[ let down your guard ]

[fanofthegenre]

The case is wrapped. Ben Conrad, the man that they had pinned down as their suspect, is dead and on his way to the morgue. Beckett sends her detail home for the second time with every intention of luxuriating after the stress of the week in a long, hot shower. Underneath the warming spray, she can vaguely make out the sound of her own phone, but

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[trigger_man]

Jack's sitting at a table not far from the door when it flies open. He turns to look, barely seeing the figure come flying into the bar, his attention to the burst of flame just behind her.

In a split second, he's on his feet, heat hitting his face as he uses the door for protection from it the flame as he closes the door. As soon as it's shut, the smell of--explosives?--smoke still in his nose, he turns to see if the person that came in is all right.

For a moment all he can see is soot and blood and naked skin, but then he focuses on the face and--

"Beckett?" he gasps, instantly running toward her.

[fanofthegenre]

Her first thought isn't that she's lying naked on the floor of the bar, or even that she's in the bar in the first place. Adrenaline still pumping through her veins, the full impact of her injuries hasn't hit her yet, though she's sure to feel sore in a few places when it starts to wear off.

Her head feels a little fuzzy, but she hadn't hit it that hard, had she?

She doesn't hear or sense Jack until he's right beside her.

"Jack?"

Her voice is small, sounding like it's coming from very far away.

"What're you doing in my apartment?"

[trigger_man]

"You're not--" he starts to say, before he realizes that she's kind of naked in the middle of the bar. Immediately, he pulls off the button-down shirt he's wearing, exposing the t-shirt underneath as well as the scars and tattoos on his arms. He'd go to the bar and get a blanket for her, but he doesn't want to leave her side, too worried that she's hurt.

Tucking it around her, he starts over. "You're not in your apartment, you're in the bar. Are you hurt anywhere?"

[fanofthegenre]

Clarity returns to her vision, but the adrenaline's still coursing through her system, still masking the small and not-so-small hurts. Slowly, she sits up, lifting a hand to her head at the sensation of something wet trickling down over her forehead.

Her fingers come down red.

"The bar," she echoes, slipping her arms through the sleeves of his shirt and wincing when her shoulder doesn't move the way it's supposed to.

[bestsellingego]

The heat is incredible. An exploding, overwhelming, luminous wave that appears to split the whole block down the middle, like God drawing a finger down the center of the sun. The force of the explosion sends Castle pinwheeling in place, crashing against the spokes of a wrought iron gate. He can still feel the heat on the back of his neck. No, no, no -- and his heart's a dull, rusty hammer in his throat as he turns around, watching the pieces of her apartment split across the black sky. Kate. Oh god, Kate.

Someone across the street screams and for a second, Castle thinks it's her; thinks that, somehow, the blast threw her out the window and onto the pavement and now he's going to have to look at the remains of grit and stone and glass and see Beckett -- see his partner -- crumpled in the gutter. No. The scream doesn't fit. It's a women, a pack of leashed dogs at her feet, who's doing the screaming instead. Castle sucks his voice up from the bottom of his chest: "Call an ambulance!" The dog walker doesn't seem to hear him. Her canine

[fanofthegenre]

Beckett makes it back through the door from Milliways - a door that quite effectively appears in the window of her own bathroom. She stands in her charred tub in Jack's dirtied, bloodied button-down, glancing around and trying to figure out if there's anything she can cover herself with in order to make it to the front door. The towels on the rack are on fire, the robe hanging up is on fire. She moves to the blackened bathroom door, treading carefully on bare feet to test the doorknob. Still warm. Which means there could be more fire on the other side. She pulls back, moving into the tub, sitting down and drawing her knees up to her chest to wait it out for the inevitable help, a small hiss of pain as she adjusts the swollen one to bend. The door's gone behind her. There's a faint sound she can't quite make out from the sirens on the street and the crackling noise of her clothes, her couch, everything burning to an unrecognizable crisp. It's a dull pounding, over and over, and then the sound of her name, shouted from a

[bestsellingego]

And there she is: half in, half out of the tub, looking like a failed experiment in personal hygiene. Her hair is half on end and the detritus smoldering behind her makes it look like she's sitting in a pool of smoke. He advances into the bathroom, gingerly picking his way among the debris. He turns over a cabinet door that, five minutes ago, had been attached to her bathroom sink. Under the circumstances, he's surprised that he hasn't found her in several pieces across the room. Surprised, but relieved.

"Are you alright?"

Kind of a stupid question.

[fanofthegenre]

"Yeah," she says, though it's more of a half-croak, half-wince due to the fact that her knee feels like it's directly connected to her heartbeat, throbbing in perfect time. She shifts her weight to relieve the pressure, gingerly testing her weight before she eases one leg out of the tub at a time, Jack's shirt rising up over her ash-covered thighs.

"The door showed up just as I - I dove through just in time," Beckett explains.

"How did you get here so fast?"