Amber Part 9
Characters: Beckett/Altlivia (Castle/Fringe crossover)
Genre: slash, drama, some humour, pre-season 1, AU
Rating: R (language, violence)
Length: 1800 words
Summary: Beckett drives Dunham to the lockbox on Lexington.
A/N: Continues to work on Fringe canon - that the drugs in the alternate universe are miraculous and far exceed our own.
Amber 9
She can’t concentrate on driving. It starts to rain and Beckett can’t distinguish between Dunham’s breathing and the backlash of weather against the windscreen, and ten minutes away from the Lexington address, she pulls over.
‘I can’t do this,’ Kate says, willing herself to sound adamant, You need the hosp-’
‘C’mon B...beckett. Not far. Special ... drugs. You promised.’
Beckett leans over the console, using the hand not cradled against Dunham’s thigh to cup her face. To her surprise, Olivia’s no worse. Dunham’s in obvious pain, but she’s not turning blue and the rain’s not covering her final gasps for air. Retracting her hand from Dunham’s cheek, Kate wrenches the steering wheel so they can continue gunning for Lexington.
‘I’ll make you a deal, Dunham,’ she says, cop voice on, totally aware of Olivia’s thumb skirting against the blade of her hand. ‘If there’s no improvement in another ...’ she trails off to think about the time, but it’s to steady her voice while the hand action is causing her to think about other things.
‘Yeah?’ asks Dunham, closing her eyes, removing her hand from Beckett’s and bringing it up to rest on Kate’s shoulder.
Beckett ignores it. There are traffic lights to consider. Oh, and then there’s Dunham’s hand, her fingers suddenly stroking. ‘Okay,’ she says, trying to refocus. ‘If you’re not considerably better in an hour, um ... Dunham, I-I’m taking you to the hospital.’
Her ultimatum comes on a wisp of air. Dunham’s fingers have threaded through the ends of her hair, her knuckles dusting the skin of her neck, and Beckett has to stop herself turning her face from the road and arching into her touch.
‘Okay, Kate,’ she whispers, slumping across the car console. She stops the caress of Beckett hair, the tease of her skin and drapes her hand across Kate’s shoulder. Olivia is close enough to rest her face in Kate’s lap, and for a second Beckett thinks she’s about to do it, but no; she simply leans in. ‘Thanks. You’re g-great.’
‘Sure.’ Kate rolls her eyes towards her window. They’re close now.
‘It’ll be ... fine,’ says Olivia, tapping Kate’s shoulder, rubbing along the seam of her muscles and creating havoc with every dampened-down urge Beckett has had in the past few months. In a’nour, we’ll be ... laughing bout this.’
‘Yeah. Hope so,’ Kate says, accelerating away from traffic, willing Lexington to come quicker if only to facilitate leaving the sexual cauldron of the car. Not that it’s all unwelcomed and awkward, just way too intense when her passenger is souped-up on pain and seeking comfort wherever she can find it.
That’s all this is, Kate tells herself. Olivia is responding to kindness, she’s a bit delirious, a lot needy and Kate’s helping her fix excruciating physical pain. She hopes that’s what she’s doing. As far as the hand on her shoulder, the whispered thanks in her ear, and the attraction she feels towards Dunham? All of that can be put in a box and shelved with her Sorenson cold case.
***
The lockbox combination! What the fuck is it? she thinks as she leans against Kate and works clumsy fingers over tiny buttons. The corner of Lexington and Vine is busy, but the alcove they’re in is dark, quiet and a perfect spot for Kate’s flashlight to make the task easier ... if only she could remember ... the combination. It’s got a 2 in it, yeah? A 5? Something else, with four-digits, but damn, she cannot-
‘What the hell is this, Olivia?’
She hears Kate’s voice in another universe, she thinks, but feels Beckett’s fingers at her wrist, her arm across her achy back where it really, really hurts.
‘Rub my back, Kate?’ She whispers, hot with need. ‘Please.’
‘Yeah, like we’ve got time for that,’ she thinks Beckett replies, as she thinks she’s lowered to the ground and she thinks Kate is rolling up her sleeve. Her sleeve. Olivia’s sleeve.
‘C’mon Kate, I need-’
‘Here’s another deal, Olivia. If this number written on your wrist is the lockbox combination, then I’ll rub your back if you still need it.’
‘Oh. I’ll still need it.’
Dunham thinks Beckett ignores her. ‘Why would you have this on your wrist anyway?’ She pauses, and Dunham thinks she hears Beckett murmur something about ‘the FBI’ and their bullshit procedure and their stupid, silent ways of doin’ ...
‘Okay. It is the combination. I have a vial here and a-a, jesus the biggest needle ever. What? No way.’
Olivia thinks about the typewriter, her orders, the room she entered, the combination. She wrote it on skin. Of course she did, it’s nothing too secret, and she’d anticipated the pain would get too much. It’d all get too much. But Beckett is here. She needs her like an addict needs their next hit of zing.
‘Inject. Kate. Inject. Into here.’
Olivia thinks she pulls open her shirt, drags everything away from her left-hand side and points to the place it hurts most. She thinks she hears Kate say ‘no way’ again, she thinks she grabs hold of Beckett’s hand and tries to push the vial towards the needle, she thinks she starts to beg.
‘Please. Kate, please.’
‘Dunham?’
She can hear Kate now, knows she’s close, feels her directly in front of her, running fingers over the huge hurt of her ribs, palming flat against the massive swelling of her injury, and she cannot stop begging. The hesitation. It’s doing her in. ‘Please. The trust, the right medication, it’s right. Just. Please.’
‘Do you know what you’re asking me to do, Olivia? If this doesn’t work ...’
‘I’ll die. The pain.’
Olivia thinks she sees panic on Kate’s face, hears emotion in her voice. ‘You’ll die if I do it. I can’t inject this ... this ... motherfucker into the actual-’
‘Kate!’ Dunham groans as loudly as she can, ‘just ... just. Fill the syringe. Okay ... I’ll do ... the ...’
A guttural sound splits the atmosphere of the alcove, the light of Beckett’s torch jams shut, the air around them vacuums to zilch, and Olivia doesn’t know whether it’s Kate sobbing or herself. The pain is excruciating for a moment, all slice, dice, fillet, but then she’s soaring, and Olivia knows Kate has sucked the syringe in, bolstered herself and injected.
‘God. Thanks. Thanks.’ Olivia thinks she says.
‘No problem,’ she hears Beckett’s reply. It's shaky. Crying?, no that’s her. 'But you don’t have to call me God.’
***
One moment, Beckett’s kneeling in front of Dunham, pressing her palm against the hottest, most swollen flesh she’s ever touched, the next she’s looking into Olivia’s eyes and listening to her pleas. One moment, she’s unsure and no nonsense about putting that needle anywhere near another person, the next she’s jamming the sucker straight into Dunham’s intercostals.
One moment, Olivia’s a floundering mess, overcome with pain and need. The next, she’s all about movement and relief, flinging herself down beside shellshocked Kate and wearing a celebratory smile.
‘What the hell is this stuff?’ Beckett tries to say, but she’s ambushed by a deviant, pain-free Dunham, intent on crowding her personal space and saying whatever she likes.
‘God, I feel soooo great,’ says, Dunham, stretching and flicking a leg out over Beckett’s body. ‘And I want to call you God, Kate, coz you feel so great too.’
Kate's back connects with the alcove wall and she coughs out a laugh to stop herself falling straight into Dunham’s lips. They’re close enough. Tempting enough. ‘Ha. That’s the drug talking, whatever it was,’ she says, so distracted by Dunham moving into her lap, her shirt flapping open, she almost misses Olivia’s eyes glancing at her lips.
Olivia smiles. ‘I feel so much better, Kate. God. Haven’t felt this good in forever.'
‘I’m glad,’ says Kate, watching Dunham’s mouth shaping into words, prepping to steal forward and wax lush against her own. It’s illegal how fucking hot this woman is - as illegal as the stuff she’s injected into her skin and suddenly rendered her so sexily animated. ‘Now you feel better, we can get outta here.’
Dunham edges closer, placing legs either side of Beckett's hips, hovering. ‘And I really love you, you know that? Really, really love you.’
‘They must be really great drugs, Dunham.’ Kate's laugh is too loud. 'You love the pain being gone. That's all.'
'Maybe.'
Everything’s too loud. Olivia’s words are too loud from lips too close, Kate’s heartbeat is too loud in her ears; her thoughts, too loud in the back of her mind. And the groan erupting from deep in her throat? It might have been too loud, but it’s cut off by Dunham inching forward and kissing her before Beckett can insist on anything else.
Like all things Dunham, there’s not a lot of subtlety. It’s no love-tap at the start, but it’s full and open, a weave of tongue, a play of lips and deep sound . Beckett closes her eyes despite wanting to stay aware of their surroundings, their vulnerability, but as her flashlight dims, so does her resolve.
It gets intimate before it gets sensible. Dunham’s hands plunge into her hair, stray to the neckline of her top, but Beckett moves straight for the open shirt. The white, dress shirt, laced with business material, scented with hours-old Fendi, leading her fingers to an expanse of skin and soft textures.
Beckett tries to stifle her groan of appreciation, but it’s noticed and just when she thinks Dunham is going to smirk at the sound, to up the ante and find skin of her own to unsettle, she flinches.
Olivia Dunham soft?
‘You okay?’ Kate mumbles, unable to stop touching the skin beneath Olivia’s bra, working gentle fingers along her ribs. ‘Am I hurting you?’
‘No.' Olivia scoffs, playful, so flirtatious. ‘You? Highly unlikely, Detective. I was worried that I might be hurting you against the bricks here-’
Beckett moves her hand to the back of Dunham’s head, grasps her ponytail at just the right angle and kisses her with scorching abandon. Once, twice, increasingly frantic, then thickly, slowly, until Olivia pulls away breathless. Kate chases her lips, deposits a brief kiss on them, then dips her head to Dunham’s ear, her neck.
‘Let’s get out of here.’ The bricks are starting to annoy her spine, her arse is getting cold when it could be getting comfortable.
Dunham stretches and stands, more agile than Kate has ever seen her. She offers her hand to Beckett. She takes it, stifling the need to push Dunham against the opposite wall and ply her lips with more tongue. Olivia crowds her as she stands, holds both her hands and teases forwards to kiss and talk. ‘I’m at FBI HQ, at the moment, but could find a hotel if I’m going to stay for longer than I thought.’ She arches an eyebrow at Beckett. ‘The case, right? It’s complicated.’
Grab your stuff, stay at my place, as long as you like. Come over. Use my things, have breakfast, walk naked into my bathroom.
Beckett knows what she wants to say, but a shyness descends as they break from the alcove. Dunham must read something. She threads her fingers through Beckett’s as they walk to the car. ‘Let’s get something to eat. I know a place. They serve ribs.’
Kate laughs, scuffs the curb, and is relieved by the banter even though desire is coursing through her like mercury throb through a thermometre. ‘Speaking of ribs, I have a lot of questions. We have a lot to talk about.’
Olivia opens the car door. ‘Oh, I’m not interested in talking, Kate. And I can’t answer your questions, you know that. If I did, I’d have to kill ya.’
Beckett nods, unable to suppress a smile. ‘Don’t worry, Dunham. I have interrogation methods you haven’t seen. You won’t believe what might slip out when I’m done. With you.’
‘Oh-kay,’ says Dunham, her eyes locking on Beckett’s mouth. ‘Showtime.’
Genre: slash, drama, some humour, pre-season 1, AU
Rating: R (language, violence)
Length: 1800 words
Summary: Beckett drives Dunham to the lockbox on Lexington.
A/N: Continues to work on Fringe canon - that the drugs in the alternate universe are miraculous and far exceed our own.
Amber 9
She can’t concentrate on driving. It starts to rain and Beckett can’t distinguish between Dunham’s breathing and the backlash of weather against the windscreen, and ten minutes away from the Lexington address, she pulls over.
‘I can’t do this,’ Kate says, willing herself to sound adamant, You need the hosp-’
‘C’mon B...beckett. Not far. Special ... drugs. You promised.’
Beckett leans over the console, using the hand not cradled against Dunham’s thigh to cup her face. To her surprise, Olivia’s no worse. Dunham’s in obvious pain, but she’s not turning blue and the rain’s not covering her final gasps for air. Retracting her hand from Dunham’s cheek, Kate wrenches the steering wheel so they can continue gunning for Lexington.
‘I’ll make you a deal, Dunham,’ she says, cop voice on, totally aware of Olivia’s thumb skirting against the blade of her hand. ‘If there’s no improvement in another ...’ she trails off to think about the time, but it’s to steady her voice while the hand action is causing her to think about other things.
‘Yeah?’ asks Dunham, closing her eyes, removing her hand from Beckett’s and bringing it up to rest on Kate’s shoulder.
Beckett ignores it. There are traffic lights to consider. Oh, and then there’s Dunham’s hand, her fingers suddenly stroking. ‘Okay,’ she says, trying to refocus. ‘If you’re not considerably better in an hour, um ... Dunham, I-I’m taking you to the hospital.’
Her ultimatum comes on a wisp of air. Dunham’s fingers have threaded through the ends of her hair, her knuckles dusting the skin of her neck, and Beckett has to stop herself turning her face from the road and arching into her touch.
‘Okay, Kate,’ she whispers, slumping across the car console. She stops the caress of Beckett hair, the tease of her skin and drapes her hand across Kate’s shoulder. Olivia is close enough to rest her face in Kate’s lap, and for a second Beckett thinks she’s about to do it, but no; she simply leans in. ‘Thanks. You’re g-great.’
‘Sure.’ Kate rolls her eyes towards her window. They’re close now.
‘It’ll be ... fine,’ says Olivia, tapping Kate’s shoulder, rubbing along the seam of her muscles and creating havoc with every dampened-down urge Beckett has had in the past few months. In a’nour, we’ll be ... laughing bout this.’
‘Yeah. Hope so,’ Kate says, accelerating away from traffic, willing Lexington to come quicker if only to facilitate leaving the sexual cauldron of the car. Not that it’s all unwelcomed and awkward, just way too intense when her passenger is souped-up on pain and seeking comfort wherever she can find it.
That’s all this is, Kate tells herself. Olivia is responding to kindness, she’s a bit delirious, a lot needy and Kate’s helping her fix excruciating physical pain. She hopes that’s what she’s doing. As far as the hand on her shoulder, the whispered thanks in her ear, and the attraction she feels towards Dunham? All of that can be put in a box and shelved with her Sorenson cold case.
***
The lockbox combination! What the fuck is it? she thinks as she leans against Kate and works clumsy fingers over tiny buttons. The corner of Lexington and Vine is busy, but the alcove they’re in is dark, quiet and a perfect spot for Kate’s flashlight to make the task easier ... if only she could remember ... the combination. It’s got a 2 in it, yeah? A 5? Something else, with four-digits, but damn, she cannot-
‘What the hell is this, Olivia?’
She hears Kate’s voice in another universe, she thinks, but feels Beckett’s fingers at her wrist, her arm across her achy back where it really, really hurts.
‘Rub my back, Kate?’ She whispers, hot with need. ‘Please.’
‘Yeah, like we’ve got time for that,’ she thinks Beckett replies, as she thinks she’s lowered to the ground and she thinks Kate is rolling up her sleeve. Her sleeve. Olivia’s sleeve.
‘C’mon Kate, I need-’
‘Here’s another deal, Olivia. If this number written on your wrist is the lockbox combination, then I’ll rub your back if you still need it.’
‘Oh. I’ll still need it.’
Dunham thinks Beckett ignores her. ‘Why would you have this on your wrist anyway?’ She pauses, and Dunham thinks she hears Beckett murmur something about ‘the FBI’ and their bullshit procedure and their stupid, silent ways of doin’ ...
‘Okay. It is the combination. I have a vial here and a-a, jesus the biggest needle ever. What? No way.’
Olivia thinks about the typewriter, her orders, the room she entered, the combination. She wrote it on skin. Of course she did, it’s nothing too secret, and she’d anticipated the pain would get too much. It’d all get too much. But Beckett is here. She needs her like an addict needs their next hit of zing.
‘Inject. Kate. Inject. Into here.’
Olivia thinks she pulls open her shirt, drags everything away from her left-hand side and points to the place it hurts most. She thinks she hears Kate say ‘no way’ again, she thinks she grabs hold of Beckett’s hand and tries to push the vial towards the needle, she thinks she starts to beg.
‘Please. Kate, please.’
‘Dunham?’
She can hear Kate now, knows she’s close, feels her directly in front of her, running fingers over the huge hurt of her ribs, palming flat against the massive swelling of her injury, and she cannot stop begging. The hesitation. It’s doing her in. ‘Please. The trust, the right medication, it’s right. Just. Please.’
‘Do you know what you’re asking me to do, Olivia? If this doesn’t work ...’
‘I’ll die. The pain.’
Olivia thinks she sees panic on Kate’s face, hears emotion in her voice. ‘You’ll die if I do it. I can’t inject this ... this ... motherfucker into the actual-’
‘Kate!’ Dunham groans as loudly as she can, ‘just ... just. Fill the syringe. Okay ... I’ll do ... the ...’
A guttural sound splits the atmosphere of the alcove, the light of Beckett’s torch jams shut, the air around them vacuums to zilch, and Olivia doesn’t know whether it’s Kate sobbing or herself. The pain is excruciating for a moment, all slice, dice, fillet, but then she’s soaring, and Olivia knows Kate has sucked the syringe in, bolstered herself and injected.
‘God. Thanks. Thanks.’ Olivia thinks she says.
‘No problem,’ she hears Beckett’s reply. It's shaky. Crying?, no that’s her. 'But you don’t have to call me God.’
***
One moment, Beckett’s kneeling in front of Dunham, pressing her palm against the hottest, most swollen flesh she’s ever touched, the next she’s looking into Olivia’s eyes and listening to her pleas. One moment, she’s unsure and no nonsense about putting that needle anywhere near another person, the next she’s jamming the sucker straight into Dunham’s intercostals.
One moment, Olivia’s a floundering mess, overcome with pain and need. The next, she’s all about movement and relief, flinging herself down beside shellshocked Kate and wearing a celebratory smile.
‘What the hell is this stuff?’ Beckett tries to say, but she’s ambushed by a deviant, pain-free Dunham, intent on crowding her personal space and saying whatever she likes.
‘God, I feel soooo great,’ says, Dunham, stretching and flicking a leg out over Beckett’s body. ‘And I want to call you God, Kate, coz you feel so great too.’
Kate's back connects with the alcove wall and she coughs out a laugh to stop herself falling straight into Dunham’s lips. They’re close enough. Tempting enough. ‘Ha. That’s the drug talking, whatever it was,’ she says, so distracted by Dunham moving into her lap, her shirt flapping open, she almost misses Olivia’s eyes glancing at her lips.
Olivia smiles. ‘I feel so much better, Kate. God. Haven’t felt this good in forever.'
‘I’m glad,’ says Kate, watching Dunham’s mouth shaping into words, prepping to steal forward and wax lush against her own. It’s illegal how fucking hot this woman is - as illegal as the stuff she’s injected into her skin and suddenly rendered her so sexily animated. ‘Now you feel better, we can get outta here.’
Dunham edges closer, placing legs either side of Beckett's hips, hovering. ‘And I really love you, you know that? Really, really love you.’
‘They must be really great drugs, Dunham.’ Kate's laugh is too loud. 'You love the pain being gone. That's all.'
'Maybe.'
Everything’s too loud. Olivia’s words are too loud from lips too close, Kate’s heartbeat is too loud in her ears; her thoughts, too loud in the back of her mind. And the groan erupting from deep in her throat? It might have been too loud, but it’s cut off by Dunham inching forward and kissing her before Beckett can insist on anything else.
Like all things Dunham, there’s not a lot of subtlety. It’s no love-tap at the start, but it’s full and open, a weave of tongue, a play of lips and deep sound . Beckett closes her eyes despite wanting to stay aware of their surroundings, their vulnerability, but as her flashlight dims, so does her resolve.
It gets intimate before it gets sensible. Dunham’s hands plunge into her hair, stray to the neckline of her top, but Beckett moves straight for the open shirt. The white, dress shirt, laced with business material, scented with hours-old Fendi, leading her fingers to an expanse of skin and soft textures.
Beckett tries to stifle her groan of appreciation, but it’s noticed and just when she thinks Dunham is going to smirk at the sound, to up the ante and find skin of her own to unsettle, she flinches.
Olivia Dunham soft?
‘You okay?’ Kate mumbles, unable to stop touching the skin beneath Olivia’s bra, working gentle fingers along her ribs. ‘Am I hurting you?’
‘No.' Olivia scoffs, playful, so flirtatious. ‘You? Highly unlikely, Detective. I was worried that I might be hurting you against the bricks here-’
Beckett moves her hand to the back of Dunham’s head, grasps her ponytail at just the right angle and kisses her with scorching abandon. Once, twice, increasingly frantic, then thickly, slowly, until Olivia pulls away breathless. Kate chases her lips, deposits a brief kiss on them, then dips her head to Dunham’s ear, her neck.
‘Let’s get out of here.’ The bricks are starting to annoy her spine, her arse is getting cold when it could be getting comfortable.
Dunham stretches and stands, more agile than Kate has ever seen her. She offers her hand to Beckett. She takes it, stifling the need to push Dunham against the opposite wall and ply her lips with more tongue. Olivia crowds her as she stands, holds both her hands and teases forwards to kiss and talk. ‘I’m at FBI HQ, at the moment, but could find a hotel if I’m going to stay for longer than I thought.’ She arches an eyebrow at Beckett. ‘The case, right? It’s complicated.’
Grab your stuff, stay at my place, as long as you like. Come over. Use my things, have breakfast, walk naked into my bathroom.
Beckett knows what she wants to say, but a shyness descends as they break from the alcove. Dunham must read something. She threads her fingers through Beckett’s as they walk to the car. ‘Let’s get something to eat. I know a place. They serve ribs.’
Kate laughs, scuffs the curb, and is relieved by the banter even though desire is coursing through her like mercury throb through a thermometre. ‘Speaking of ribs, I have a lot of questions. We have a lot to talk about.’
Olivia opens the car door. ‘Oh, I’m not interested in talking, Kate. And I can’t answer your questions, you know that. If I did, I’d have to kill ya.’
Beckett nods, unable to suppress a smile. ‘Don’t worry, Dunham. I have interrogation methods you haven’t seen. You won’t believe what might slip out when I’m done. With you.’
‘Oh-kay,’ says Dunham, her eyes locking on Beckett’s mouth. ‘Showtime.’