The Boy on the Jungle Gym 1/1
Characters: Rick n’ Kate
Genre: post episode, angst, reflective, het
Rating: pg-15
Spoilers: a knowledge of all things to date
Summary: Kate's aware of the boy on the jungle gym, but he doesn't really understand the seriousness of her life.
A/N: This short piece explores the ideas first raised in His Sleuth of Bears regarding R_Castle’s build and brawn, but develops them using the ‘jungle gym’ exchange he had with Kate in 3:24. It’s from her POV.
Thank you for the messages regarding 'The Old Haunt' and its continuation. I (really) hope to have a chapter done sometime this week, RL-permitting!
The Boy on the Jungle Gym
The boy on the jungle gym is looking at her while she sits on a hard seat in the strictest classroom of life. It’s a cloister. She’s learning what it’s like to lose a mother, how it feels to be growing into a woman’s body while still feeling like a little girl, and the responsibilities that entails without maternal guidance.
She’s discovering what it’s really like to choose police work over a more salubrious job, one for which she has the given intellect.
The kid on the jungle gym has the intelligence too, but he’s not in class focusing on the work that will make him an engineer. He’s not perched at a microscope, birthing an idea for a cancer cure or posing theories about evolution. He’s not going to be a lawyer, a Wall Street anything, a cardiac surgeon.
He’s growing before her eyes. The classroom walls pickle and mutate into the lonely, violent streets of her adult life.
The boy on the jungle gym is watching her. He’s smiling and he has eyes that cause her skin to prickle, her brain to race. He shouldn’t look at her like that. Life’s not a joke, she doesn’t have room in her day for a court jester. Detective Beckett has an important job to do, she’s got sexy, ripped men to find. Guys that can heat her bed, though they might never cause blood to rise to her face, or her fury to ignite beyond combustion. Studs that might hold her hand, but never cause her fingernail beds to tingle in pain due to sheer anticipation. Boys that might tongue kiss her into forgetting, but never lick at the periphery of her memory during the majority of her waking moments.
Or through long nights lost in cold sheets of hot frustration.
Josh might ruffle her hair in an attempt to hurry her from the bathroom to boudoir, but the man on the jungle gym will scrag her locks, delve fingers beneath the weight of her head and ruffle her feathers. Demming let her ride them into oblivion on the hood of his car in a private garage, but the guy on the jungle gym will flip her onto her back, use his bulk and experience, drive her mental before letting her dominate their carnal life on a regular basis.
Though she will. She’ll straddle him eventually, it’s as inevitable as Castle riding down the closest red slide with his arms in the air and a huge grin on his face. He wants to take her with him, wants her to sit between his legs and swoosh along the heated plastic while they lose their inhibitions and revel in the sheer joy of no-win control.
The slide, the way they work together, the way they’ll have sex? So much about her forfeiting control. It scares her.
She’s not ready to play. It’s her life. She might be willing to try running around with the school’s funniest kid. It doesn’t mean she’s ready to walk away from the atrocities of her life and adopt his one-stop shop of humour, where everything is about fun and money. And being happy.
The fella on the jungle gym of her life baits her. He doesn’t study his books, doesn’t play football or train for swim squad. He blossoms full and thick, his body the size of an athlete's, his form enough to pump at her baser instincts, but when he looks at her that way, it’s never serious. It’s about sex. He’s bear-sized and bouncy. He’s not committed. To anything, although he’s as addicted to crime as he is to charm, he’s as masterful with humour as he is with his words.
Beckett’s life is serious! She needs to tell him that.
‘Hey Kate!,’ says the man on the jungle gym. ‘Come over and climb this rope with me. It’ll be fun!’
'Ye-heh,' she wants to agree. Fun is good. It’s liberating, and she may get to feel what it’s like to be on the playground without the safety net of her badge. Her nowhere relationships with the men she doesn’t love. Her shield. She should do this. Go with him ...
But she won’t, though she is so tempted to simply play.
He’s up the rope in a minute, all biceps and brawn, and when he’s at the top he soaks her a smile that makes her feel more alive than she’s ever felt with anyone. Will, the wonderboy, Tom. Josh, or the string of men that take her to the climax, but don’t quite push the buttons they can’t manually stimulate or actually see.
Then Castle leaps from the rope, and for a moment she can see the reality etched on his face. He’s as frightened as she is. For a split-second, the laughter falls away and the boy is revealed, and he’s sensitive, loving, loyal. The charm flaps in the air as he jumps, and Kate spots the core of the man, the boy that’s been hurt, the lad without a father figure, the handsome kid that didn’t know how to channel his urges, his good looks. His gift with words. His bludgeoning body.
‘Be careful,’ she calls, remembering her mother saying the same thing to her - before she passed away and it forged Kate into a relationship conservative. But Rick lands on his feet like a cat, with puppy dog eyes and a glower of the animal instincts that always put her on guard.
He hangs around, the boy on the jungle gym, just like he does before he takes the flying leap from the playground rope. He’s like a scent that lingers between her nose and mouth, like a taste that a bulimic craves, but will continually deny herself.
Because she’s a homicide detective, a mourner of her mom. Life is not about the game.
Until the day that the playground dissolves and the jungle gym unravels. It’s been happening gradually, the three years decreasing the thrill of the swing, the fast swoosh of the slide, the ease of the rope climb, so that this particular man-kid is forced into the deepest ravine of her sandbox. He’s here. It’s more than Kate can say for the other main characters in her life.
The man off the jungle gym stands his ground. There’s more to him than the dash of glamour, the quirky raising of an eyebrow, and Kate realizes she’s known that well before he uses his playground strength to shunt her away from Roy’s final battle. Even though she’s accused him of playing in her life so flippantly that he’s forced to brush a stray hair from his forehead in case he looks even more frivolous in her eyes.
He stands and fights, verbally, physically. Until Kate sees that the guy on the play equipment is as grounded as the shot-out helicopter in a hangar of blue.
The boy tries to confide in his mama. The guy throws his scotch glass at the focus of his angry Heat, but the man? The man is steadfast. Friend. Pallbearer. Constant, body-guard close … then she watches his love of the playground dwindle with the regular rhythm of her own heartbeat, and listens to him speak the words she wanted to hear while wrapped in her cloister.
Kate wishes she’d joined him on the rope climb. Wishes she’d played while time was her gift and offers were abundant. But regrets are pointless, especially as she wakes to the feel of his hair under her recovering fingers in a hospital room of bright lights and whispered promises.
His new jungle gym is a shared space with room for baby steps, collaborative adventures and a soft-fall surface. She hopes he won’t restrict her in any way, as she takes up his older offer to swing to the top of the castle.
Genre: post episode, angst, reflective, het
Rating: pg-15
Spoilers: a knowledge of all things to date
Summary: Kate's aware of the boy on the jungle gym, but he doesn't really understand the seriousness of her life.
A/N: This short piece explores the ideas first raised in His Sleuth of Bears regarding R_Castle’s build and brawn, but develops them using the ‘jungle gym’ exchange he had with Kate in 3:24. It’s from her POV.
Thank you for the messages regarding 'The Old Haunt' and its continuation. I (really) hope to have a chapter done sometime this week, RL-permitting!
The Boy on the Jungle Gym
The boy on the jungle gym is looking at her while she sits on a hard seat in the strictest classroom of life. It’s a cloister. She’s learning what it’s like to lose a mother, how it feels to be growing into a woman’s body while still feeling like a little girl, and the responsibilities that entails without maternal guidance.
She’s discovering what it’s really like to choose police work over a more salubrious job, one for which she has the given intellect.
The kid on the jungle gym has the intelligence too, but he’s not in class focusing on the work that will make him an engineer. He’s not perched at a microscope, birthing an idea for a cancer cure or posing theories about evolution. He’s not going to be a lawyer, a Wall Street anything, a cardiac surgeon.
He’s growing before her eyes. The classroom walls pickle and mutate into the lonely, violent streets of her adult life.
The boy on the jungle gym is watching her. He’s smiling and he has eyes that cause her skin to prickle, her brain to race. He shouldn’t look at her like that. Life’s not a joke, she doesn’t have room in her day for a court jester. Detective Beckett has an important job to do, she’s got sexy, ripped men to find. Guys that can heat her bed, though they might never cause blood to rise to her face, or her fury to ignite beyond combustion. Studs that might hold her hand, but never cause her fingernail beds to tingle in pain due to sheer anticipation. Boys that might tongue kiss her into forgetting, but never lick at the periphery of her memory during the majority of her waking moments.
Or through long nights lost in cold sheets of hot frustration.
Josh might ruffle her hair in an attempt to hurry her from the bathroom to boudoir, but the man on the jungle gym will scrag her locks, delve fingers beneath the weight of her head and ruffle her feathers. Demming let her ride them into oblivion on the hood of his car in a private garage, but the guy on the jungle gym will flip her onto her back, use his bulk and experience, drive her mental before letting her dominate their carnal life on a regular basis.
Though she will. She’ll straddle him eventually, it’s as inevitable as Castle riding down the closest red slide with his arms in the air and a huge grin on his face. He wants to take her with him, wants her to sit between his legs and swoosh along the heated plastic while they lose their inhibitions and revel in the sheer joy of no-win control.
The slide, the way they work together, the way they’ll have sex? So much about her forfeiting control. It scares her.
She’s not ready to play. It’s her life. She might be willing to try running around with the school’s funniest kid. It doesn’t mean she’s ready to walk away from the atrocities of her life and adopt his one-stop shop of humour, where everything is about fun and money. And being happy.
The fella on the jungle gym of her life baits her. He doesn’t study his books, doesn’t play football or train for swim squad. He blossoms full and thick, his body the size of an athlete's, his form enough to pump at her baser instincts, but when he looks at her that way, it’s never serious. It’s about sex. He’s bear-sized and bouncy. He’s not committed. To anything, although he’s as addicted to crime as he is to charm, he’s as masterful with humour as he is with his words.
Beckett’s life is serious! She needs to tell him that.
‘Hey Kate!,’ says the man on the jungle gym. ‘Come over and climb this rope with me. It’ll be fun!’
'Ye-heh,' she wants to agree. Fun is good. It’s liberating, and she may get to feel what it’s like to be on the playground without the safety net of her badge. Her nowhere relationships with the men she doesn’t love. Her shield. She should do this. Go with him ...
But she won’t, though she is so tempted to simply play.
He’s up the rope in a minute, all biceps and brawn, and when he’s at the top he soaks her a smile that makes her feel more alive than she’s ever felt with anyone. Will, the wonderboy, Tom. Josh, or the string of men that take her to the climax, but don’t quite push the buttons they can’t manually stimulate or actually see.
Then Castle leaps from the rope, and for a moment she can see the reality etched on his face. He’s as frightened as she is. For a split-second, the laughter falls away and the boy is revealed, and he’s sensitive, loving, loyal. The charm flaps in the air as he jumps, and Kate spots the core of the man, the boy that’s been hurt, the lad without a father figure, the handsome kid that didn’t know how to channel his urges, his good looks. His gift with words. His bludgeoning body.
‘Be careful,’ she calls, remembering her mother saying the same thing to her - before she passed away and it forged Kate into a relationship conservative. But Rick lands on his feet like a cat, with puppy dog eyes and a glower of the animal instincts that always put her on guard.
He hangs around, the boy on the jungle gym, just like he does before he takes the flying leap from the playground rope. He’s like a scent that lingers between her nose and mouth, like a taste that a bulimic craves, but will continually deny herself.
Because she’s a homicide detective, a mourner of her mom. Life is not about the game.
Until the day that the playground dissolves and the jungle gym unravels. It’s been happening gradually, the three years decreasing the thrill of the swing, the fast swoosh of the slide, the ease of the rope climb, so that this particular man-kid is forced into the deepest ravine of her sandbox. He’s here. It’s more than Kate can say for the other main characters in her life.
The man off the jungle gym stands his ground. There’s more to him than the dash of glamour, the quirky raising of an eyebrow, and Kate realizes she’s known that well before he uses his playground strength to shunt her away from Roy’s final battle. Even though she’s accused him of playing in her life so flippantly that he’s forced to brush a stray hair from his forehead in case he looks even more frivolous in her eyes.
He stands and fights, verbally, physically. Until Kate sees that the guy on the play equipment is as grounded as the shot-out helicopter in a hangar of blue.
The boy tries to confide in his mama. The guy throws his scotch glass at the focus of his angry Heat, but the man? The man is steadfast. Friend. Pallbearer. Constant, body-guard close … then she watches his love of the playground dwindle with the regular rhythm of her own heartbeat, and listens to him speak the words she wanted to hear while wrapped in her cloister.
Kate wishes she’d joined him on the rope climb. Wishes she’d played while time was her gift and offers were abundant. But regrets are pointless, especially as she wakes to the feel of his hair under her recovering fingers in a hospital room of bright lights and whispered promises.
His new jungle gym is a shared space with room for baby steps, collaborative adventures and a soft-fall surface. She hopes he won’t restrict her in any way, as she takes up his older offer to swing to the top of the castle.