Wander, Ch. 7: Wander; Castle WIP post-Squab & the Quail (5 x 22) NOW COMPLETE
Title: Wander, Chapter 7
WC: ~4800 this chapter; ~32,000 total
Rating: T
Summary: "But it's not just this April she hates. It's the last and the last and the last. Almost since he's been with her, though not quite." (7 chapters, despite my terrific lies about 4 when I started) set after The Squab and the Quail (5 x 22) and more or less AU from there, given the end of the season.
A/N: The seventh and, I promise, FINAL chapter. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing and letting me know what worked and what didn't.
Here's Chapter 1, if you missed it.
And chapter 2.
And chapter 3.
And chapter 4.
And chapter 5.
And chapter 6.
She feels good the next time she wakes up. For all of forty-five seconds she feels good. She opens her eyes and it's not an Olympic-level event. She just tells her eyelids to open and they do, and there's nothing more painful beyond the darkness of her eyelids than the dim glow of the monitors. She feels good.
It's partly the contrast. She's in so much less pain now, and the contrast is amazing.
The pounding in her head has eased off to the point it's hardly there and she's starting to feel like her neck is made of separate bones again.
It's partly that she knows how much more it could hurt. How much more it hurt last time. Last time.
She pushes the thought away and concentrates on her body. Her chest is still a mess, but she can wiggle her shoulders now and there's a kind of exquisite pleasure in breathing deeper and deeper into the sore places. It's bruising and the pull of abused muscle. It's not shattered places, punctured sliced. Torn apart and sewn back together so they feel too small.
She feels good and she holds on to that.
It's partly that someone finally thought to turn off the goddamn lights, and the noise of the ER seems to have faded to a distant, efficient hum.
It's partly that she slept. She doesn't know for how long, but she really slept this time, dark and even and deep. No clawing to the surface and falling back. She slept.
She lets her eyes close again and the panicked, out-of-control feeling is gone. She's tired-she's still dead tired-but it's not pulling at her anymore. She's not sinking and sinking and tied to anchor when she tries to kick up toward her body. She can sleep when she wants to.
She lets her eyes close and she listens. Monitors beep and announcements come and go and they're all in their place. Near and far and in the middle distance. They're not all crowded around her, pouring directly into her ears and making her brain throb against the confines of her skull.
It's partly because she's better-because she feels good-but she thinks it's late, too. She thinks it's quieter because it's late, but she doesn't have her phone and she hasn't seen a clock in God knows how long, but something tells her it's really late.
She turns her wrist up and she's proud of that. She's proud of the way her arm works as a whole unit until she realizes she doesn't have her watch. Her watch is at home.
Not regulation.
She thinks about the uniform. She thinks about the line of navy and most of the day on her feet. She thinks about Castle across the street and how annoyed she was that she couldn't get to him right away. How annoyed she was by the gaping hole between him and her and the fact that someone was yelling. Someone wouldn't shut up.
She remembers the shooter raising the gun and the flare of aggravation. She remembers thinking she wanted to get to Castle and she didn't have time for this. She didn't have time to get shot.
She got shot.
She breathes in through her nose and fights back the sick feeling. She squeezes Castle's fingers. She tries to squeeze his fingers and realizes they're not there. She turns her head to find him. To ask him what time it is and what the hell he thinks he's doing, letting go of her hand. She turns her head because she can and she wants to see him.
She turns her head and he's not there.
The curtains clatter open and blinding light pours in from the hallway and Ow. She twitches away from it and Ow. Her head isn't that much better. It's not that much better at all, and her neck might have separate bones but they don't quite work right and she hisses between her teeth.
It's Ray, of course. It's Ray and she tries to ask him where Castle is.
It's not that her tongue doesn't work this time. It's not that her thoughts are muddled. They're not muddled at all. She wants to know why the hell Castle isn't here. She wants to know where he is.
It's that Ray won't listen. He putters around the bed, fiddling and rearranging and noting things down. He keeps up an endless stream of small talk. He asks her questions he's not really interested in the answer to and he won't let her get one in edgewise.
He holds up an impatient hand when she manages to get Castle's name out, and she thinks she might snap it off at the wrist. She thinks it would almost certainly be worth the pain.
But he's leaving by the time she makes her mind up to it. He's rolling his cart full of equipment in front of him and pulling the curtains open again, and it's a painful wall of light and sound.
She yells, then. She's not proud of it, but she yells.
Ray yells right back. It's low and monotone, but it's still yelling. He tells her to calm down. He calls her "Mrs. Beckett" and she loses it.
"Detective," she yells back. She yells it back and her mouth snaps shut because it's not her voice. It doesn't sound like her voice at all.
It sounds like Castle's and she can't make any sense of it until Ray rolls his eyes and pulls the curtain wide to reveal Castle, looking very much like he'd happily murder Ray where he stands.
She smiles at him, as wide as she can make it, and Castle smiles back, sappy and smitten and ridiculous.
Ray shakes his head and pushes past. "You see, Detective Beckett? I told you your husband would be right back."
Ray seems to have taken his chair at some point. Presumably to promote maximum awkwardness.
That's pretty much mission accomplished because they've gone from grinning at each other like lovestruck idiots to this painful, unending silence and absolute avoidance of eye contact.
With no chair, there's absolutely nowhere for him to go. There's no stage business. There's no reason for him to approach her bedside. In fact, without the chair, he's not sure what's to keep them from standing there-well, him from standing there and her from lying there in the bed-until one or both of them dies of awkwardness.
For him, that might be sooner, rather than later. It might be for the best.
He wishes she'd yell. He wishes his doom would come and she would yell and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing passing himself off as her husband. But she's looking down at her hands and her chin is tucked into her chest. She looks . . . embarrassed. It's awful. It's so awful and he can't think what to say and there's nowhere for him to go.
They look up at exactly the same time. They open their mouths at exactly the same time. They speak at exactly the same time.
"I called your dad . . ."
"What happened to your head?"
She lets out a frustrated laugh and his hand flies to the bandage. It's huge. It covers most of the side of his head and it's wet and sticky from whatever the Nameless One put on it and he must look like an absolute dork.
So they weren't quite at maximal awkwardness a second ago, but now that's all taken care of. Now maximal awkwardness is out of the way.
They start again.
"It's nothing . . .
"My dad? That's . . ."
They stop again.
It reminds him of her across the street. The two of them heading for opposite corners and him doubling back. Going her way and eager to tease her about it. It reminds him of the terrible way his mind collected facts about the man before he shot her. He meets her eyes and he knows she's thinking the same thing.
She pats the bed next to her. "Don't be an idiot, Castle."
"Ray said I couldn't," he says, but he takes a step closer. "That I might flip the bed if I sat on the end."
"Fuck Ray," she says.
"Right in the ear," he deadpans back.
She gives him a wicked smile. She looks so much like herself that he laughs and takes another step closer and another step. It's dimmer here, away from the faint light seeping into through the gap in the curtain. All he can see is pale skin and the glimmer of her eyes and it's easier. It's . . . slightly less than maximally awkward.
She snags him by the hand when he's close enough and they're bickering. She wants him to climb in with her and he's insistent that she's a mass of bruises and he'll hurt her.
She says she's not the one wandering around with a concussion and he blurts out that his is only a Grade Two, and she gives him a total gotcha look and they bicker about that.
She gets her way, of course. Even with the lesser of two concussions, he's no match for her.
She taunts him. She asks if he's afraid of Ray and she eventually gets her way. He kicks off his shoes and wedges himself along the bed railing. He slides his arm behind her and props all the pillows on the far side of her so that her weight rests against his chest.
She pulls his other arm around her and complains that he smells bad. He does. There's tar clinging to his jeans in patches and whatever the Nameless One used on his cut smells absolutely awful. But she pulls his arm around her and settles back into him and they're quiet a while.
She's quiet and he's worried she's in pain. He opens his mouth to ask. She pinches his hand before he can and mumbles that she's just tired. He's worried, but her breath is slow and even and her face rests in its familiar lines.
He keeps his palm heavy and constant as he runs it up and down her arm. He thinks she's asleep when she asks again. "What happened to your head, Castle?"
"Newspaper box attacked it," he says. It's hollow. He was going for light, but it's hollow. He doesn't want to talk about this.
She does. So that pretty much settles that. "How stupid were you, Castle?"
"Well I didn't get shot, so moderately?" He winces. "I didn't mean that you . . . I didn't plan on it. I was trying to get to you. And I think . . . I just remember him trying to run by me."
"So you thought you'd tackle an armed suspect. On a street swarming with cops."
"He wasn't armed," he argues. He stops. He replays the scene in his mind. The details he has, and there aren't a lot. "I don't think . . . Esposito said he dropped the gun after the second shot."
He stops. It's not really the point, is it? Whether or not the guy was armed is not really the point.
She doesn't say anything. She's not quiet, she's just . . . doesn't say anything. He hears her not saying any number of things. He hopes they're done with this. He knows they're not.
"What do we know about him?" Her voice is tight. Controlled.
"Nothing," he says quickly.
"Castle . . ." She's bracing. She thinks it's Bracken. She thinks it's starting all over again and it's not. It's not. She's safe. She's as safe as she can be in a job where random people walk up to her in the street and shoot her because it's convenient.
"No, Kate, I mean really nothing." He skims his fingers through her hair and feathers his lips against the skin behind her ear. "There's nothing to know. Random. Just random."
"Random?" She presses a hand to her forehead. "How can it be random?"
He doesn't have an answer to that. Not one she doesn't already know.
He tells her what he does know. Low and matter of fact, he gives her the details, with a little indignant punctuation around the fact that Ray absconded with his cell phone.
"But it's unlikely there's anything new anyway," he tells her. "It's probably over by now."
She's quiet. She asks a question here and there, but she seems to accept it. She seems willing enough to accept that it's just one of those things and he doesn't have an answer to that, either.
He just holds on to her as tightly as he can without hurting her. Hopefully without hurting her.
"You're not hurting me Castle." It's testy and exhausted and more than a little hopeless.
"Figures." He laughs into her hair.
"What figures?"
"That you'd get cool psychic powers with your concussion and I'd just get . . . stinky antiseptic and manhandling from the Nameless One."
She laughs. It ends in a pained yelp. "Ok, now you're hurting me. Laughing hurts."
He backpedals. As much as one can backpedal in a very small hospital bed. Which isn't very much, especially when Kate Beckett is hanging on. And she's hanging on.
She's hanging on and more. He's worried about her. He wants her to rest, and she wants to talk. She keeps tugging them forward. She asks about the Nameless One and tries not to laugh.
He tries not to make her, but it's funny. It's funny and they laugh together in the dark a while. They laugh together in the dark until she sounds well and truly tired.
He's not going to ask again. He won't ask if she wants to sleep. She's getting annoyed with him. He thinks about playing the guilt card. He thinks about saying he's tired. That he needs to sleep. It's true enough but he'd rather not circle back to his underachieving Grade Two concussion and exactly how stupid he was.
He figures he'll just wait it out. That there has to be an end to her stubbornness in sight and he'll just wait it out. He tells her a few of Ray's origin stories. Sad ones. Quiet ones. He tries to lull her to sleep.
He thinks he has. It's been a long while since either of them has said anything and then there are four quiet words in the darkness.
"You called my dad."
Four quiet words and he's suddenly worried. Really worried.
He's worried that he overstepped. It's not his place, after all. He's been playing at this new thing without her-playing husband-and he never stopped to think how it would look to her. He never stopped to think that it's not his place.
"I wouldn't have done that." She goes on and he feels like he's drowning.
He reaches for an apology. He claws for it, but it's like he's out of words.
"I'm not sorry."
Apparently not quite out of words. Shit.
"I'm not." He says it again and wonders what the hell is wrong with him. He wonders and then he doesn't have time to wonder. He's definitely not out of words. "Someone needed to call him. Someone should call your dad when something like this happens."
"And you're someone?" Her voice is strange. It's measured and cautious and level and she doesn't sound tired at all.
It's everything he's not right now. He's frustrated and reckless. He's exhausted. This isn't how he wanted to say this. It's not how he wanted to say any of this, but he's still not out of words.
"Yes," he says and hates how defensive he sounds. "I'm someone. When you get shot and someone should tell your dad, I'm someone."
"And when I'm not?" There's a crack. She recovers instantly, but there's a crack in her voice. It feels important. Like something to hang on to. "When I'm not getting shot?"
"I'm still someone, then," he says fiercely. He's holding on to whatever it is, but he's tired and he's confused and he wishes this were easier. He wishes it were, but it's not. "I still want to be someone."
"Castle . . ." She lets out a sigh and it hurts. He feels her spine straighten and her arms pull in to her sides and he knows it hurts. She starts to say something and stops.
She says something else entirely and it's terrible. "We should probably sleep."
It's flat and hopeless and he tries to swallow down the panic that comes with it. He tries to hold on to the all important crack in her voice, but it's gone now.
"You've had a long day," she says and the crack is gone.
He laughs and it startles them both. It's a short, grating bark, but it's funny and he can't help it.
He's had a long day? She's the one who got fucking shot. She's the one who got up this morning for a routine dress inspection-the one day in her life that should be guaranteed 100% criminal-and got shot.
"Castle . . ." The crack is still gone. She sounds annoyed now. She sounds wary. She sounds like she's retreating.
It clicks then. He sees how it looks to her. Like one more giant lurch forward in the wake of a near-death experience. That's what it looks like to her.
He sees it and it makes sense. The strangeness of her voice and the way she's tugging them forward into this. Why she didn't want to sleep on it and why she does now. It makes sense or at least he thinks it does and he decides that's good enough for two concussed people having this conversation in the dark.
Because they are. They're having this conversation and it's the worst possible time and place. It's on the heels of a near-death experience and none of that is what this is about. Because they had a date to have this conversation and she got shot and shit happens.
To them, shit happens, and it's going to keep happening, and they are having this conversation now. Even if she passes out in the middle of it or he does, they're having it.
"Kate. Can you . . .?" He wriggles a little higher in the bed. She's still stuck on the laugh. She's still wary. She's still retreating.
He squeezes her fingers hard. It's the only thing he can think to do. He needs her to move and he wants her to stay close and it's the only part of her he can keep hold of without hurting her.
"Kate." He brushes his lips over her ear. He thinks that's ok. That seems ok. "Kate I need . . . I just need . . . don't . . . don't go anywhere."
She grumbles that she can't go anywhere, but she lets him manage her. He thinks she must be a little afraid. She must suspect he's lost it or that his Grade Two concussion is finally getting the better of him, because she grumbles, but she doesn't fight him. She lets him ease her against the pillows and make sure of her before he goes digging in his pocket.
His fingers dig into his pocket. The close around the bubble and his heart is pounding like crazy. This seemed like the perfect idea two seconds ago and now he sees it for what it is. He sees that it's insane. He has a concussion-two concussions-a rubbery gum ball machine ring and the certainty that he loves thinking of her as his wife and what is he supposed to do with that?
His heart pounds and he doesn't have an answer.
His heart pounds he doesn't know what he can do other than something stupid.
It's calming. The inevitability is oddly calming and that should probably worry him. It might worry him some other time, but right now, it's calming.
His heart slows down and he pulls her gently to him. He settles her back against him and curls his arm around her waist. He sets the bubble in her lap and covers it with his hand.
"You said you'd go out with me tonight," he says. He lets the words linger in her ear. He lets his cheek rest just against her skin and he feels her smile. She doesn't want to, but she smiles. He goes with it. "We had a date."
"If this is about me standing you up . . ." She's going for teasing. She thinks that's what he's doing and she's trying to meet him half way.
She's trying and he loves her.
"No," he turns his cheek toward hers and brushes an experimental kiss a little below her ear. "No. Just sorry we missed it. It was going to be good. Flowers and everything."
"Flowers, huh?"
"Flower, actually . . . Oh." He trails off. "It's . . . that's probably at the bottom of the giant hole in front of the precinct."
"Well," she says dryly. "There's a metaphor."
"No." He nips at her earlobe for that. "Not a metaphor. Stop that."
"Fine. Not a metaphor." She's thinking now. He can practically hear it. She's trying to figure him out. She won't though. This is the kind of stupid she'll never figure out. "So . . . we take a raincheck on this date?"
"I think we should still have it." He pulls his hand back. He taps the top of the bubble once. "For you."
She tries to look back at him. She twists her neck to give him one of her patented WTF? looks, but he kisses her cheek and nudges her gaze back down.
She picks up the bubble and gives it an experimental shake. The ring thuds around inside. She shakes it again and nods like she's figured something out.
He wonders what, but he can't wait for her to tell him. His heart is pounding again. He's excited now. There's no going back and he's excited.
"Beckett," he says impatiently.
He reaches for the bubble, but she pulls it away.
"Is it mine or not?" she snaps.
"Yours." He kisses her neck. Her ear. Her jaw. "Yours."
"Then you wait."
"Yes." He laughs, and it might be the tiniest bit hysterical. "I'll wait as long as it takes."
She finally pops the bubble in half and tips the ring out on to her palm. She's the kind of speechless he's only seen once or twice and he wishes he could see her face better. It would be perfect if he could see her face, but it's pretty damned perfect with her cheek against his and the tiny sounds of consternation she's making.
"Did you . . ." she starts and breaks off. She tries to look back at him, but it's not really doable. She stares down at the ring. "Did you win this at skeeball?"
"Oh! I wish!" He laughs again and it's definitely a little hysterical this time. A little hysterical and a lot relieved. No going back. "Nothing as manly as skeeball. Just four hard-earned quarters in the florist's gum ball machine."
"Gum ball machine," she repeats. She's lost.
It occurs to him that he's not explaining himself very well and she's completely lost. He loves it a little bit. It's mean. She has a concussion. But he loves that she's trying to figure it out, and he loves that it's stupid enough that she can't.
"Before you got shot," he tells her like it's a hint. "We had a date. We were supposed to talk. And I got you flowers and a ring before you got shot."
"A ring." She goes still. It doesn't seem to have occurred to her that it's a ring. It's ring from a gum ball machine, but a ring nonetheless and she goes still. "Castle. I . . . what?"
What?
The question pulls him up short.
What?
His mind is a blank. For three terrible seconds his mind is a blank and then the words come.
"I don't want this to end. Ever." He starts with that and he's satisfied. It's the truest thing and a good beginning. "I love you and I can't see my life from here without you in it."
That's true, too. It's satisfying and a kind of ease settles over him at saying the words and knowing she hears them. She hears them and he feels the heat of her skin and the way her pulse jumps and he wishes he could stay in this moment for a while, but there's more. There's more, and there's no going back now.
"I knew that this morning. I knew that when I asked you to go out with me tonight. And I knew that when you got shot and when I knew you were ok."
"So you bought me a ring from a gum ball machine." She sounds baffled. She's definitely stuck on the ring, but she sounds baffled, rather than aghast or annoyed or any of a number of other things she might be, and he takes it as a hopeful sign.
"Better safe than sorry, right?" He reaches for her left hand. He sweeps his thumb over her knuckles, lingering over her bare fourth finger. "Kate, I'm not asking . . . anything. I don't know what you want me to ask. Or what you don't."
"What do you want?" she asks quietly, and he's not expecting it.
He should have. Of course he should have, but he stumbles a second time and some of the giddiness leaves him. It's probably for the best, but he misses it. He misses the giddy certainty that it's well past time he do something stupid.
"I don't want this to end," he says slowly. He comes back to that. The truest thing. "It's not . . . it's less important to me how we do that. What that means."
"Less important," she echoes, and it's another question. Another one he should have been ready for.
"I want to marry you." He says it and it's true, so he guesses he was ready for that one. He was all along and the only thing he can do is tell her and see where it takes them. He says it again, because he might as well. "I want to be married to you."
"Did you know that . . . before?"
"Before?" There's something in her voice he doesn't quite recognize. He doesn't know what she's asking.
"Before you started telling anyone who would listen that I'm your wife."
She's teasing him. His heart comes to a full and complete stop, then thankfully starts again. She's teasing him.
He buries his face against her neck. "You're not a nice person, Kate Beckett. Did you know that?"
"I think that's a question you should be asking yourself, Castle." She holds the ring up. She twists it in the dim glow. "It seems like something you should know about the person you want to marry."
He wants to leave it like this. Part of him wants to leave it with her fingers folding around the silly ring and her cheek pressed against his. He wants to fall asleep together, further along than they were. Still in motion, even if they're wandering.
But he does something stupid instead.
He unfolds her fingers and waits for the ring to drop into his palm. He eases her forward and shifts his other arm from her shoulders to her waist. He slides her left hand into his.
"Kate, I mean it." He fiddles with the ring in his right palm. "I want to marry you, but it's not . . . it doesn't have to be soon. It' doesn't have to be ever . . . If it's not what you want, then however this doesn't end . . . I can live with however we make that happen."
She nods. She spreads her fingers like she's picturing it. She turns their hands over so his is on top, like she's picturing that, too. His ring and hers and he can't resist. He flips their hands over and slides the ring on her fourth finger.
It fits. It's giant and ugly and she can hardly bend that finger at the knuckle, but it fits exactly and she gives a delighted little laugh.
She holds it up for him to admire and he thinks it's enough.
But she holds it up for him to admire and words come with it.
"Me too. I think."
He goes still and the words come again. Louder this time and more of them.
"I want to marry you, too. Not . . . right away. I don't think right away?"
"Doesn't have to be, Kate," he whispers. "We can wander a while."