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It’s a small miracle Brad doesn’t scream when he spots a shadowy figure across the room, looming over his daughter’s bassinet. His breathing catches in his chest and his head goes dizzy with fear for a split second—until he realizes it’s just Beckett. The fear subsides and is replaced with worry. Worry for Beckett and their daughter. Brad waits until his breathing is normal before sliding out of their bed and crossing their small quarters.
“What are you doing up?” he asks softly. He peers around Beckett down at Ayla, blessedly sound asleep. She’s been a remarkably chill baby, though if Carol is to be believed, that’ll change around the time she hits two. Brad is crossing his fingers that’s not the case, but he knows Beckett, so he won’t be surprised if Ayla takes after her.
Beckett doesn’t reply immediately. She’s got both hands curled around the edge of the bassinet, rocking it slightly. She doesn’t pull away when Brad gives in to the urge to reach for her. She lets him hug her, his arms winding around her waist and his chin settling on her shoulder. They stay there, quiet and together, for a long while.
“What if she wants to go into Starfleet?” Beckett asks softly.
Brad’s brow furrows. “What?”
“Ayla,” Beckett clarifies, as though that’s the part Brad’s confused about. “What if Ayla wants to go into Starfleet?”
Brad hesitates in his answer. He hasn’t been back on the Cerritos long, just the two months since Ayla was born, and sometimes it feels like he and Beckett spent longer apart than nine months. Sometimes she feels like a stranger to him. Like he’s starting at the very beginning of a book he thought he had memorized. Granted, Brad is slowly realizing it’s less that they’re strangers and more that Beckett is opening up to him in ways she didn’t before. He never had Beckett memorized before, he’d barely scratched the surface. He’s finding chapters he didn’t even know existed.
“Brad?”
“Sorry,” Brad apologizes quietly, “I got tangled up in a metaphor in my head.”
Beckett snorts softly. “It’s fine. Forget I said anything.”
“Hey, no.” Brad tugs gently until Beckett lets go of the side of the bassinet and allows herself to be turned. He keeps his arms around her and stares at her. She’s tired, he knows. They both are. Taking care of an infant in the middle of a starship isn’t easy, even with Carol as the captain.
Technically he and Beckett are on parental leave for another two months, but they’re both too stubborn to stick to that. He’s been sneaking in shifts wherever he can and Beckett’s been on a handful of away missions when she can manage it.
Part of Brad thinks maybe he should let Beckett get away with the deflection—they could use the sleep, surely. He didn’t even check what time it was before he climbed out of bed, but it’s probably some ungodly hour.
But then Beckett twists and looks back at their daughter like she’s worried Ayla might have disappeared in the few seconds Beckett wasn’t looking at her. Brad brings a hand up and tilts Beckett’s face to look at him again.
“Talk to me,” he pleads softly.
Beckett sighs, her nostrils flaring. “I grew up in Starfleet.”
Brad nods. “Sorry, again, for letting that secret get out.”
Beckett rolls her eyes affectionately. “You’re forgiven. It was hardly the worst thing you did that week.”
Brad doesn’t even wince; he deserved that. Instead, he gestures for her to continue.
Beckett looks down and crosses her arms over her chest. “I loved Starfleet, when I was little. I loved growing up in it. It made me who I am.”
Brad waits.
“Ayla is going to grow up like me, a Starfleet brat. And I know she’ll be safe, and I know she’ll have an enormous family besides you and me and my parents. She’ll have Tendi and Rutherford. Hell, she’ll even have Ransom.” Beckett shakes her head. “But I don’t know what I’ll do if she wants to go into Starfleet, when she’s older.”
“What…what would be so bad about that?”
The pause before Beckett’s answer is heavy and long. For a second, Brad worries he’s crossed some sort of invisible line. Especially when he realizes Beckett’s eyes are wet.
“Beckett,” he starts, only for her to stop him with a raised hand and a shake of her head.
Her voice doesn’t tremble as she speaks. “The Federation isn’t perfect. It’s not even remotely close to perfect. It’s a messed up system, with stupid rules. There is so much more we could be doing than just lame second contact missions.” Her eyes still shine even as her expression hardens with anger. “We’re always told not to interfere and then we have to sit back and watch civilizations collapse on themselves or make ridiculous, preventable mistakes.”
Brad can only nod. He’s never heard this exact rant from Beckett, but it’s not surprising given, well, the everything about her. Her disdain for Starfleet’s and the Federation’s politics is plenty well-known. Hell, after the mess with the Pakleds, how everyone underestimated them, Brad has an even better appreciation for her anger.
So he says, “You’re worried Ayla is going to get stuck in a cycle.” Then, after a moment of self-reflection, he adds, “You’re worried she’s going to grow up a grade-a brownnoser.” The like me is unspoken, but heavily implied.
“Brad, no—?”
This time, it’s Brad’s turn to stop Beckett. “It’s okay. I am a grade-a brown noser.” He smiles at Beckett until she returns the grin, however meekly. “But I don’t think that’s gonna happen to Ayla.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well, first off, I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything right now. This is all uncharted territory, and I’m pretty much one lost pacifier away from losing my entire mind at any given moment.”
That gets a laugh out of Beckett, soft and quiet.
Brad continues. “I’m not sure Ayla won’t have some ass-kissing tendencies, just like I’m not sure Ayla’s going to be as much of a nightmare toddler as your mom thinks. Right now, I have no idea what Ayla is going to be like. I don’t know what she’ll be like in a couple months, not a couple years, not decades from now.
“What I do know,” Brad says as he holds Beckett tighter, “is that she’s got the coolest mom in all of Starfleet, who won’t feed her bullshit about how the Federation is some utopia. Ayla has an incredible mom who’s going to tell her the truth about how the system fails, sometimes, and how all we can do is our best. Ayla’s mom isn’t going to let her get sucked into the propaganda, even when she’s growing up smack in the middle of it.”
Beckett drags in a wet, shuddering breath. “Brad,” she starts but doesn’t say anything else.
“Ayla might want to go into Starfleet,” Brad admits, “I think that’s inevitable. Am I super jazzed about that? Not really. It scares the shit out of me, honestly.” Brad shrugs, says, “But if she does, I’ll support her choice. Because I think she’ll be doing it for the right reasons. Not because she thinks Starfleet or the Federation are the end-all, be-all of the universe, but because she knows it can be better and wants to help make that happen. Just like her mom.”
“Just like her parents,” Beckett corrects.
Brad smiles. “Yeah, just like her parents. But mostly her mom, the objectively cooler parent.”
Beckett finally uncrosses her arms and wraps them around Brad’s torso. She buries her face against his neck. “You’re pretty cool too, Boims. I don’t have a ship-wide mandate named after me, you know.”
“God, don’t remind me.” Brad shakes his head.
They’re both quiet for a moment, relishing the moment of downtime even if it’s at an unreasonable hour. When Beckett yawns against Brad’s neck, he laughs.
“Come back to bed?”
“Okay.” Beckett lets Brad lead her across their quarters back to their bed. Neither of them speaks as they crawl under the covers, and Brad doesn’t protest when Beckett rolls and tucks herself against Brad’s side.
It should be strange, maybe, making the jump from friends to kind-of-enemies to whatever this is, but it just feels right. It’s as easy as breathing to wrap his arm around Beckett and settle in. It’s been a weird two months, from showing up in the middle of Beckett’s labor to suddenly getting their own quarters to dealing with everything that raising a baby entails. Brad is fast finding he likes this kind of weird. It’s like a more amplified version of his life before he left for the Titan.
“Brad?”
“Hm?” Brad looks down at the top of Beckett’s unruly hair, made messy by the little bit of sleep she got earlier.
“Thanks.” She leans up and brushes a kiss over the corner of his mouth. “Y’know, for someone so neurotic, you’re pretty good in times of crisis.”
Brad rolls his eyes. “Just you wait, Ayla could be neurotic just like me, then you’ll have two of us to deal with.”
Beckett settles back against Brad’s chest. He doesn’t need to see her face to know she’s grinning. “I’m looking forward to it.”