Blame & Gravity-A Castle four-shot set shortly after After the Storm (5 x 01).
Title: Blame and Gravity, Ch. 2
Rating: T
WC: ~1500, this chapter; 3500 total, so far
Summary: "It's not much. No explanation. A promise she'll be back and between the lines the fact that she didn't want him to wonder." A three-shot, set very shortly after the events of After the Storm.
A/N: Um. Hello. If you have never read one of my stories before, I would like to say that my promising a two-shot and changing it to a three-shot is an aberration, but that would be a lie. Castle is such a CHATTY, ruggedly handsome fiend that stories from his POV inevitably grow along the way.
Will try very hard to have the last of this up no later than tomorrow. It's almost finished, but I think this is a natural break. Thank you very much for the kind reviews on Chapter 1.
He climbs in beside her. He won't say no to her. Kate Beckett asking him back to bed in the middle of the day? He'll never say no.
But he's worried about how this will work. He's worried that it can't. She's a light sleeper. Watchful and restless and always skimming the surface. And he's not tired. Not at all, and stillness isn't exactly his strong suit. He'd hopes she can rest at least, so he worries.
She drops off right away, though. Almost as soon as the sheets settle on her skin, sleep takes her, heavy and deep. It's new. New to him, but it's only been a few days after all. The sight of her beside him-here-seems so right. It has the familiarity of the thousand times he's imagined it. Not just having her, but having her here. He has to remind himself that it's only been a few days.
He doesn't really know what's new and what isn't, so he watches. Smiles to himself about the chance to do it without her scolding. There's no chance of scolding right now. Sleep has her. Rest so profound that he risks a touch. Movement. One palm gliding over her where she's already peeled away the covers from the far side of her body. Shoulder to hip and back again. The rasp of fabric on skin making music with her breath.
He'll wait a while. That's what he thinks to himself. He's not tired. Not at all, but he can wait. When it gets too much and he can't keep still enough, he'll stay nearby. He'll slip into the office to work. Or grab his laptop and set up shop in the chair right here. Maybe. He doesn't want her to wake up alone. He doesn't want her to think he's gone.
He tells himself he'll wait just a little while, but it's hypnotic. Her steady breath and the warm skin beneath her clothes. His clothes. He drifts off. His hand stills at the curve of her waist. Two fingers barely touching skin where the frayed hem of the shirt bunches up.
Even at rest, she tugs him along after her. His eyes slip closed. He follows her into sleep.
It's dark when he wakes. It shouldn't be. Immediately, he knows it shouldn't.
He blinks into the gloom. He blinks up at the ceiling. He wonders about mixed messages and the passage of time on a strange day like this. It's dark, but he knows it hasn't been that long. His hands and feet work. He wiggles fingers and toes and there's none of the clumsiness in them born of a long nap. The tip of his nose hasn't gone cold in the air conditioning, and his mind spools up too quickly.
It can't have been that long. It shouldn't be dark.
He's moving before he remembers not to. That she's so easy to wake and he needs to be careful. He wants her to sleep if she can. She's not ok, and he hopes she can sleep.
He goes still. Listens for her breath and the weight of her at rest in the dark that shouldn't be. He finds both. Breath and deep sleep. Respite from whatever's wrong. For now, anyway.
He finds her and waits a while longer. He makes sure of her and wonders about the dark. Wonders if he got good at stillness somewhere along the way or if that's her, too. If the possibility in him is just something she brings out, like the patience for this that a long, hard year couldn't break in the end. Like so many things about the person he's become since he's known her.
He eases on to his side. Startles back with a bitten off laugh. They're nose to nose. She must have flopped over in her sleep. Turned toward him and reached out to hog the covers. More of the mattress. To snatch the corner of his pillow, too, like hers isn't enough.
He watches her a while longer. Nose to nose. He listens to her breathe and forgets to wonder why it's dark. He forgets to wonder when he learned to be still.
He nods off again. Not for long, but it's surprising. He's not tired, but helpless against it somehow.
It's the dark that shouldn't be, he thinks. And her. The stillness and weight of her. The juxtaposition of strange and familiar. The ways that having her beside him is such a long time coming and nothing like he ever imagined. Both at once.
They're still nose to nose. She's drawn into herself in sleep. Fists of sheet pulled up to her chin and her knees tucked against her body. Guarded, but not quite defensive. Her chin is lifted and her face is tipped in his direction. And when her mouth turns down-when a dream takes her or she rises to the surface and nearly wakes-she leans closer. Seeking, she breathes him in and settles. Like his nearness calms her.
He hopes so.
He hopes it does, but he's nearing the end of this. His unexpected capacity for stillness. He's wondering about the dark again and where she's been. Why she's not ok and what he can do. What she'll tell him and what she might let him do for her.
This is a lot already. For her and them and where they are. For the fact that it's only been a few days. It's a lot that she even answered when he asked. Truthful, even though she hesitated.
Are you ok?
Not really.
It's a lot that she left a note and came back. That she asked for a beer and for clothes and climbed into bed in the middle of the day. That she asked him to come with her. It's a lot and nothing close to what he'd do for her. What he wants to do so she'll be ok again.
Wondering makes him restless. It prickles over him even when his body is still and prickles over her, too. Uneasy fingers of it penetrating the sleep that still weighs her down.
He eases himself from the bed. Bunches the covers against her and presses a fist into his pillow. She stirs. He holds his breath, but it's over in a moment. She gathers more of the blanket and tugs his pillow further under her cheek. She unfurls and takes over more of the mattress.
Manifest destiny, he thinks.
He steps quietly from the bed to the window, too curious about the dark to linger long now that he's up. He eases the slats of the blinds a sliver apart and sees the patter of rain. Silver patterns on the glass, and beyond, clouds and fog as sudden and thick as grief. It's surprising after the morning of the sun pouring in, but that explains it. Why it's dark, even though it hasn't been long.
He turns from the window and there it is. A discovery he owes to the dark. A white corner peeping out from beneath the arm chair. He stoops to retrieve it, a card too small to fill his palm. It's totally unfamiliar to him. Completely.
He remembers the messy heap of her clothes bundled in the chair. It must be hers, whatever it is. It must have slipped from a pocket when he gathered them up.
He turns it front to back and front to back and tries to make sense of it. The white caught his eye, but it's nearly filled with text. Tiny and impossible to read in the dark. He makes out two lines at the top, centered like an epigram. Beneath that, white space and a block of verse of some kind.
The reverse is an image. A dull bronze background. A metallic sheen that catches what little light there is. It's flat. A pointedly two-dimensional single figure. A man, he thinks, but it's hard to see in the dark.
A saint, he realizes. He thinks of stained glass and Ryan's wedding. He traces an arc near the top of the card. A halo. A saint. He understands now. He sees more. His eyes adjust and make better use of the low light, but the pieces fit together, too. A mystery unfolding in the dark. Weighing him down, even with how little he knows.
A saint on one side, a prayer on the other. And the two lines. A name and a date. Dates. Birth and death. He can't read it. He can't make out the small print in the dim light, but he knows what the second date must be. Just a few days ago. Just a few.
"Edward McManus."
Her voice should surprise him. Coming out of the dark like that, it should be startling, but he expects it somehow. He expects to she her hunched against the headboard with her knees drawn up. Just a silhouette, but it seems familiar. How small she looks with the covers pulled around her and pillow drawn tight against her middle.
"Eddie," she says a moment later. Low, but steady, like she's demanding things of herself. Demanding the words. "Doorman at the Rosslyn. Maddox snapped his neck."