Petrichor-Set just post-After the Storm (5 x 01), A Caskett one-shot
More archiving.
Title: Petrichor
Rating: T
Summary: "He's down right testy with her, but she turns again-rush-hour grace that takes his breath away as her shoulder brushes his. As she hooks his pinky with hers for just an instant, and it's . . . more. More intimate. More arousing. More everything than the shock of her hand sliding down and down, dropping the bottom out of his world in that elevator."
A/N: Just a one-shot episode tag for "After the Storm" (5 x 01)
pet·ri·chor-/ˈpeˌtrīkôr/-noun-a pleasant smell that frequently
accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.
He wants a cab. He very, very badly wants a cab and a wide back seat and the nod to privacy afforded by a plexiglass barrier and medallion boilerplate. He flags one down. It's absolutely heroic with the streets still a mess from the storm, and he's so relieved he might actually cry as his palm lands at the small of her back. He ushers her to the curb and holds the door open with an expectant look, fighting the urge to toss her bodily through and dive after.
But she has other ideas.
She waves the cabbie off. She actually waves him off, then ducks to the rolled down passenger-side window when the red-faced man seems inclined to ignore her. The traffic swallows up whatever it is she says, but he peels away from the curb, chewing on his own fury and calling out almost certainly rude things over his shoulder.
She's impervious to it. She turns on one heel to walk backwards. Facing him, as her eyes sweep up the stone face of the precinct. Her fingers just splay and curl down by her hip. A beckoning gesture that quickens his steps. An all-too-visceral memory of what those fingers have just been doing. Which is why he wanted a damned cab.
"Come on, Castle."
His mouth opens and closes. Disbelief fixes him to the spot, but she gives him a wide smile and he jerks forward, irresistibly drawn along. He leans in, grousing in her ear as he pulls parallel. He wants to touch her. He wants to wrap himself around her and have her. Now-again, again, again-but they're still in the shadow of the precinct, and she doesn't need the kind of trouble he wants to get her into.
"Come on? I kind of assumed that was the plan, Beckett."
He's down right testy with her, but she turns again-rush-hour grace that takes his breath away as her shoulder brushes his. As she hooks his pinky with hers for just an instant, and it's . . . more. More intimate. More arousing. More everything than the shock of her hand sliding down and down, dropping the bottom out of his world in that elevator.
"Still the plan, Castle." Her voice is low enough that there's no way he should catch the words. No way in this roaring, too-crowded world he should be able to hear them trailing behind her as her mouth comes close to his ear in passing, but it's all he hears. The only thing. "Definitely still the plan."
They're drawn together. She sets a pace, and distance opens up between them and the precinct. She leads the way and they're pulled closer and closer in a tight, eccentric orbit. The usual inclination of her head becomes the tug of her fingers on his; the typical lift of her chin in one direction or the other turns into a hand at his back or an arm around his waist that's in no particular hurry to fall away. And then, like nothing ever before, she presses up into him-a swift, sudden kiss and this way murmured against his lips as they wait out a turn arrow.
He'd call it boldness, and it is. A wicked flash behind her eyes and something very definitely proprietary in the way she crowds against him when they're threading their way through another stream of head-down commuters whose trajectory is at right angles to their own.
It's boldness, but inevitability, too. Irresistible force drawing him to her and her to him, and he loves it. Her easy confidence and the challenge that sparks between them. The way she goes weak against him when he reaches across her body to catch one hand, then, the other, dancing her out of the way of a rolling suitcase poised to topple as it smacks into an uneven bit of pavement.
He kisses her then. Turnabout and more. Lingering. Not swift at all, and it's more than either of them bargained for. Her breath comes ragged and his tangles with it. They stumble back out of the flow of foot traffic and into the shadow of a half-falling-down awning. He presses blindly forward, absorbing the shock as her shoulders meet the plywood of a boarded-up window and her mouth tips up to his again.
"Are you sure . . ." The words are lost. His train of thought. Everything is lost in the taste of her. The feel of her fingers slipping beneath his jacket like they're bound and determined to commit the lines of his body to memory.
"Sure?" It's an idle, teasing question. She's laughing at him. At herself and the way they're barely propping each other up. The way they must look like a pair of tipsy high schoolers. "I'm sure," she says to the nothing-in-particular he's managed. Still teasing and not, but he grabs on to the word. He hauls himself taller, knuckles scraping the surface behind her.
"Are you sure . . ." He looms over her. Finds a scrap of control somewhere. " . . . we can't get a cab right . . . " He coasts a palm over the outline of her body, fingers grazing her breast and landing in a biting curl at her hip ". . . right the hell now?"
He bends her back. An expert series of kisses that he knows already are just the thing to undo her. Just the thing to get his way.
"Now. Yeah."
She's barely had time to breathe the two syllables before he has her by the wrist. He ducks them under the sharp, sagging spoke of the awning and tries to get his bearings. He squints against the glare blinding him to half the street sign and almost misses the uncertain tug on his arm. The nearly soundless No.
He circles back around, holding on and reeling her in. Prepared to beg. More than prepared to play dirty, but her eyes are closed and her face is tipped up to the sinking sun. She breathes in deep and her tongue peeks out like she's tasting the air. She stands tall and he can see that it hurts. To straighten her shoulders and fill her lungs.
He sees the toll it takes and remembers how much they've been through in so few hours. How much she's been through and his part in all of it, not just the last endless string of hours.
"Just a little while?" She opens her eyes and steps into his body. She taps their tangled fists against his hips. One, then the other in a playful gesture that comes with an upturned smile. "I feel like . . ." She looks around, wide-eyed, as if the whole world surprises her. "I feel like I've been locked up so long. I just . . . I just want to be . . ."
"Out," he finishes, kissing her and tugging her along at the same time. Any which way. "Let's be out."
He knows where they're going long before the last turn. Long before she makes a dash across the middle of the street and her fingers catch the wrought-iron fence.
"The swings." He's laughing. He knew. He's known for blocks and blocks that this was the only possible destination, but he still can't believe it until she's standing there in the entrance with her arms spread wide.
"Our swings," she says. It's defiant, but her face falls. Her shoulders droop and she kicks at the still-damp mud clinging to the edge of the paved path.
She's embarrassed. He's managed to embarrass her, and he'd like a cab to throw himself in front of now.
He's just surprised. It's such a sentimental gesture. So much more him than her.
Except it's not, he realizes. His mind treats him to a sudden replay of the journey here. His heart shows him every sly and half-hidden smile she's given him. Every tug, this way and that, with her growing bolder and more ebullient by the minute.
He realizes he has no idea what Kate Beckett might be like in love. That it's a bad habit, thinking him as this and her as that. A bad habit he star how ts breaking, here and now.
"Our swings." He folds his arms around her, standing fast as she fights him a little. "Ours," he says again, pressing his lips to her hair.
They sit side-by-side. Eventually, they do. She hip checks him and points imperiously when he starts to sink down in the wrong swing-her swing, apparently-and he's careful this time not to laugh, even when she flashes him that smug, pressed-lip smile.
She points herself the opposite way from him, her legs kicking out and tucking under body. Pumping hard to take her higher, and he doesn't like it at first. The way she disappears until he leans far back to see her, hair flying and teeth set in a fierce grin set the height of her arc.
He wonders how it doesn't hurt-how every tight coil of muscle and long, straight line isn't agony. Then realizes it does. It is. He sees the white-and-red-and-white-again clench of her knuckles around the chains. He hears the way she breathes out hard. Right into and through the stretch and pull she feels the most.
He wants to stop her. He wants to gather her up and take her home. Away. He wants to care for her and keep her safe. He wants to put right impossible things. The things that make her her. the woman he knows he'll love until he closes his eyes on the world for the last time. He wants, even now, to save her, and he doubts. For the first time since she crashed into him, bruised and dialing and contrite, he doubts.
She knows. Her feet skim the ground. Sudden friction that's kind of a mess with everything still soaked. She reaches out, her swing twisting side to side as the chain of his-the weight of his body-slows then stops it altogether.
"I came here. Before I came to you," she says quietly. She looks to the sky, craning to find what's left of the sun. "I was afraid."
"I never meant . . ." He feels the bottom dropping out of the world again. Wholly unpleasant this time. "When you told me. How you'd wake up and wonder how you were still alive . . ." He makes himself meet her eyes. "I never meant for you to be afraid like that. It never occurred . . ." It's too much. His gaze drops to the ground. The deep furrows her heels have carved just now into muddy earth. Searching. "Fearless. I'm so used to thinking of you as fearless."
"Flattering."
She gives him a wan smile. Goes easier on him than he deserves, but it's not flattering. Another bad habit. He opens his mouth to say so, but she's going on. Halting. studying her own fingers as they work their way high on the chain, then slide back down to his own.
"Me too." She frowns at herself. "You." She kicks at the ground again, frustrated as she hauls in a breath. "I'm used to you . . . throwing yourself headlong into everything. Being too stupid to be afraid." She dips her mouth to his knuckles and presses a smile there. Softening. Joking and not happy with herself for it. She shakes it off. "Not what I meant, though."
She looks up at him. Waits for the tilt of his head that says he's listening, and there's comfort in it. The familiar call and response between them.
"This." She slides her hand from the chain down his arm-slowly, slowly-till her palm curves at his cheek. "I was afraid of this."
"Not . . . anymore?" His breath stutters as her fingers find the pulse banging and fluttering low in his throat.
She laughs. A bright peal that sets off a chain-reaction smile, all around the playground. Mothers and fathers bent over strollers. Sullen teenagers passing whatever back and forth. It tugs at every one of them. It tugs at him, and he hauls her closer. He leans his forehead against hers.
"Anymore. Still," she says softly. "Probably always." She looks up through her lashes. "Aren't you?"
He nods, too full of words to find one to start with, but it's enough. The slightest movement with her close like this is enough between them, and that's nothing new.
"Not now, though."
She closes her eyes and breathes deep. She draws in the scent of earth, dark and green after the storm. The scent of him, winding around her. She breathes it in, and he tastes it all, like they're sharing a kiss, and then they are. They are, and there's no room for fear.
"Not right now."
A/N: Just something trying to get myself unstuck. Thanks for reading.