Kara was palming Laura’s breast beneath the gown, and they were moving, shifting ever closer, even in the confining hospital bed. Their cheeks were pressed together, and Kara could not tell whose tears were whose.
~~~
Then, one day, by some strange miracle, Laura said, “This is the last one.”
Kara, who had been halfway through a story about the ridiculously stupid thing one ridiculously stupid nugget had done in the simulator, paused mid-sentence, hands stilling in the middle of demonstrating a complex maneuver.
“At least,” Laura went on, “the doctor thinks so.”
Then she smiled, and Kara smiled.
“Now go on. I want to hear about what brilliant thing you would’ve done to pull out of that tailspin.”
Kara, grinning a ridiculously stupid grin, obliged her.
But.
But later she woke in the darkness of her-their-bedroom and she could hear the steady sound of Laura’s breathing beside her but did not dare turn her head for fear of what she might find. Her sleep-fogged mind saw fingers tapping, tapping, and on the inhale she choked on the scent of cigarette smoke.
She was in the bathroom before she knew it, her head hanging over the toilet bowl, body heaving but nothing coming out.
Eventually, Kara settled onto the floor, eyes closed and head tipped back against the wall. When she opened them again, Laura was there.
“Kara,” she said, “are you here? Are you with me?”
Laura’s knee brushed against hers as she knelt on the tiles, and her palm was warm when she pressed it against her thigh; and, for a time, Kara felt rooted in her own body and Laura’s and the lines they formed together.
end
Title: The Body Stops Here
Disclaimer: not mine
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: The other K/L (aka Kara/Laura)
Warnings: cancer and sadness
Word Count: ~1200
Notes: I wrote this for a challenge at twelvecolonies ... and it was too long so this is the full version. letterstonorah made a lovely graphic for it but I'll let her share that with you if she wants. Also the poem Kara reads is from Eamon Grennan's "The Quick of It."
~~~
The first time Laura had to go in for a treatment, Kara almost didn’t show up. Laura hadn’t asked her exactly-not in as many words, but the want had been there all the same. Kara had read it in the slight quiver of Laura’s voice as she whispered good night, in the gentle, aching slope of her forehead pressing into the curve of Kara’s shoulder, and in the way her hands had clutched at Kara’s hips even after her breathing slipped into the soft cadence of sleep.
It was important, Kara knew. It wasn’t every day your whatever Laura was got her first radiation treatment. And Kara-whatever she was, whatever this was-really ought to be there and hold her hand and read to her and sit with her until she fell asleep.
But.
Since when did Kara do what she ought to do?
So that morning she slipped out of bed while Laura was still asleep, and tried to concentrate on flight evals and her latest batch of fresh-faced cadets rather than the lines around Laura’s mouth and the way her hair fell against the pillow.
She went through her day and pretended everything was fine, situation normal. If she made the nuggets cower a little more than usual, well, that was just for fun. Anyway, they needed it, and by the end of the day she was pretty sure three or four of them - at least - would be praying at the altar of Starbuck for the rest of the course.
Which was all well and good. But.
But in the moments of quiet, of calm, that was when she felt shattered. She got in her truck with every intention of heading to the nearest bar and getting drunk off her ass because she couldn’t stand to be alone tonight.
That was the idea, anyway.
~~~
Laura was asleep when she walked into the small, curtained-off “room” and slid the chair over to the bed. Kara didn’t think she’d made any noise, but Laura’s eyes flickered open when Kara settled into the seat by her bedside.
“Hey you,” Laura whispered, voice strained but pleased.
Kara smiled despite herself. “Hey yourself.”
Laura held out the hand without the IV, and Kara wrapped it in her own. The bones felt brittle under her fingers, but their grip was strong - and that was Laura, wasn’t it?
~~~
Kara came to the hospital for every treatment after that. It wasn’t easy; she still had a full-time job (as Laura wouldn’t let her take leave just for this, insisted that Kara would need that time off for when Laura was feeling better and the two of them could go to the shore together). So Kara went to the base and then drove over to the hospital as soon as she was off duty. She chafed against the restrictive visiting hours, as the staff insisted that Kara wasn’t family and had no claim to Laura, that the invisible marks they’d left on each other didn’t count.
Still, they managed.
And if Kara tossed and turned at night, plagued by dreams of her mother in Laura’s hospital bed, or Laura in her mother’s coffin, well … that was a small price to pay for Laura’s succor.
Sometimes she read to Laura …
[because the body stops here because you can only reach out so far because the pointed blade of the headache maps the landscape inside the skull and the rising peaks with their roots behind your eyes their summits among the wrinkles of your brow]
… but sometimes her vision blurred and her throat closed up, trapping the words there unuttered.
[because the sweat comes weeping from your hands and knotted nipples because your tears keep kissing your cheek and your cheek feels like the tip of another’s tongue testing your tears]
When that happened, she held the book in hands that didn’t shake and stared at the pages until the letters resolved themselves once more into words, words that held meaning, yes, but still only words, and she could pretend that they were not hers.
But sometimes she couldn’t pretend, or didn’t want to, and sometimes Laura said she was sick of reading (and Kara absolutely did not notice the way Laura’s voice hitched on the word sick because it was only a word, only a word, only a word).
One evening, when Kara had been stuck working late and arrived with only 47 minutes before the end of visiting hours, Laura was asleep when she got there, and she looked so tired that Kara couldn’t bear the thought of waking her, so she simply leaned back in the stiff plastic chair and looked at Laura until, quite of their own volition, her eyes slipped shut, and she drifted in some place between sleeping and waking for a time. A hand slipped around hers though, and Kara realized that she’d been humming softly. She opened her eyes to the sight of Laura’s smile.
“I like that,” Laura said. “What song is it?”
“I don’t know,” Kara said. “Nothing.”
Laura’s smile softened. “It’s not nothing.”
~~~
One night, Laura kept laughing and running the pads of her fingers over Kara’s knuckles in a way that drove her mad. Somehow Kara ended up scrunched in against Laura’s side, the bedrail digging into her back. They were kissing and laughing, Kara’s thumb caressing Laura’s collarbone, when Laura’s breath hitched in that way and Kara realized she was crying.
“Laura,” she said.
Laura grabbed Kara’s hand and moved it lower. “Please.”
“Laura,” she said again, softer this time, because she knew no other words.
“Please. Please, Kara.” Laura’s hand was insistent, showing Kara how she wanted to be touched. Soon, Kara was palming Laura’s breast beneath the gown, and they were moving, shifting ever closer, even in the confining hospital bed. Their cheeks were pressed together, and Kara could not tell whose tears were whose.
~~~
Then, one day, by some strange miracle, Laura said, “This is the last one.”
Kara, who had been halfway through a story about the ridiculously stupid thing one ridiculously stupid nugget had done in the simulator, paused mid-sentence, hands stilling in the middle of demonstrating a complex maneuver.
“At least,” Laura went on, “the doctor thinks so.”
Then she smiled, and Kara smiled.
“Now go on. I want to hear about what brilliant thing you would’ve done to pull out of that tailspin.”
Kara, grinning a ridiculously stupid grin, obliged her.
But.
But later she woke in the darkness of her-their-bedroom and she could hear the steady sound of Laura’s breathing beside her but did not dare turn her head for fear of what she might find. Her sleep-fogged mind saw fingers tapping, tapping, and on the inhale she choked on the scent of cigarette smoke.
She was in the bathroom before she knew it, her head hanging over the toilet bowl, body heaving but nothing coming out.
Eventually, Kara settled onto the floor, eyes closed and head tipped back against the wall. When she opened them again, Laura was there.
“Kara,” she said, “are you here? Are you with me?”
Laura’s knee brushed against hers as she knelt on the tiles, and her palm was warm when she pressed it against her thigh; and, for a time, Kara felt rooted in her own body and Laura’s and the lines they formed together.
end