Fugit Lux: A Season 7 TARDIS-Verse Story, set during Once Upon A Time in the West (7 x 07)
Title: Fugit Lux
Rating: T
WC: ~2200
Summary: "He sits with his back to the quiet corner and watches as she swings from one pair of hands to another, her skirts flaring out as her heels stamp the floorboards in time with the relentless fiddle. Her cheeks are pink and her smile is wide. The whole room is in love with her, him most of all."
A/N: TARDIS-verse story for the 3rd anniversary of Kill Shot (3 x 09). Set just after Once Upon a Time in the West (7 x 07).
He's about to drop. The room is full and bright and warm and the music is unrelenting. She spins into him and he almost misses. He stumbles and tries to make it look deliberate. He slides his hands over the stiff silk at her waist like he meant to cop a feel.
She knows, though. She's lit up and golden in the lantern light. She arches an eyebrow, because she knows. She takes pity on him, though. She slips an arm around him and ducks them into a corner. She lets her back hit the wall and tips her chin up, laughing as his mouth catches hers hungrily.
"Tired?"
She looks him up and down. He shakes his head. Denies it, but her eyes narrow.
"Saddle sore?"
"Well, I have been ridden hard and put away wet four days running . . ."
He plants a palm on the wall and leans in with an over-the-top leer. She surprises him, though. She looks up at him, a good few inches shorter in her flat, lace-up boots. She looks up, starry- eyed and in love and a little wistful.
"Four days," she says. "Good honeymoon."
She's too good at this. All of it. She rides like she was born to it and hikes tirelessly. She clambers up steep, rocky trails as easily as she navigates the midtown lunch rush.
She wears everything with ease. These complicated things with laces and fasteners. Layers upon layers and resistance where he least expects it. She laughs and tips herself back. She falls away from him, hands moving deftly, and lets him catch her around the waist She tugs and slides and fabric falls in picturesque heaps at her feet.
And there's nothing she can't dance to, apparently. Nothing.
It's for them. A not-quite-the-end-of-the week soirée that the ranch wouldn't usually have, but they're off kilter with everyone else. Four unexpected days and a couple of coaches filled with the next round of guests just rolled in around supper time. They're the only two who'll roll away again in the morning, and the barn dance is for them.
He'll be glad enough to be home. Glad enough to be out of button-fly everything and a bed that's a little too period accurate. The skin is peeling off his nose and he hurts all over. He misses Alexis. His mother and Lanie and the boys.
He'll be glad enough, but he's loved every second of this. He's loved watching her under honest-to-God breathtaking starlight and the cloud of dust she kicks up as she moves. He's loved falling on to the high iron bedstead and bracing his body over hers.
He loves watching her like this, even ready to drop.
He sits with his back to the quiet corner and watches as she swings from one pair of hands to another, her skirts flaring out as her heels stamp the floorboards in time with the relentless fiddle. Her cheeks are pink and her smile is wide. The whole room is in love with her, him most of all.
The band winds higher and higher, then the bottom drops out. The song is over just like that and she's turning in place. She's looking for him and the world lights up when their eyes meet. That perfect, irresistible tug from him to her and back again.
She sets out for his quiet corner. She lifts her skirts and makes it five purposeful steps before the low thump of the washtub bass sounds and another ranch hand has her by the elbow. He spins her in three tight circles. She laughs and lets her arm snap taut. She gestures helplessly his way. She tries to beg off, but the whole room is in love with her, and they're having none of it.
The instruments join in one by one. The caller steps to the mic and she's caught up. She's whisked off, but not without throwing an apologetic kiss over her shoulder. He smiles and catches it, even though she she can't see. She's surrounded. The center of everything.
He's caught up in watching for her. The swirl of emerald and scarlet and the curve of her shoulder with a kiss of color that's not quite sunburn.
He steps out to the porch when his quiet corner gets not-so-quiet. When a bright-pink wave of taffeta crowds into his field of vision and the flash of wedding band is anything but a deterrent. He's polite, then firm, then gone, and he's grateful that the desert is all cool blues tonight.
He leans a hip against the railing and winces. A hard square outline, awkward in the slim pockets of the high-waisted pants, presses into one of a hundred sore spots. One of a hundred tender bruises that map exactly to her fingers. He smiles at the thought and fishes absently for the offending item.
His phone.
He stares down and the dark face of it is strange. Unfamiliar. He'd switched it off with great ceremony the minute she'd told him they could stay. He's flipped it on a couple of times. When she was napping. When she insisted that she did not, in fact, need any help at all bathing in that tin tub. Before she gave in on that particular point and admitted with a purr that he was essential.
He's flipped it on to make sure the city hasn't burned down without her. He's zipped off a handful of pictures to Alexis and his mother. Ridiculous poses and the two of them crowding into the frame in front of things they'd probably ooh and aaah over if they had eyes for anything but one another.
He hasn't missed it. Doesn't want to flip it back on now, though there's something unmistakably winding down about the moment, even though the music is still going strong. He doesn't want to, but there's something about the moon or the alignment of the stars.
She'd say it's nothing more than the rhythm of the place. That he's come to know it and a door slamming or the call of two hands in passing tells him the time.
That's what Kate would say, he thinks with a smile as he brings his thumb down on the button. As the phone spools up and their faces fill the screen, the sun over the sea burning through the clouds behind them.
He smiles when the clock ticks over to midnight. The date flips over and the smile fades.
November 21, 2014.
She knows he's gone. She doesn't see him leave, but it's like the light dims and all the sweetness rushes out of the air. Like the tug of his smile is gone.
It's the middle of a song, and she stumbles for the first time. Her eyes drop, and she's tired all of a sudden. Good and warm and weary, mostly, but she's tired and she wants him.
The ranch hand she's dancing with tries to reclaim her attention. She works on a polite, apologetic smile, then realizes he's not a hand at all. He's one of the guests. The guy who spilled out of the coach looking green around the gills, and she sees for the first time that the whole thing doesn't hang easy on him. His steps are mincing like the boots hurt and he keeps hitching at his pants like they don't quite fit right.
She's sorry for him in an off-handed way. She wonders who dragged him here and why, but it's not even half her mind on the question. Everything about him calls up the contrast to Castle. She thinks of the brim of his hat tipping low over one eye and the heat of his body under rough fabric and tantalizing buttons. She wants him.
She raises her voice over the music, trying to explain she has to go. The man shakes his head and leans in, a little too closely. She holds up her left hand and mimes looking for someone, raising up on her toes and peering out. She mouths the word husband. It teases the corners of her mouth high in a grin. It's ridiculous. She knows it must be, but she doesn't care.
She cares even less when the expression on her dance partner's face turns sour. She executes a perfect curtsey and pushes past him.
She's kinder to the hands. She flutters her eyelashes and sashays past them as they clutch their hands to their hearts like they're mortally wounded. She plays it up and makes a show of it, but she hurries.
She hurries. She wants him.
The cool air and the creak of the swinging doors call to her. The wind fans over her skin. A wave of relief before she's even over the threshold.
She sees the silhouette of him at the end of the porch. His head bowed and one fist planted on the railing. Her breath catches at the sight. The broad sweep of his shoulders and the hat tipped low. His profile, dark against a bonfire in the distance.
Something stops her from calling out. Something makes her watch a moment.
He sets something on the rough wood in front of him. He pushes it away and she sees his chest rise and fall in a sigh. He turns to lean a shoulder against the post rising up beside him. It's enough to let her see the last flare of light-an oblong that's strange at first-before it fades.
His phone, she realizes, and she almost calls out again. It's on her tongue, a sing-song accusation that she knew he'd cheat. But something stops her again. Something in him that isn't quite sadness and isn't quite not.
It settles on her from out of nowhere. From the stars or the missing tug of his smile. The date. It settles on her and she does call out, then. Not his name or anything in a teasing lilt. She calls out two familiar words.
Time out.
He whispers the words back against her cheek. Against her shoulder and the shiver racing over it.
Time out.
They hold each other a long while in silence. It's . . . solemn. Something not quite sorrowful and he knows she's only just realized, too. The date and everything wrapped in it for them.
Sorry.
It almost slips out, but he buries his lips in her hair at the last second and he's glad. It's not the word for it, this strange anniversary of theirs.
He's not sorry. He's not sorry that the world still turns and the two of them are here. He's not sorry that tomorrow they'll go home and he'll sweep her over the threshold again. He's not sorry that they don't need the middle of the night or those words quite like they used to. He's not sorry that they'll keep if they ever do.
"I miss him," she says. It's careful, like she's come to something new. Maybe not right now, but lately. He strokes a hand down her spine and they're quiet for another long while.
"The wedding-our wedding." She wriggles a little to look up at him. Starry-eyed still, but there's a sweet point of sorrow in it. "I wanted that. Exactly that. Just us . . . " "You and me. Martha and Alexis and my dad. That was . . . "
"Perfect." He kisses her. "It was perfect, but . . ."
"But." She laughs softly.
"We could . . ." He trails off.
There's a loud, sudden pop in the distance and they both start. Firewood cracking. Collapsing, probably. They both know what it's not.
"Could what?"
He shakes his head. It's gone from bad idea to terrible in the space of one sound in the night.
She's persistent, though. She slips her fingers between the buttons of his vest and tugs. "What, Castle?"
"The cemetery." He rushes through it once it's out. "We're home late tomorrow, but Ernie . . ."
"The cemetery." It comes out flatter than she means it. She sweeps her palm over his jaw to take the sting out. It's not thing to do with him. It's just . . . Montgomery. She hasn't been in a while. A long while. "Have you . . . ?"
He shakes his head again. Bows further into shadow. He's ashamed and she doesn't want him to be. She knocks her knuckles against the brim of his hat. She ducks under it and waits for him to meet her eyes.
"When we're home." She smooths a hand over his collar. "The cemetery. We'll go together."
"Together," he echoes. He turns her body, keeping her close, her back to his front as he crowds her forward. "Tomorrow. Home. We'll go together."
She stops their forward momentum. Digs her heels in and tips her head way back to smile up at him. "And tonight?"
"Tonight." His gaze darkens. His hands roam over laces and tucks of fabric. They toy with fasteners. He lowers his mouth to her skin. "Tonight, good honeymoon."
Rating: T
WC: ~2200
Summary: "He sits with his back to the quiet corner and watches as she swings from one pair of hands to another, her skirts flaring out as her heels stamp the floorboards in time with the relentless fiddle. Her cheeks are pink and her smile is wide. The whole room is in love with her, him most of all."
A/N: TARDIS-verse story for the 3rd anniversary of Kill Shot (3 x 09). Set just after Once Upon a Time in the West (7 x 07).
He's about to drop. The room is full and bright and warm and the music is unrelenting. She spins into him and he almost misses. He stumbles and tries to make it look deliberate. He slides his hands over the stiff silk at her waist like he meant to cop a feel.
She knows, though. She's lit up and golden in the lantern light. She arches an eyebrow, because she knows. She takes pity on him, though. She slips an arm around him and ducks them into a corner. She lets her back hit the wall and tips her chin up, laughing as his mouth catches hers hungrily.
"Tired?"
She looks him up and down. He shakes his head. Denies it, but her eyes narrow.
"Saddle sore?"
"Well, I have been ridden hard and put away wet four days running . . ."
He plants a palm on the wall and leans in with an over-the-top leer. She surprises him, though. She looks up at him, a good few inches shorter in her flat, lace-up boots. She looks up, starry- eyed and in love and a little wistful.
"Four days," she says. "Good honeymoon."
She's too good at this. All of it. She rides like she was born to it and hikes tirelessly. She clambers up steep, rocky trails as easily as she navigates the midtown lunch rush.
She wears everything with ease. These complicated things with laces and fasteners. Layers upon layers and resistance where he least expects it. She laughs and tips herself back. She falls away from him, hands moving deftly, and lets him catch her around the waist She tugs and slides and fabric falls in picturesque heaps at her feet.
And there's nothing she can't dance to, apparently. Nothing.
It's for them. A not-quite-the-end-of-the week soirée that the ranch wouldn't usually have, but they're off kilter with everyone else. Four unexpected days and a couple of coaches filled with the next round of guests just rolled in around supper time. They're the only two who'll roll away again in the morning, and the barn dance is for them.
He'll be glad enough to be home. Glad enough to be out of button-fly everything and a bed that's a little too period accurate. The skin is peeling off his nose and he hurts all over. He misses Alexis. His mother and Lanie and the boys.
He'll be glad enough, but he's loved every second of this. He's loved watching her under honest-to-God breathtaking starlight and the cloud of dust she kicks up as she moves. He's loved falling on to the high iron bedstead and bracing his body over hers.
He loves watching her like this, even ready to drop.
He sits with his back to the quiet corner and watches as she swings from one pair of hands to another, her skirts flaring out as her heels stamp the floorboards in time with the relentless fiddle. Her cheeks are pink and her smile is wide. The whole room is in love with her, him most of all.
The band winds higher and higher, then the bottom drops out. The song is over just like that and she's turning in place. She's looking for him and the world lights up when their eyes meet. That perfect, irresistible tug from him to her and back again.
She sets out for his quiet corner. She lifts her skirts and makes it five purposeful steps before the low thump of the washtub bass sounds and another ranch hand has her by the elbow. He spins her in three tight circles. She laughs and lets her arm snap taut. She gestures helplessly his way. She tries to beg off, but the whole room is in love with her, and they're having none of it.
The instruments join in one by one. The caller steps to the mic and she's caught up. She's whisked off, but not without throwing an apologetic kiss over her shoulder. He smiles and catches it, even though she she can't see. She's surrounded. The center of everything.
He's caught up in watching for her. The swirl of emerald and scarlet and the curve of her shoulder with a kiss of color that's not quite sunburn.
He steps out to the porch when his quiet corner gets not-so-quiet. When a bright-pink wave of taffeta crowds into his field of vision and the flash of wedding band is anything but a deterrent. He's polite, then firm, then gone, and he's grateful that the desert is all cool blues tonight.
He leans a hip against the railing and winces. A hard square outline, awkward in the slim pockets of the high-waisted pants, presses into one of a hundred sore spots. One of a hundred tender bruises that map exactly to her fingers. He smiles at the thought and fishes absently for the offending item.
His phone.
He stares down and the dark face of it is strange. Unfamiliar. He'd switched it off with great ceremony the minute she'd told him they could stay. He's flipped it on a couple of times. When she was napping. When she insisted that she did not, in fact, need any help at all bathing in that tin tub. Before she gave in on that particular point and admitted with a purr that he was essential.
He's flipped it on to make sure the city hasn't burned down without her. He's zipped off a handful of pictures to Alexis and his mother. Ridiculous poses and the two of them crowding into the frame in front of things they'd probably ooh and aaah over if they had eyes for anything but one another.
He hasn't missed it. Doesn't want to flip it back on now, though there's something unmistakably winding down about the moment, even though the music is still going strong. He doesn't want to, but there's something about the moon or the alignment of the stars.
She'd say it's nothing more than the rhythm of the place. That he's come to know it and a door slamming or the call of two hands in passing tells him the time.
That's what Kate would say, he thinks with a smile as he brings his thumb down on the button. As the phone spools up and their faces fill the screen, the sun over the sea burning through the clouds behind them.
He smiles when the clock ticks over to midnight. The date flips over and the smile fades.
November 21, 2014.
She knows he's gone. She doesn't see him leave, but it's like the light dims and all the sweetness rushes out of the air. Like the tug of his smile is gone.
It's the middle of a song, and she stumbles for the first time. Her eyes drop, and she's tired all of a sudden. Good and warm and weary, mostly, but she's tired and she wants him.
The ranch hand she's dancing with tries to reclaim her attention. She works on a polite, apologetic smile, then realizes he's not a hand at all. He's one of the guests. The guy who spilled out of the coach looking green around the gills, and she sees for the first time that the whole thing doesn't hang easy on him. His steps are mincing like the boots hurt and he keeps hitching at his pants like they don't quite fit right.
She's sorry for him in an off-handed way. She wonders who dragged him here and why, but it's not even half her mind on the question. Everything about him calls up the contrast to Castle. She thinks of the brim of his hat tipping low over one eye and the heat of his body under rough fabric and tantalizing buttons. She wants him.
She raises her voice over the music, trying to explain she has to go. The man shakes his head and leans in, a little too closely. She holds up her left hand and mimes looking for someone, raising up on her toes and peering out. She mouths the word husband. It teases the corners of her mouth high in a grin. It's ridiculous. She knows it must be, but she doesn't care.
She cares even less when the expression on her dance partner's face turns sour. She executes a perfect curtsey and pushes past him.
She's kinder to the hands. She flutters her eyelashes and sashays past them as they clutch their hands to their hearts like they're mortally wounded. She plays it up and makes a show of it, but she hurries.
She hurries. She wants him.
The cool air and the creak of the swinging doors call to her. The wind fans over her skin. A wave of relief before she's even over the threshold.
She sees the silhouette of him at the end of the porch. His head bowed and one fist planted on the railing. Her breath catches at the sight. The broad sweep of his shoulders and the hat tipped low. His profile, dark against a bonfire in the distance.
Something stops her from calling out. Something makes her watch a moment.
He sets something on the rough wood in front of him. He pushes it away and she sees his chest rise and fall in a sigh. He turns to lean a shoulder against the post rising up beside him. It's enough to let her see the last flare of light-an oblong that's strange at first-before it fades.
His phone, she realizes, and she almost calls out again. It's on her tongue, a sing-song accusation that she knew he'd cheat. But something stops her again. Something in him that isn't quite sadness and isn't quite not.
It settles on her from out of nowhere. From the stars or the missing tug of his smile. The date. It settles on her and she does call out, then. Not his name or anything in a teasing lilt. She calls out two familiar words.
Time out.
He whispers the words back against her cheek. Against her shoulder and the shiver racing over it.
Time out.
They hold each other a long while in silence. It's . . . solemn. Something not quite sorrowful and he knows she's only just realized, too. The date and everything wrapped in it for them.
Sorry.
It almost slips out, but he buries his lips in her hair at the last second and he's glad. It's not the word for it, this strange anniversary of theirs.
He's not sorry. He's not sorry that the world still turns and the two of them are here. He's not sorry that tomorrow they'll go home and he'll sweep her over the threshold again. He's not sorry that they don't need the middle of the night or those words quite like they used to. He's not sorry that they'll keep if they ever do.
"I miss him," she says. It's careful, like she's come to something new. Maybe not right now, but lately. He strokes a hand down her spine and they're quiet for another long while.
"The wedding-our wedding." She wriggles a little to look up at him. Starry-eyed still, but there's a sweet point of sorrow in it. "I wanted that. Exactly that. Just us . . . " "You and me. Martha and Alexis and my dad. That was . . . "
"Perfect." He kisses her. "It was perfect, but . . ."
"But." She laughs softly.
"We could . . ." He trails off.
There's a loud, sudden pop in the distance and they both start. Firewood cracking. Collapsing, probably. They both know what it's not.
"Could what?"
He shakes his head. It's gone from bad idea to terrible in the space of one sound in the night.
She's persistent, though. She slips her fingers between the buttons of his vest and tugs. "What, Castle?"
"The cemetery." He rushes through it once it's out. "We're home late tomorrow, but Ernie . . ."
"The cemetery." It comes out flatter than she means it. She sweeps her palm over his jaw to take the sting out. It's not thing to do with him. It's just . . . Montgomery. She hasn't been in a while. A long while. "Have you . . . ?"
He shakes his head again. Bows further into shadow. He's ashamed and she doesn't want him to be. She knocks her knuckles against the brim of his hat. She ducks under it and waits for him to meet her eyes.
"When we're home." She smooths a hand over his collar. "The cemetery. We'll go together."
"Together," he echoes. He turns her body, keeping her close, her back to his front as he crowds her forward. "Tomorrow. Home. We'll go together."
She stops their forward momentum. Digs her heels in and tips her head way back to smile up at him. "And tonight?"
"Tonight." His gaze darkens. His hands roam over laces and tucks of fabric. They toy with fasteners. He lowers his mouth to her skin. "Tonight, good honeymoon."