Ch. 43 - "Meet me in St. Louis, Louis."
x
Kara's eyes shot open, heart pounding as she stared into the unfamiliar room, something heavy pinning her to the bed.
Strapping her down. Trapping her, like at Avocet.
"What's wrong?" The voice was low, tense, and Kara abruptly relaxed, logic overcoming panic as she realized that the "weight" pinning her to the bed was nothing more Danny's arm slung across her chest from when they fell asleep, curled up together in the large hotel bed that was about six times as wide as her bunk. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could make out Halsey's outline by the door, the dog alert and at attention, no doubt responding to the tenor of Danny's voice.
"Nothing, just a cramp. Sorry I woke you." Lying as still as possible, Kara waited for Danny to relax, his breath slowing as, having confirmed that nothing was wrong, he drifted back to sleep. Staring into the darkened room, Kara wished that she could do the same.
It was after midnight by the time they got to their room following a long but rewarding day spent spreading the cure, and a hectic evening spent relocating the entire crew from the Nathan James to the St. Regis. Without fuel, and with most of its critical systems crippled, the CO and XO had quickly decided that the hotel was a better base of operations than the James. Mayor Oliver suggested the St. Regis due to its central location and proximity to the hospital where Rachel was setting up shop, and the decision was made. Garnett and her team were able to get the hotel's emergency generator running fairly quickly using propane commandeered from one of the safe zones, but the process of assigning rooms and arranging watch and transferring people the five miles from the harbor to the hotel had taken hours. Shifting slightly, Kara realized that she had another problem - one that would definitely preclude more sleep. She began easing out of the bed, only to have Danny's arm tighten again.
"Where are you going?"
Apparently he hadn't fallen back to sleep. "I need to make a quick trip to the facilities."
There was a slightly pause while Danny squinted at his watch. "It's 0445, Kara. You have to pee now?"
"Blame your son," Kara grumbled as she struggled to a sitting position. Although the bed was incredibly comfortable - it should be given that this had once been a four hundred dollar a night hotel - getting out of it made her feel like a whale. Next to her Danny slung his feet over the side without any problem. "You don't need to come, Danny. The Captain posted a watch."
Ignoring her protest, Danny slid on a shirt and his shower flip-flops, opening the door to let Halsey exit first. One downside to being back on land was the lack of working bathrooms. Garnett had put them on the priority list, but given that she was currently facing a city without any working infrastructure and a destroyer that needed to be rebuilt almost from the ground up, Kara wasn't sure which "critical priority" would actually take priority. Still, without clean water and proper facilities, Rachel was concerned about the spread of preventable disease, which would probably propel water and sewer closer to the top of the list. Nobody wanted a rash of deaths from whooping cough when they finally had a cure for the Red Flu.
Reaching the hallway, Kara was thankful for the emergency lighting as they traveled the five floors down to the ground. They were on the last flight when a voice called out, "Who's there?"
"Foster and Green, Walker. Just making a pit stop," Danny answered.
"Didn't know you had such a small bladder, sir," Walker replied. He nodded as Kara passed, his tone revealing nothing about his thoughts on seeing them together in the middle of the night. Kara supposed by now people were used to the idea. Nobody had so much as blinked when Danny offered to gather her belongings from the Nathan James the night before, allowing Kara to avoid the trip back to the ship. And Danny was no longer even pretending to follow the frat rules. Hell, he hadn't even bothered to collect the key to the room he was assigned here in the hotel, joining Kara in hers without discussion. "Ma'am."
"Quiet night, then?" Danny asked, having scoped out the fenced in space before returning to where Walker was standing in the doorway, trusting Halsey's sharp senses to notice any intruders before he did. Kara made a beeline to the porta-potties that she and Alisha marked "women only" earlier that evening. They might not have running water and be reduced to peeing in a hole, but there was still a line. Neither she nor Alisha was willing to share with the guys. Their bathrooms were always disgusting.
"A few stragglers came by, looking for the cure, but we directed them over to the hospital," Walker was explaining when Kara returned.
"Do you know if Lieutenant Bivas was moved from the James?" Danny asked.
"Doc Rios decided to wait until morning," Walker replied.
Kara supposed that made sense. It was well past dusk by the time they got things in somewhat decent order at the hospital, and even that was mostly thanks to Mayor Oliver's foresight in opening the building in anticipation of the Nathan James' arrival. The mayor of St. Louis for only fifteen months prior to the outbreak, Oliver had done better than most in keeping the city under control, with no major rioting. While the hospital lacked power, water, and supplies, it hadn't been ransacked, and a surprisingly large number of the medical staff had survived in the various safe zones set up around the city due to Oliver's foresight in splitting them up early. There were already rumors that Michener planned to ask Oliver to serve as his vice-president, and Kara thought that the man could do far worse. Michener needed a strong second-in-command to serve as his sounding board, while occasionally giving him a swift kick in the ass. In other words, he needed his own Master Chief and, on first glance at least, Oliver fit that bill.
Even if he did ride out the pandemic in a Costco, a fact that brought no end of amusement to both his own staff and the crew of the Nathan James.
Kara shivered in the cool morning air. Yesterday had been a beautiful day, but it was December in St. Louis, and the weather wasn't warm. "Thank you, Walker."
Hurrying up the stairs, Kara was breathing heavily by the time they reached the fifth floor, a fact which Danny wisely didn't comment on as he preceded her into the room, collapsing onto the bed. Following him at a slower pace, Kara settled down on the other side, the one that she had claimed as hers the night before, back against the headboard, too wound up to go back to sleep despite the hour. "Have you been by to see Ravit?"
Danny rolled until his head was against her stomach, arm thrown across her legs. "I tried. She didn't want to talk or play cards. Said she was too tired. Carlton said she barely talks to anyone, even him or Wolf. Just sleeps and reads."
Kara threaded her fingers through Danny's hair. It was too long, and there was no longer any excuse for the beard, but nobody had said anything, probably because there were so many more important things to worry about. Although the contagious cure was spreading, the good news was almost dwarfed by stories of outbreaks currently going on across the country, brought by people travelling hundreds of miles based on rumors of a cure. Today alone, there had been planes arriving from as far away as Arizona, mostly small, private aircraft. After two near collisions, Slattery assigned Gator to handle traffic control until they could find someone qualified to do the job.
It was something that Michener should have approved, but he was apparently too busy personally supervising Niels' transfer from the Nathan James to the hospital to take the time. Despite the myriad issues the country was facing, their new president remained hyper focused on Niels, demanding a formal investigation into what happened during the sinking of the Archilles, despite all evidence pointing to Niels' coma being the result of the man falling and hitting his head on his bunk when the missiles hit the ship. In light of all of the other problems he was facing, Michener's focus on Niels struck Kara as almost obsessive.
"She's been through a lot, Danny. She can barely move and she's in pain. Give her time."
"It's just..." Danny paused. "Carlton is going nuts trying to figure out how to help her. His head isn't in the game. The guys are covering for him but Slattery's going to notice sooner or later."
More likely he already had and was simply cutting Burk some slack. Kara sighed. "This is something that she needs to work through on her own. Carlton needs to give her that space."
Danny moved so his head was propped up on one arm. "That's what Caro said too. But it just feels wrong. Ravit was a member of my team, and they're my friends. I want to help them. Both of them."
Kara raised an eyebrow. "When did you talk to Caroline?"
"I gave her a lift to the James to pick up her stuff. I still can't believe she plans to marry Teylor. They've never even dated," Danny sulked.
Biting her tongue, Kara managed not to point out that Danny hadn't seen dating as a prerequisite to proposing back in Baltimore. She could already hear his response.
"It's different."
"Why?"
"Because you're pregnant!"
That's what it always came back to, the baby, the pregnancy, him wanting - no needing - to keep her and the baby safe, the way he couldn't keep Frankie or his family safe. Kara blinked away tears, once again cursing the hormones that overwhelmed her at the most inopportune moments, wondering what would have happened if she wasn't pregnant. Would she and Danny have moved past the events of Gitmo, coming back together in Norfolk or even now in St. Louis? Or would that night in Gitmo have been the end, the need to keep their distance putting too much stress on a relationship that barely was?
And did it even matter? Because Danny was right about one thing. She was pregnant and, if there was anything that she had learned over the past few months, it was that she and Danny were tied together in a way that she would never have understood before. A way that felt far more permanent than any relationship, bound by their love for the tiny person who was even now kicking her in the ribs.
Dragging her thoughts back to the topic at hand, Kara tried for reason. "Even if they never technically dated, haven't Caroline and Teylor known each other for years?"
"Only if you count mutual hatred," Danny groused. That wasn't the story that Kara had heard - and didn't quite mesh with Danny's own admission that the two were having sex - but Danny apparently wasn't interested in reason when it came to his sister. "And what's the deal with wanting to get married this week? Why not stay engaged for a while? Marriage is a big step. No reason to rush into anything."
In Kara's opinion, Caroline had every right to live her life however she wanted, including marrying one of Danny's friends without waiting for her brother to adjust to the idea. But saying that out-loud would simply get Danny riled up. As much as he claimed to be a modern man, there were times when he was unbelievably old-school, and Caroline getting married seemed to have brought out those caveman instincts.
"I heard today that Michener is hoping to get the high school reopened by the middle of January. Your dad should talk to him about a job there." Kara paused as a thought occurred to her. "Unless he plans to go look for your mom."
"No, he's not." Danny shook his head. "Said it was too dangerous to be on the roads right now, and he didn't want to leave Chris. Originally Caro was dead set on going, but Teylor talked her out of it somehow. If Mom's alive, she'll head here the moment that she hears about the Nathan James. If she isn't, well, we'll find out sooner or later."
Silence fell and Kara thought that Danny might have fallen back to sleep until one of his hand found its way under the hem of her shirt and began stroking her baby bump. "Did Rachel say when I'll be able to feel him move?"
"She said it could be as early as twenty weeks, but more likely around twenty-five weeks. I guess it depends on the woman," Kara explained. "So any time now."
Rolling, Danny pushed Kara's shirt up to kiss her no-longer-flat stomach. "Come on baby, I know you're in there. Move for daddy..."
Giggling, Kara drank in the sight of Danny talking to her bump. Apparently giving up on the idea of feeling the baby move, Danny looked up, giving her that slow grin, the one that never failed to reduce her to a quivering pile of goo. "No luck with the little guy. What about you, mama? Think I could get lucky?"
"Maybe." Sliding down, Kara wrapped her arm around his neck, pulling him towards her for a slow, languid kiss that ended only when Danny rolled her on top of him. Wiggling herself free from his arms, drawing a groan from Danny when she brushed against his growing erection, Kara pushed into a seated position that was more comfortable for her bump. Pulling her shirt over her head, she bent down for another kiss, only to be stopped by his hands cupping her face.
"I can't imagine my life without you. You know that, right?"
Tears pressed against her eyes and Kara blinked them away. It wasn't a proposal, but maybe that no longer mattered. "Well, lucky for you, you won't need to. You're stuck with me, Danny Green. Get used to it."
