Hiraeth, Ch. 3-a Season 5 Caskett 4 Shot.
TItle: Hiraeth, Ch. 3
Rating: T
Summary: "She can't sleep. It's his fault. Entirely his fault, even though she's eaten more tonight than she has in months. That and actual black coffee with the macarons might seem the more likely culprits, but it's absolutely his fault. She wants to call and tell him it is. She wants to yell at him a little for the mess he's made of her in just a few short weeks. For how essential the warmth and weight and white noise of him at her back has become so quickly."
A/N: Third chapter of this 4-shot. Set early season 5 in the "Cloudy With a Chance of Murder" (5 x 02) time frame.
She can't sleep. It's his fault. Entirely his fault, even though she's eaten more tonight than she has in months. That and actual black coffee with the macarons might seem the more likely culprits, but it's still absolutely, 100% his fault.
She wants to call and tell him that it is. She wants to yell at him a little for the mess he's made of her in just a few short weeks. For how essential the warmth and weight and white noise of him at her back has become so quickly, when she's never particularly welcomed another body in her bed before.
But the trade off for the satisfaction of yelling is confession. Is how insufferably smug he'll be about it. And how innocently, sweetly charmed, and that's almost worse. That's definitely worse, she thinks rolling on to her back for the fifteenth time in as many minutes.
And it's not quite entirely his fault. Except it is. Because she'd never have been thinking about the old neighborhood if not for him, and it's more than just one innocent assumption. More than just an offhand joke about boy bands and her teenage room.
She thinks back to a year ago. Trying to explain herself to him. Trying to explain herself to herself, and calling it a wall inside seemed like the right metaphor. But more and more-especially these past few weeks when everything, inside and out, seems to be changing so quickly-she thinks of it as doors. Hundreds of them inside her, and she's long since lost count of how many she's slammed behind her, without regret or a single look back.
And she stands by a lot of them. Most of them, maybe. She's never been particularly nostalgic. She's always been quick enough to see the end of things-practical enough-that she's prone to leave people's heads spinning at how quickly and quietly the end comes for her. Friends. Lovers. Relationships of all kinds that had run their course. She's walked away immediately, without malice. Without any particular fond remembrance or after-the-fact, rose-colored glasses either.
But some she's come to see differently. Some, she's come to revisit with her heart pounding and her fingers shaking as she reaches out, because there's something dear behind it. Something vital and precious that she could still love now, if only . . .
If only. That kind of thinking is pure him. His influence. His infuriating need to know why, but more than that, too. His . . . ambition for her. The fact that he wants so much more for her than she's let herself want in thirteen years.
It's him that won't let her sleep and it isn't. It's a second floor For Rent sign she'd never have seen if not for him.
It's nearly one when she gives in. Half gives in. She's already slipped into her workout clothes and scraped her hair up into a pony tail. If it comes up, there's some half-assed plan in the back of her mind about telling her dad she couldn't sleep so she's going for a run. As if that will work.
She hadn't planned to call him. Castle. She hadn't really planned any of this since she slid into that parking space outside the bakery, but with her running shoes in one hand and her phone in the other, she's suddenly sending him the address. She's suddenly, silently easing the front door open and tiptoeing down to the landing below in her stocking feet.
Her phone's lit up already by the time she makes it. A single question mark that makes her unreasonably irritable as her fingers fly over the screen.
Coming or not?
She stuffs one foot, then the other into her shoes, a little less careful as she makes her way down the next two flights and out into the tiny, gated yard in front of her dad's building.
That's what she said!
"That doesn't even make sense," she mutters to herself two seconds before he texts exactly the same thing.
She lifts the latch to the hip-high gate carefully, cringing as it inevitably squeals. Shaking her head at herself as the sound is inevitably lost in the long blare of horns a block or two away. She looks down just as the phone flares again.
On my way.
She's thoroughly cased the place by the time he strolls up, way sooner than should really be possible, even at this time of night. He's trying hard not to pant, but the look she gives him says she knows that he hasn't been strolling for long. That he probably ran from the subway or wherever the cab dropped him.
"Hey." He strides right up, and the look he gives her says he doesn't care if she knows. He kisses her like it's been a hundred years and he has to learn her all over again, but curiosity gets the better of him. "What's this?"
He squints up at the building, and she thinks again how stupid this is. How reckless given that she's hardly even off suspension. But the bright red of the For Rent sign burns the inside of her eyelids, and she wants this. She wants to tug him through this door with her.
Window.
Whatever.
"Come on," she says, pulling him along.
He follows, of course. Where she'd be the one dig her heels in-stand her ground until he'd given her every last detail, three times over-he follows, his face alight, and she wants it even more.
They slip through a break in the hedge dividing one yard from the next. He rustles like mad going through, muttering curses as the branches catch at his jacket. His pants. She glares back at him. It's not particularly fair. The gap isn't as wide or well-used as it once was. It's hardly even sized for her now, but she wants this. She wants it to be exactly like it always was, but it's been thirteen years. Thirteen, and still she feels a pang when she stands on the spot where the upturned wheelbarrow ought to be.
"Beckett?"
It's more vibration right at her ear than it is sound. He's at her back, ready as ever to follow her lead. It calms her. It makes the moment-this new moment sloshing around with everything old-just right.
"Boost me," she mouths, turning to him and pushing down on his shoulder.
He looks from her to the side of the building, putting it together. Following the most likely route to the most likely destination and his eyes light up, a flash of fear that puts a delicious edge on the eagerness. He drops to one knee and laces his fingers together, rising up at just the right time for her to catch the first metal L jutting from the side of the building and brace her foot against the stone.
Muscle memory takes over. She jukes to the left and swings herself, letting the momentum carry her high enough to grab the next handhold and the next, and then she's in a crouch on top of the eave. She wonders, like she has every single time before, why they're even there-the irregular, de facto rungs. She has no idea what they're for, and she wants to tell him that. She wants to hear his wild theories about what they might have been fifty years ago. A hundred.
But he's down on the ground. He's down on the ground, and the first of them is too high. There's no one to boost him. She hadn't thought it through. When she saw the wheelbarrow was missing, her mind had made the leap to him and gone no further and she's crushed. She wants this.
Her face falls. He's staring up at her, perplexed. Waiting to see what's next, but he knows then. He knows in that instant. Not just how important this insane plan is to her, but how to pull it off. He raises one finger. An absolutely determined hold on gesture before he moves out of sight.
She hears the drag of something. Faint, but it makes her freeze in place. Every noise is deafening from her vulnerable position, every movement cause for alarm, but he's back and some of the tension bleeds out of her. He's dragging something heavy looking. One of those decorative things for hiding coiled up hoses, and it might just be tall enough.
He braces on hand against the building and makes his unsteady way on top of the thing. The handhold is a reach, but he has it. He has his foot planted and he's moving. Climbing steadily, if not particularly gracefully, but his arm span is just that much greater than hers that he doesn't need to do quite as much acrobatic work. He's nearing the end, about to reach a shaking foot toward the overhang when she has a sudden, dizzying vision of of the thing collapsing under their combined weight. She's never made the climb with anyone else before.
"Castle," she hisses. "Hold up."
The frazzled, you have got to be kidding me look he gives her makes her want to giggle. Or maybe it's the sheer stupidity of this. Maybe it's the fact that any second this could take a turn and go really, really badly for them.
"One second," she mouths, quieter now. Gulping down air and fighting hard against the laughter trying to erupt. She turns to the window, flicking open her knife with a practice gesture and praying to whatever god or goddess of stupid teenagers and suddenly nostalgic thirty-somethings might be listening that in their enthusiasm for cosmetic upgrades to the building, they haven't replaced the childishly simple sash locks.
Luck is with her. She hardly has to think and the curved brass tongue is turning. She's soundlessly pushing the window up and slipping through. She finds the floor with the toe of one shoe, then the other. She leans back through the window, craning around the frame.
"Now, Castle!" She holds her hand out to him. "Quick!"
A/N: Just one more slightly longer chapter after this. Thanks for reading. I'm sorry for fomenting a global craving for macarons. I still want macarons.
Rating: T
Summary: "She can't sleep. It's his fault. Entirely his fault, even though she's eaten more tonight than she has in months. That and actual black coffee with the macarons might seem the more likely culprits, but it's absolutely his fault. She wants to call and tell him it is. She wants to yell at him a little for the mess he's made of her in just a few short weeks. For how essential the warmth and weight and white noise of him at her back has become so quickly."
A/N: Third chapter of this 4-shot. Set early season 5 in the "Cloudy With a Chance of Murder" (5 x 02) time frame.
She can't sleep. It's his fault. Entirely his fault, even though she's eaten more tonight than she has in months. That and actual black coffee with the macarons might seem the more likely culprits, but it's still absolutely, 100% his fault.
She wants to call and tell him that it is. She wants to yell at him a little for the mess he's made of her in just a few short weeks. For how essential the warmth and weight and white noise of him at her back has become so quickly, when she's never particularly welcomed another body in her bed before.
But the trade off for the satisfaction of yelling is confession. Is how insufferably smug he'll be about it. And how innocently, sweetly charmed, and that's almost worse. That's definitely worse, she thinks rolling on to her back for the fifteenth time in as many minutes.
And it's not quite entirely his fault. Except it is. Because she'd never have been thinking about the old neighborhood if not for him, and it's more than just one innocent assumption. More than just an offhand joke about boy bands and her teenage room.
She thinks back to a year ago. Trying to explain herself to him. Trying to explain herself to herself, and calling it a wall inside seemed like the right metaphor. But more and more-especially these past few weeks when everything, inside and out, seems to be changing so quickly-she thinks of it as doors. Hundreds of them inside her, and she's long since lost count of how many she's slammed behind her, without regret or a single look back.
And she stands by a lot of them. Most of them, maybe. She's never been particularly nostalgic. She's always been quick enough to see the end of things-practical enough-that she's prone to leave people's heads spinning at how quickly and quietly the end comes for her. Friends. Lovers. Relationships of all kinds that had run their course. She's walked away immediately, without malice. Without any particular fond remembrance or after-the-fact, rose-colored glasses either.
But some she's come to see differently. Some, she's come to revisit with her heart pounding and her fingers shaking as she reaches out, because there's something dear behind it. Something vital and precious that she could still love now, if only . . .
If only. That kind of thinking is pure him. His influence. His infuriating need to know why, but more than that, too. His . . . ambition for her. The fact that he wants so much more for her than she's let herself want in thirteen years.
It's him that won't let her sleep and it isn't. It's a second floor For Rent sign she'd never have seen if not for him.
It's nearly one when she gives in. Half gives in. She's already slipped into her workout clothes and scraped her hair up into a pony tail. If it comes up, there's some half-assed plan in the back of her mind about telling her dad she couldn't sleep so she's going for a run. As if that will work.
She hadn't planned to call him. Castle. She hadn't really planned any of this since she slid into that parking space outside the bakery, but with her running shoes in one hand and her phone in the other, she's suddenly sending him the address. She's suddenly, silently easing the front door open and tiptoeing down to the landing below in her stocking feet.
Her phone's lit up already by the time she makes it. A single question mark that makes her unreasonably irritable as her fingers fly over the screen.
Coming or not?
She stuffs one foot, then the other into her shoes, a little less careful as she makes her way down the next two flights and out into the tiny, gated yard in front of her dad's building.
That's what she said!
"That doesn't even make sense," she mutters to herself two seconds before he texts exactly the same thing.
She lifts the latch to the hip-high gate carefully, cringing as it inevitably squeals. Shaking her head at herself as the sound is inevitably lost in the long blare of horns a block or two away. She looks down just as the phone flares again.
On my way.
She's thoroughly cased the place by the time he strolls up, way sooner than should really be possible, even at this time of night. He's trying hard not to pant, but the look she gives him says she knows that he hasn't been strolling for long. That he probably ran from the subway or wherever the cab dropped him.
"Hey." He strides right up, and the look he gives her says he doesn't care if she knows. He kisses her like it's been a hundred years and he has to learn her all over again, but curiosity gets the better of him. "What's this?"
He squints up at the building, and she thinks again how stupid this is. How reckless given that she's hardly even off suspension. But the bright red of the For Rent sign burns the inside of her eyelids, and she wants this. She wants to tug him through this door with her.
Window.
Whatever.
"Come on," she says, pulling him along.
He follows, of course. Where she'd be the one dig her heels in-stand her ground until he'd given her every last detail, three times over-he follows, his face alight, and she wants it even more.
They slip through a break in the hedge dividing one yard from the next. He rustles like mad going through, muttering curses as the branches catch at his jacket. His pants. She glares back at him. It's not particularly fair. The gap isn't as wide or well-used as it once was. It's hardly even sized for her now, but she wants this. She wants it to be exactly like it always was, but it's been thirteen years. Thirteen, and still she feels a pang when she stands on the spot where the upturned wheelbarrow ought to be.
"Beckett?"
It's more vibration right at her ear than it is sound. He's at her back, ready as ever to follow her lead. It calms her. It makes the moment-this new moment sloshing around with everything old-just right.
"Boost me," she mouths, turning to him and pushing down on his shoulder.
He looks from her to the side of the building, putting it together. Following the most likely route to the most likely destination and his eyes light up, a flash of fear that puts a delicious edge on the eagerness. He drops to one knee and laces his fingers together, rising up at just the right time for her to catch the first metal L jutting from the side of the building and brace her foot against the stone.
Muscle memory takes over. She jukes to the left and swings herself, letting the momentum carry her high enough to grab the next handhold and the next, and then she's in a crouch on top of the eave. She wonders, like she has every single time before, why they're even there-the irregular, de facto rungs. She has no idea what they're for, and she wants to tell him that. She wants to hear his wild theories about what they might have been fifty years ago. A hundred.
But he's down on the ground. He's down on the ground, and the first of them is too high. There's no one to boost him. She hadn't thought it through. When she saw the wheelbarrow was missing, her mind had made the leap to him and gone no further and she's crushed. She wants this.
Her face falls. He's staring up at her, perplexed. Waiting to see what's next, but he knows then. He knows in that instant. Not just how important this insane plan is to her, but how to pull it off. He raises one finger. An absolutely determined hold on gesture before he moves out of sight.
She hears the drag of something. Faint, but it makes her freeze in place. Every noise is deafening from her vulnerable position, every movement cause for alarm, but he's back and some of the tension bleeds out of her. He's dragging something heavy looking. One of those decorative things for hiding coiled up hoses, and it might just be tall enough.
He braces on hand against the building and makes his unsteady way on top of the thing. The handhold is a reach, but he has it. He has his foot planted and he's moving. Climbing steadily, if not particularly gracefully, but his arm span is just that much greater than hers that he doesn't need to do quite as much acrobatic work. He's nearing the end, about to reach a shaking foot toward the overhang when she has a sudden, dizzying vision of of the thing collapsing under their combined weight. She's never made the climb with anyone else before.
"Castle," she hisses. "Hold up."
The frazzled, you have got to be kidding me look he gives her makes her want to giggle. Or maybe it's the sheer stupidity of this. Maybe it's the fact that any second this could take a turn and go really, really badly for them.
"One second," she mouths, quieter now. Gulping down air and fighting hard against the laughter trying to erupt. She turns to the window, flicking open her knife with a practice gesture and praying to whatever god or goddess of stupid teenagers and suddenly nostalgic thirty-somethings might be listening that in their enthusiasm for cosmetic upgrades to the building, they haven't replaced the childishly simple sash locks.
Luck is with her. She hardly has to think and the curved brass tongue is turning. She's soundlessly pushing the window up and slipping through. She finds the floor with the toe of one shoe, then the other. She leans back through the window, craning around the frame.
"Now, Castle!" She holds her hand out to him. "Quick!"
A/N: Just one more slightly longer chapter after this. Thanks for reading. I'm sorry for fomenting a global craving for macarons. I still want macarons.