A/N — for those who celebrate, I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. xoxo — kals

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Chapter 34 — Take Two

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"You're sure you want to do this?" Danny asked, pulling the truck into the parking lot next to a small pub. The outside of the place was certainly unimpressive, but Danny claimed that it served the best beer and fries around. Kara wondered whether Pablo picked this out-of-the-way spot because he was trying to avoid being recognized — or if he had gotten himself deemed persona non grata everywhere else.

Kara unbuckled her seatbelt. "That's at least the fifth time you've asked me that. Yes, I want to have lunch with Pablo and I haven't changed my mind in the last two minutes."

But Danny didn't move. "This isn't some elaborate trick to arrest him?"

"What?" Head whipping around, Kara stared at Danny, expecting a smirk, but his face remained grim. She crossed her arms over her chest. "You've got to be kidding me. I invited him to our wedding."

"That was before he found Evelyn," Danny replied, his hands tightening on the wheel, eyes fixed on the door to the pub.

And just like that, Kara understood. This wasn't about Pablo, not really. This was Danny's own uncertainty that Kara was really over what happened at the adoption hearing. Kara reached out, squeezing Danny's hand. "I know that I didn't react well when you and Pablo appeared with Evelyn. And I stand by what I said. You should have told me about Evelyn the moment that you knew Stella might have a surviving biological relative. But..."

Danny's eyes met hers. Sober. Unflinching. The way he looked before a mission — preparing for the worst. "But?"

"You were afraid," Kara said bluntly. "We have so much history, and a lot of that history isn't good. There are times when I worry that the last year has been a dream and I'm going to wake up back in my cabin on the Nathan James, alone."

His eyes flared, then his hand turned, fingers threading through hers. "That isn't going to happen, Kara. But, even if this were a dream, can you imagine waking up and just ignoring everything that happened? Because I can sure as shit tell you that if I woke up tomorrow morning and found out this was a dream, you'd still be my first phone call."

xxx

Kara held up the tiny white vest. "Admit it, Tex was trying to throw us together."

Andrea snorted, juggling Liam as she wiggled him into the little shorts. The christening outfit was adorable but not very practical, which is why Andrea was getting Liam dressed at the church only minutes before the ceremony began. "Of course he was. Not that Tex asked for my opinion, to be clear. I would have told him to pick someone else."

"Would that have been fair, though?" Kara asked, sliding Liam's pudgy little arms into the vest and straightening the collar of his button-down shirt. "The deal was that you got to pick the godmother and Tex got to pick the godfather. If you were going to nix Danny, shouldn't you both have picked someone else?"

"If you didn't want to be godmother, Kara, you should have told me before we had the certificates filled out," Andrea replied, distracted by Liam kicking off the sock that she had just managed to get onto his foot.

Kara retrieved the sock, turning it right side out and sliding it back onto Liam's foot. "That's not what I was saying. Just that..."

"Let me stop you," Andrea cut Kara off. "You and Danny made things easy by getting back together, but if you hadn't, Tex would have some way to convince every single man we know to decline to be godfather, leaving Danny as the only option. And if you think that he wouldn't have done something underhanded to get you here today, you aren't as smart as I've always given you credit for being." Andrea's eyes softened. "Tex has always thought that the two of you would end up together. And damn if the man doesn't have a knack for being right."

xxx

"My first call would be to Rios asking about mental breaks," Kara replied.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Don't fight the hypothetical."

"Fine, I concede," Kara muttered, before tossing Danny a grin. "Tex was throwing us together every chance that he got."

"Carlton too," Danny added. At Kara's incredulous look, he added, "Just because Carlton is terrible at match-making doesn't mean that he wasn't trying. Why do you think he assigned me all of that bullshit work on our cruise to Brazil? He was waiting for me to get fed up and insist on a private conversation."

Unfortunately, that did sound like something Carlton would do. Kara took a deep breath, before blurting out the secret that had been weighing on her for the last week. "My period is late."

"I know." When Kara just blinked at him, Danny shrugged. "They taught us how to use a calendar in kindergarten."

Kara scowled. "Why didn't you say anything?"

There was a long pause, then the corner of Danny's mouth curled. "You know what they say. When is it appropriate to ask a woman if she's pregnant? It's a trick question. The answer is never. Even if she's mid-labor screaming about getting to a hospital."

There was a short pause, then Kara started laughing. "Now all I can think about is that show where women gave birth without knowing that they were pregnant. Do you remember that? During the pre-pandemic reality television craze?"

The look on Danny's face was a combination of horror and disbelief. "You're making that up."

"Oh, just ask Alisha. She was totally obsessed with figuring out how these women could gain fifty pounds and feel something moving inside them and not know that they were pregnant. It had to have been some type of strange mental disorder." As she finished speaking, an awkward silence fell. Kara watched as the dashboard clock clicked to 11:56. If they didn't leave now, they would be late to meet Pablo. "Should we go in?"

"We should." Danny opened his door before turning back to Kara. "I didn't say anything because I didn't want to rush you. We can wait as long as you want, Kara. Although, I'm pretty sure Rios will be annoyed if you show up to surprise him mid-labor."

That brought a tight smile as Kara reached for her own door. "We can do the test tonight."

Pablo was already there when they entered, seated in the corner of the dim room with the wall to his back, and Kara suspected that he had been nursing the beer in front of him for a while given the lack of frost on his glass. Apparently, Pablo really was nervous about seeing her again. She wondered whether Pablo was nervous to see her because she could get him court-martialed — the man had broken a dozen regulations in just the few days they spent together — or because Kara was Danny's wife and now had much greater control over who Danny would be spending time with. She strongly suspected that it was the latter.

"You're late," Pablo announced, although he stood to clasp hands with Danny, and waited until Kara was seated in the booth before resuming his seat. Sometime in his past, someone had apparently taught the guy some manners.

"Says the guy who left me hanging out at a Mexican barra for four hours while he toured the local scenery," Danny replied good-naturedly. He reached for the bowl of peanuts in the center of the table. "Which reminds me, you've been around much more than usual. Who did you piss off?"

"You mean besides the Captain of the Nathan James?" Pablo asked, voice slightly mocking. "Because I seem to be getting a suspicious number of spam emails recently."

Danny laughed. "Spam email barely counts as annoyance. Val has much more effective ways to punish you. Believe me, I've experienced most of them."

Pablo's eyes flickered to Kara. She held his gaze, not willing to give an inch. She might be willing to accept that Pablo was a part of Danny's life, but that didn't mean she liked the man. As though he could read her mind, Pablo suddenly smiled. "Did you and Nolan really need to start riding a desk at the same time? These kids that I'm stuck with couldn't find Reiss, never mind someone who doesn't call a press conference every time he takes a shit."

"Can't be worse than Bushay," Danny replied without missing a beat.

But instead of being pleased, Pablo groaned, just as their server appeared.

"Bushay?" Kara asked, curious, as soon as they finished ordering.

Danny chuckled. "This guy at basic. He was terrible at everything. But he was such a nice guy that you couldn't help but like him."

"Terrible doesn't even begin to describe it," Pablo added, shaking his head. "He failed every inspection, which meant that we all failed inspection. Every time the drill instructor would ask who could beat him in something, Bushay would volunteer and then get left in the dirt and the rest of us would be scrubbing the floor with toothbrushes. Again."

As Danny and Pablo launched into a series of stories about officer candidate school and their first deployment in Iraq, Kara remained quiet, soaking in the stories. She had heard similar stories from Frankie Benz, during the early days on the Nathan James, but there was something different about hearing Pablo talk. Because the Danny he knew was so very different from the man Kara knew.

And that, after all, was the reason she agreed to this lunch.

Because Pablo was the last person alive who knew that Danny. The one from before the Arctic and the virus and all that came after.

"Wait," Kara interrupted, attention caught by Pablo's last story, as she turned to her husband. "You tried to buy some girl a diamond necklace and your card got declined?"

"Yup." Danny took a gulp of his beer, neck turning red. "But that wasn't the worst of it."

Pablo was laughing so hard that he could barely form the words. "So after his own card got declined, Green here thought it would be a good idea to use the card that his brother gave him for emergencies to get the necklace. Zack got special permission from the higher-ups to come yell at Danny in person when he found out."

Kara glanced sideways. Danny rarely talked about his family, usually only in response to questions Stella asked about his childhood. And even then, there was an underlying sense of sadness, as though the memories themselves were now tainted. But right now, there was no sense of grief. Instead, Danny was laughing as he explained. "Zack told me that I was going to use every cent I earned to pay him back or he was going to get me dishonorably discharged and I was too scared to realize that he was bluffing. I spent the next six months eating every meal in the cafeteria and serving as designated driver when we went out to avoid spending money on booze."

"Not that it hurt his game with the ladies," Pablo grumbled. "If I admitted that I couldn't buy some chick a drink because I was broke and owed my brother a shit-ton of money, I would have gotten called a loser. But somehow with Green, the girls found it sweet."

Danny tipped his glass to Kara. "It's all in the spin."

xxx

"Your second course, mademoiselle."

Kara glanced up from the first-aid manual she was studying to see Lieutenant Green, one of the SEALs who joined them in Norfolk, balancing something on a tray. She arched an eyebrow. "Second course?"

"Mais oui," he replied, settling into the seat across from her and presenting the dish of chocolate pudding with a flourish. "Compliments of Petty Officer Cowley."

"Who?" Focused on the application of various topical antibiotics, it took Kara a moment to catch up. "Oh, Bacon."

"I'm Danny, by the way," the man responded, flashing her a brilliant smile. He lifted his own plate off the tray. This one was filled with lasagna.

"Kara." She dug her spoon into the pudding. Bacon did make the most amazing desserts. Deciding that ignoring Danny would be rude, Kara set her manual to the side. "Now that we've officially met, how are you settling in?"

xxx

Kara shook her head at him. "You lucked out guessing that I liked chocolate."

"Not guessing, just clever observation and deductive reasoning," Danny replied smoothly.

Pablo glanced from Danny to Kara and back. "Do I want to know?"

"Probably not," Danny admitted. "But having Zack put the fear of god into me did have the indirect effect of helping me learn to budget. He was a good brother."

And there it was, the wistfulness that Kara was used to hearing. Today, however, there had been a moment of happiness to temper the sadness. After a moment, Pablo spoke again. "Zack wasn't too bad, but he had his moments. Remember the time he sold us out to Lieutenant Rollings for underage drinking?"

"God, I forgot that," Danny groaned. "Remember the look on Rollings face when Lyman jumped out the window thinking that he could get away without being seen and fell in the pool?"

Settling back into the booth as Pablo and Danny continued to swap stories, Kara ate her french fries. Pablo might be an utter asshole, but she would put up with almost anything to hear Danny laugh like that again.

xxx

Danny was waiting in the kitchen when Kara reappeared, his eyes studying her but not saying anything. Kara hadn't told him what she was doing in the bathroom, but they both knew. With the girls in bed and — hopefully — asleep, there was no reason to delay. Kara took the plastic bag out of her pocket and set it down on the middle of the table.

"It's positive," she said, as though the cross in the middle of the pregnancy test wasn't clear enough.

Danny reached out, then paused. "Why is it in a bag?"

Kara raised an eyebrow. "You know that I just peed on that thing, right?"

Danny snorted, then fell silent as he picked up the test, glancing at it only briefly before setting it down. He stood, moving around the table to wrap Kara in his arms. "No matter what happens, we're in this together. I'm not going anywhere."

Wrapping her arms around his waist, Kara ignored the icy tentacle creeping down her back. She could do this. "Neither am I."