Bodies at Rest, Chapter 3: A short Castle WIP
A/N: Fourth and final chapter coming sooooooon. Thank you for reading and reviewing!
Here's the first chapter if you missed it.
And here's the second
It doesn't feel like work. It is work. It's changing course and being mindful and resisting patterns old enough to feel like instinct. But it doesn't feel like work and she had expected it to.
She'd been bracing for it. Paralyzed and frustrated and bracing for it. Angry enough to go to Burke. To pace the perimeter of his ugly office rug with her elbows pulled in against her sides and one hand fluttering over her scar. Angry with herself because she expected it to be work and she didn't know if she could do it.
So she'd gone to Burke and he'd been maddening and inscrutable and vaguely amused. But she'd gone to him and asked for help. Told him that she had screwed everything up. That she'd been screwing everything up all these months and hadn't even realized it.
Burke had smiled and reflected her questions back at her and she'd wondered what the hell else she had expected. How she could have possibly forgotten that this was part of it. The work. The exhaustion of sorting through all this on top of fighting and fighting and fighting herself all the time. The exhaustion of his pen moving across the page at the oddest moments and that horrible rug.
But she had asked for help and Burke had listened. He'd shaken his head and told her that, no, he didn't think she needed to see him any more often. And when she'd asked what the hell, in his opinion, she did need-when she'd tamped down the urge to drop a match on that ugly fucking rug and walk out with flames rising behind her-she had asked, and he'd given her nothing more than two quiet words and the promise that he'd see her next month.
Two words: Let yourself.
And she had.
Just . . . not right away.
Right away she'd called him. She'd called Castle and backed out of their evening. Nothing major. Dinner and most likely him talking her into staying the night and he'd been fine about it. He'd whined a little, mostly for effect, though. Mostly. And he'd been disappointed, but he was careful not to show it too much. And he hadn't been surprised. He hadn't been surprised at all, and that's it. That's exactly it.
Right away, she'd gone home and held the middle of her living room floor down with her heavy head and exhausted limbs and stared. For hours, she'd stared at the ceiling. Dry eyed and hopeless and bracing the work she wasn't sure she could do.
And then there was the itch. A literal itch. Metaphorical, too. Always that, though it would never have moved her. It probably wouldn't have. At work maybe. At work, she might have . . . well. She might have and that's when she'd realized. That's when it had occurred to her that it was part of the problem. Part of the reason why he wonders.
Am I your type, Beckett?
But the literal itch had her twisting and urgent and overwhelmed. The one in the middle of her back that she'd never been able to reach. The one that made everything pull and hurt whenever she would try to get at it-her scar and her ribs and piece of herself she'd had to put back together. And suddenly, the itch had her moving.
She hadn't even cared that it was almost 2 AM. She hadn't even realized it was almost 2 AM until it took her forever to find a cab and then no time at all to end up at the loft. No traffic and no time at all before she was climbing the stairs. Before her key was in the door and there he was, huddled and blank faced in the office doorway.
And then she had cared. Then she had worried. About the fact that he'd been awake. There was no question about that. Because his face was grey in the dim light and he hadn't been sleeping or working or doing much of anything other that maybe worrying.
Wondering.
Am I your type, Kate?
Then she had cared and she'd closed the distance between them and pulled his mouth down to hers. Then she'd turned away and stretched her arms overhead and leaned herself against the bookshelf. Then she'd said Itch! crossly and he had laughed and twitched the hem of her sweater up without a moment's hesitation.
Then his hands had been on her. The exact spot. The perfect combination of flat nails and fingertips and fantastic pressure. Then he'd crowded against her and whispered- open mouthed against her neck-he'd whispered that he was glad to know she needed him for something.
She'd gone still then. Still and tipping on the edge of the next moment.
And then she'd let herself.
She'd turned in his arms and lifted her face up to his and showed him. She'd fixed it so he couldn't help seeing and she couldn't help letting him.
"Lots of things," she'd said. Low and quiet and the metaphorical itch underneath, but more than that. More than just that. "Need you for lots of things."
She thinks a lot about the metaphorical itch and the things she realized lying on her living room floor. She thinks a lot about it, but it's a while before she does anything with it.
The realization. The epiphany, he'd say, if it were the kind of thing they talk about. And she'd roll her eyes and secretly love the sound of it. An epiphany, he'd say, because he loves to write her. On and off the page, he loves to write the world around her and her moving through it. The two of them moving through it.
She thinks a lot about the metaphorical itch and her epiphany (because fine it's an epiphany, isn't it?), but it takes her a while to do anything with it. She thinks it's one thing when it's just the two of them. Letting herself is something she can do when they're at home.
She's just telling herself she can do that. That she has been doing that when all of a sudden she thinks about the H word. She thinks about the fact that home is wherever the two of them are together. Her place or his or traveling. Because they travel. They plan ski trips and pick up and go for a quick weekend and wherever they are, that's home.
The thought almost sends her scurrying back to Burke for a few more laps around his ugly rug, but she takes his advice. She lets herself. She lets herself think of it that way. She lets herself like the notion. She lets herself think it's a good thing to have a home and to have it be him.
It's another burden gone. She's lighter for it, and it's another excuse she doesn't have for not thinking about the rest of it. About what it might mean to let herself when they're not at home. About the metaphorical itch.
It's always there. The metaphorical itch is always there, but it's worst at work. Because no one can know and she hates that.
And she loves it.
She loves the way it ups the ante and it has to be hard and fast and quiet and no one can know. And it's good. It's so good and she's not alone in that. It's not like he's unwilling. It's not like he doesn't love it, too. The thrill of getting away with something is a definite turn on for Richard Castle.
He scouts locations and ambushes her and makes it his mission in life to bring as close to screaming as possible at every opportunity. At everything that looks like an opportunity if you squint at it. He leaves her clues and maps and meets her furious whispers with hard kisses and no wasted time at all. He loves that no one can know.
But he hates it, too.
He hates it because, really, he wants everyone to know. He wants to shout it from the rooftops and hold her hand on the street and take her places without having to worry who might see them.
He hates it because he loves with his whole self and it's work for him to hide that. It's hard work for him. He's tired at the end of the day and his eyes are dull with the effort. And even though they never really talk about it, she can see that he hates it.
She hates it, too, but not the same way.
She hates that it's anyone's business but hers. But theirs.
It's convenient. That's the heart of the epiphany. Staring up at the ceiling with the literal itch driving her mad, she'd realized that it's convenient for her that no one else can know.
Because it's hard enough. That's what she tells herself when there's a real possibility that their cover is blown and she snaps at him and freezes him out. When she lets him take the blame, whoever's fault it is or might be. Whether there's any blame or not. When she's choked with panic about it, she tells herself it's hard enough with everyone who already knows.
Her father. His family. All their expectations, good and bad and indifferent. The looks they all give both of them. Hopeful and warning and so full of expectations.
It's hard enough with the boys and Lanie and fucking Paula and Gina because he insisted they needed to know to head things off at the pass. All of that's hard enough and she bristles and snaps at him when anyone else is around. She freezes him out and sends him away so no one will . . . What? No one will what? So no one will think that she like likes him?
She says it out loud to herself. Just like that. She says it and wonders what the hell is wrong with her. She wonders what he can possibly see in her, given that she has the emotional maturity of a sixth grader.
She wonders about him and she knows why he wonders. That's not a mystery at all anymore when she says it out loud like that.
Am I your type, Kate?
Her head aches with it and she's actually dialing Burke's number. She's steeling herself for the rug and the notepad and going in circles in more ways than one when she realizes it's just more of the same, isn't it?
She thinks about the metaphorical itch and sees it for what it's not. What it's not only.
It's not just about the thrill. The possibility of discovery and upping the ante. It's not just about furious curses in her ear and the flat of his hand between her teeth because he's so fucking good at hard and fast and a little angry and she's not good at quiet. Sometimes she's not good at that at all.
But it's more than just that. She wants him. She wants him.
She misses him when he doesn't come in. She misses him when he does and she makes this production of picking on him. Keeping him at arm's length. She misses the meandering conversations that they pick up and put down throughout the day and the way he narrates her life and makes her laugh just when she's turning in on herself. When she's going dark inside and he teases and tugs and braves it all to pull her back out into the light.
She misses him sweeping her hair back when it falls like a curtain between them and she hides behind it. She misses the sharp smile he gets when she lays a four-dollar word on the table and the soft one for when she pays him a compliment.
She misses him when they're not at home and she doesn't need to. It's more of the same, so she does it.
She lets herself.
It's not actually doing anything new. Not really. It's not not doing things. It's letting herself, and she hates that Burke nailed it. She hates it even though she should be used to it by now.
It's still work. It's effort in its own way. Conscious effort to let herself smile and touch and laugh. To turn toward and not away. To open her mouth and let the truth spill out.
Remembering to do all that is work, and she keeps waiting for the exhaustion. For tears thickening in her throat at the end of a long day of working at it and working at it. She waits for heavy limbs and knots all along her spine and circles under her eyes.
She waits for it to be like it was last year. So much work. So much hard work. But that's not how it is now. It's the opposite.
She feels lighter. Easier. She wonders what the difference is. She spends a lot of time wondering.
She's sleeping better, and that's part of it. She sleeps. It's incredible. Long, warm, dreamless hours stretched out next to him or twined around him in a welcome tangle of limbs.
She sleeps and when she does dream-when there are nightmares-she reaches for him. She lets herself reach for him and he comes up out of sleep. Just barely out of sleep, but right away every time, and he murmurs to her-I'm here. I'm here, Kate-and he settles the covers back over the two of them and it's incredible. The sheets drifting to rest on her skin and the weight of his hand on her hip or her ribcage or her shoulder. It's like magic.
It's not just at home, either.
She smiles at work and it's so much easier than hiding it. It's so much easier that she has to be a different kind of careful, because he brings her coffee and mumbles in his chair. He thinks out loud and her smile almost turns into a laugh right then and there when he sees her smiling and he stops cold.
He blinks at her and he's so adorable when he's confused. It almost turns into a laugh and then it almost turns into something else and then it does turn into something else. She lets it turn into something else because why not?
He makes himself scarce and she wonders why. She wonders and she follows him and that makes him blink, too. She smiles and she laughs and she lets it turn into something else at the shadowy end of that hallway no one ever uses. It turns into so many long, slow kisses that she loses count, and when she has to go-and then when she really has to go another half dozen kisses later-he's dazed.
He blinks at her and she can't resist. She doesn't resist. She lets herself tell him that was just what she needed. And they go their separate ways to head back to the bull pen, but she has to grab him by the elbow so he doesn't walk into a wall.
She keeps smiling the next day and the next.
She stops waiting for it to feel like work, but she doesn't stop wondering what's different.
She keeps following him and stealing moments here and there. She lets him follow her and keep her company. In the mornings she tells him to hurry so he can ride with her and when they get there he just looks both ways and slips from the car and tells her he'll see her soon.
Soon is a moving target. Sometimes it's ten minutes, sometimes half an hour. Once in a while it's long enough that she's staring at the elevator every ten seconds and she's not sure that falls under the heading of letting herself.
It's a paperwork day when she figures it out. Why she's not exhausted with this. Why it's work but it doesn't feel like it.
It's a paperwork day and he's making himself useful. Really. He is. Oh, he knocks things over and rearranges her in and out trays and swears he read somewhere that it's more efficient. He's annoying, but he's useful, too. He comes and goes. He keeps her coffee warm and refills her paperclips. He makes a note that they should have an organization consultant look at the supply closet, because its' a wreck.
They bicker about the trays and where the elephants go and that turns into something like trouble. She's giving him her hard stare across the desk and he doesn't flinch. She tells him that she's going to staple his fingers to the desk if he doesn't step away from the elephants. He leans in and his eyebrow twitches up and she's just thinking that letting herself also means letting hard and fast and a little angry happen every once in a while.
She's just making a pretty compelling internal argument for every once in a while when he straightens up. He straightens up and turns away. He kills the moment-absolutely kills it-and he goes. He's making small talk with LT and some other uniforms by the elevator. He gets on the elevator. Heactually gets on the elevator and gives her a distracted wave as the doors close.
Her mouth snaps shut because she can't just stand there with it hanging open. She drops into her chair because she can't seem to stand anymore at all.
She's about to go after him. Just as soon as she can get her feet under her again, she's about to charge down the stairs and go after him and ask what the hell he's playing at.
But her phone buzzes and the hair on the back of her neck pricks up two seconds before the Captain's voice rings out across the bullpen. It has that particular note of menace that means she's out for blood.
Beckett is equal parts grateful it doesn't seem to be her blood right this minute and sympathetic to Reston who makes a determined effort not to drag his feet as he passes by. The Captain's door slams and something about it jars everything in her mind. The pieces tumble together and she figures it out.
It's work, but it doesn't feel like it because they're doing it together.
She thumbs her phone on and the text lights up.
Gates. Prying eyes. Making myself scarce. Try not to miss me too much.
She grins, though he's the only one who'd know it for what it is.
She grins and goes after him.
It's not ideal. It's not where she wants to do this, because this isn't what she wants to do at all, but he's through the lobby and out the door. He's on the street.
She goes after him. She crosses the lobby in long strides. She can't have what she wants-not right now-but she won't settle for nothing. She pushes through the door and blinks in the sunlight.
"Castle!" She raises her voice. She'd rather not, because who knows who's milling around. It's the precinct's damned doorstep and she doesn't care. She really doesn't give a damn who's milling around, but she doesn't want to undo his work.
Work. She grins again and it's something pretty much anyone would recognize.
He turns and he certainly recognizes it. He blinks. "Ka . . . Beckett?"
She closes the distance and tugs on his sleeve. There's not much in the way of cover out on the street here. Nothing really, but she pulls him out of the flow of traffic and into a shadow. There's a shadow at least and she steps into him, just for a second, and meets his eyes.
He blinks. "Did you not . . . did you get my text?"
She nods. She wants to say something, but there's too much. She grins.
"Kate." Her name rushes out of him along with what she's guessing is all the air in his lungs. "Don't."
"Don't what?" She's still grinning.
His hand snakes out and he grabs her wrist. Lightning fast, he brings her palm to his lips and drops it again. "Don't look at me like that in broad daylight when I have to go."
His voice is so low she feels it in her belly. She's not grinning anymore, but judging from the look he's giving her, it's not an improvement from his point of view.
"I have to go, don't I?" He's closer now and she's not sure how. She's been watching him and he hasn't moved, but he's closer.
"You should go," she says, but neither of them is moving.
A horn blares and a driver curses and it breaks the spell.
He shakes himself and smiles down at her for a second and then he's going. He turns and he's going, but she stops him again.
"I will, though," she says suddenly. Her voice is shaky and she's blushing.
"Will?" He turns back, but only a little. Like he's wary. Like she might grin at him again. She might.
"Miss you too much." She does.
But he's grinning now, too, and she knows what he means about not looking like that when he has to go. But he does. He has to go. She has to go, too.
"Maybe I'll make it up to you," he says and he stumbles back like he's hoping for minimum safe distance.
She laughs, because there's no such thing. He laughs, too, because he knows what she's thinking. He laughs and stumbles on.
"Maybe," she calls after him. "Maybe I'll let you."