Reverie 2
A river of blue ink, awash in blue, the drowning edges of white.
The frame of lashes. The window of her world framed in the dark lines of her eyelashes.
The window opens so slowly, so difficult to move.
You can figure it out when you're better.
Her eyes slip closed again, the blue words fading.
Sunlight tears open her eyelids, removes the stitches of darkness that have been keeping her under.
Her throat aches.
She moves her tongue, slits her eyes against the light. Her head throbs with her heartbeat, a ragged and dragging rhythm that might just shake her whole body to dust.
She turns her head to the side to ease away from the light, finds her vision restored, somewhat.
Blue lines down her elbow. Veins? No. Something blurred.
Ink. Across her skin. Confusing. Can't think why words have appeared like veins along her arm.
The violent and overthrowing beat of her heart makes her sick; it rises up in her; her eyes flicker open.
Castle. The back of his hand in hers, his face against the mattress; blue lines. All blue lines.
She can just make it out-
It's too much for her.
She wakes coughing violently, can't breathe, feels her heart pounding. Her body curls in on itself, agony flashing through her skin and peeling back her muscles.
His hands, his hands on her, and the quivering and brutal attack begins to subside even as she falls apart, a jumble of broken sticks and shattered glass.
It hurts to breathe.
Tears leak out of her eyes by the time it's over, her head thrown back, gasping, fat drops streaming down her cheeks.
"Breathe," he's murmuring against her cheek, holding on to her.
She opens her swimming eyes, sees nurses, a doctor, the man gentling her and laying her back against the bed.
"Castle," she grits out, her voice a jagged and fractured thing.
He pulls back and smiles at her, something too bright.
"Hey there. They took the tube out. You okay?"
She doesn't know what he means.
"Where-?" She closes her eyes again, can't keep them open.
"Rest, Kate."
"What-"
"You're in the hospital. You were shot. The doctor took you off the vent."
She takes a longer breath, still shallow, finds her body settling. Remembers, suddenly, the thing she saw when she woke.
"Why are my arms blue?" she murmurs.
He gives a little laugh that makes her open her eyes again, see him clearly. Worn, lines in his face she's never seen, a sheen to his hair that means he hasn't showered or he just woke up. The nurses are fluttering just outside her ability to concentrate.
"My fault."
"Mm'kay." Her eyes follow the line of his eyes to the crook of her elbow, the run of ink. "You wrote on me?"
He holds his hand up, palm out, spreads his fingers wide. "I wrote on me."
His hand comes down to wrap around her forearm, obscuring the lines, the fading ink. Oh.
Kate closes her eyes, just a moment, just to gather her energy, then slides her other hand up, looks at the already-dissolving words pressed against her skin. Reads them.
He wants to be near; he has to be near.
He's not here now. He's not here. That's okay.
Kate curls on her side and pulls her arms up, knowing exactly how it looks, knowing what it says about her state of mind, but it feels safer this way. It feels safer in a tight knot, as small a target in the bed as she can make herself. Safer.
After a moment, the silence and the aloneness work their way down. She absorbs the stillness until it becomes a breathing part of her.
She opens her eyes, sees her arms shielding her head, lowers them. Her knees loosen, her back unclenches.
She will be okay.
Everything hurts, but she will be okay.
Kate catches sight of the blue trail across the inside of her wrist, up her arm, wonders how far it goes, how much skin he's touched. She lifts her knee up, slides a pale and weak leg out from under the sheet.
No blue. Okay.
Her chest hurts; her heart's rhythm feels forced and unnatural. She twists her wrist and tries to read the story he wrote all over himself, the story he's transferred to her, the melting blue beginning to disappear and the dots of her pores stained with ink: I've known for awhile.
He has? How much has her heart bled out in front of him?
Breathe. She does, slowly, finds her chest strain against the depth but she pushes past it, keeps going, breathes in. Already better. She pushes her legs under the sheet, slides to her back.
Kate reaches for the tray beside the bed, her fingers snagging the edge despite the way it pulls on the muscles in her chest. The tray creeps towards her, the force of her seeking hand rather small and puny. She spies napkins covered in a liberal blue, words made soft by the medium.
Her fingers tremble as she lifts her arm, shaking, grabs the pieces of his story to read.
Umbrella in the rain, a startle of fingers, short hair, musing aloud: he can't help himself, brushes his lips over her, I don't know what we are, Kate.
A story about her. Tantalizingly unfinished.
The door snicks open and she jumps; the napkins flutter, her heart palpitates and trips over the images she can't keep hold of, can't keep out.
"Beckett?"
Castle. Just her partner.
He lays his hand over her knee, his mouth parted. "What-?"
She plucks the napkins off her chest, lifts them towards him. He takes them, rubs his fingers over the bleeding words.
"Ah."
"Where's - the rest?"
His eyes avoid her for a moment, and then he sits down heavily on her bed. Her body is tight with the effort of balance - walking the line between one agony and the next - and she stiffens on a wave of unsettled pain.
"Sorry," he mutters, his hand hovering over her hip. "The rest is written on my soul."
"What?"
"The sole. Of my shoe, Kate."
He lifts a foot and crosses it over his knee; she sees blue ink in long loping lines, from heel to toe. She nudges forward, closer to the edge of the bed, sees the ink staining the floor as well, the blue half-moons of letters against the white tile.
"I can't read it," she says. "What does it say?"
He traces his finger over the white sole of his canvas shoes, the cuff of his jeans pristine, the wide palm at his heel. "It says. It says I want you to wake up."
"I'm awake."
"It says I want you to be okay."
She's silent at that, reaches her hand across the sheet to hook her finger in his back pocket. His soft sigh makes her close her eyes, drift on the sound of his exhale, a slow boat on the water.
"Open your eyes and show me."
Kate startles awake with a jerk of her arms, feels him catch her, keep her steady. "What?"
"I was just reading it to you. But if you don't-"
"No. I do. Can you even tell what it says anymore?"
He shrugs and his hand floats down her shoulder, the outside of her arm to her elbow. It's so practiced, he does it with such ease, that she knows he's made a habit of it, he's sat by her bedside and stroked her arm until the blue ink ran.
His thumb rests in the crook of her elbow, a pressure against the vein. She bends her arm and traps him there, curls up a little so that her knees touch the outside of his thigh, bracketing him, a parenthesis around the tangent of his body.
"I should write you a new one," he says finally. "Now that you're awake."
She spreads out her fingers in the sheets, then flips her arm over and reads the words staining her white skin:
"He sees it all."
Kate lifts her eyes to him, reads the same words in his gaze. His palm slides back up her arm, over her shoulder, and settles in the warmth at her neck, his fingers in the ratty knot of her hair.
"I'll write it while you sleep."
So it's true. He does see it all.
"I don't want to read it," she says, her cheek against the pillow. There is no position that actually feels painless; she rotates from one side to another to her back; she moves her own body and refuses to stop moving it, despite the pull that curls sharp nails in her chest.
He is doing his best not to hover; she sees that. She gives back what she can, when she can.
"Okay. I'll just-"
"You read it to me," she says instead, picking at the edge of the pillowcase with her finger. "I can't make it through."
"You won't fall asleep while I read?"
"I will, but then I'll dream. And get the end of the story that way."
"Sure you will," he murmurs. She closes her eyes when he slips his hand to her elbow and curls his fingers. This is not who they are, but these are extenuating circumstances, and she's in the hospital with a broken heart, and perhaps, so is he.
"Read," she commands, still with her eyes closed, and his hand departs. She sighs with the lightness of being, her body both drifting up and settled heavily. Medication. Good medication.
"Time for everything else later. Just let me love you."
Her eyes startle open.
He's still in the chair, looking down at the pages in his hands as if he didn't just say it.
Maybe he didn't. Maybe she only read it, read between the lines of the story they've written.
"Castle."
His eyes lift to hers.
She slides her hand to the edge of the bed, spreads her fingers out, beckoning. He leans forward and takes her hand; their eyes don't meet.
"Time for everything else later," she says softly.
"I hope so," he says, and his fingers slack against hers. "I hope there's time."
She steals his laptop with her father's help. Castle is down the hall getting more coffee; he's remarkably calm even with so much caffeine swirling in his bloodstream. He needs to go home soon, needs to start living his life.
She wants to read it. Her father hovers quietly, as is his way, and she knows he might not approve. But he says nothing. His mouth is tight with judgment.
"Katie-"
"It's okay. He read me the story, but I fell asleep. I just want to read it. See? It's right here."
Her father hands her the orange juice and she sips it obediently, opening the document on his desktop. Yes, it's the same first four lines she actually heard from his own mouth.
"All right." He strokes the hair back from her cheek. "The nurse said she could help you wash your hair."
"Oh, thanks, Dad." She glances up from the computer in her lap to watch her father arrange the orange juice on the bedside table, the magazines he brought, the vase of flowers. "I feel gross."
"She said it wouldn't be great, but-"
"Better than nothing." She smiles at him; it costs something to make the muscles in her face work right. She is not at all sure why it stretches to the ache in her chest.
"Okay, Katie. I'm going on home. Tomorrow?"
She leans her head forward for the kiss he drops on her forehead, feels the grateful touch of his hand to her cheek. "Tomorrow."
"He gonna stay all night again?"
"Not if I can help it," she murmurs, and this time the smile is easier. She watches her father leave and then settles back to the laptop. The door closes softly, the silent hum of the fans is a calming white noise that keeps time to the rhythm of his words.
It's a pretty story, an umbrella in the rain. Two people. A gentle kiss, a stroke of hands.
And then a confession in the trembling rain:
I want you to be my wife. I want you to marry me. I want you. Inside. At my side. In my hands. Alive. I love you, Kate. Don't leave me.
He stands still just inside the door, two coffees in his hands, his eyes on the laptop.
"Wrong story," she says softly.
"Different story," he says instead, steps inside.
He does not look calm; he doesn't sound calm. She's never seen him sick with fear before.
Not true. She has. The idea that this warrants the same amount of fear makes her pause, study the lay of the land.
Castle hesitates at the chair; she gestures to it, and he sits, places the coffee on the table. He clasps his hands, doesn't even look at the laptop, doesn't ask for it back.
Don't leave me.
Right.
Yes.
"Want this?" she asks, her hand gesturing to the laptop.
"Yes," he says intently, his head coming up, a blinding flare of hope.
Oh. Oh, she meant - not - she meant the laptop.
He sits back, drops his hand to the armrest, his eyes avoid hers. He clears his throat. "The laptop. Yes."
She rests her hands over the computer, curls her fingers when he stands again and reaches for it.
She should offer what she can. "Not just the laptop?"
He stills.
His eyes lift slowly to hers.
The melange of anger and despair meets her, pushes words out of her mouth.
"If we make a list," she swallows hard. She is too unbalanced for this, too cramped with pain.
"Make a list?" The bewilderment rocks him back into the chair.
"I think it's likely that I'd want at least half the things on your list."
"Half?"
"Given time." She smooths her hand over the laptop. "I love the story."
"Are those two separate things, or is it conditional?"
She lays her head back on the pillow. "Can we stop talking in circles? I can't follow it, Castle. I can't keep up."
"If I say it out loud, and you say no, can we pretend it was a by-product of some really good painkillers?"
She huffs and opens her eyes, turns her head to look at him. He is serious. This is serious. As serious as her bleeding heart - this is his bleeding heart.
"Yes."
He nods; his palm rubs his thigh. "I will take anything you give me."
"But want?"
"I want you to love that story."
"I do," she admits. "You always have a way with words."
"I want you to want that story."
She runs her fingers over a nick in the laptop case, worries her bottom lip with her teeth. "I do."
"With me?"
"Most likely candidate," she says honestly. There is something of relief in knowing that this is all there is, nothing behind the words.
"Is there an election I need to be campaigning for?"
She smiles, lips pulled wide, holds her hand out for him. He looks at it for a moment longer than she'd like, but takes her hand.
"No one else is running, Castle."
"The outcome of the race is kind of inevitable then," he says softly.
"It is. But are we talking in subtext again?" She frowns at him.
"You started it."
She taps the cover of his laptop. "I don't know what to do with you, Castle."
"Do whatever you want. I love you." His voice is quiet, but the certainty is a relief. She's not sure why, just that it makes this easier.
"I don't know what to do with that either."
"That's okay." He stands, his palm meeting hers, and then he sits on the bed beside her, bringing their joined hands to his lap. "I don't need anything from you right now, Kate."
She nods. "I don't have anything to give."
"I know. So far, I seem to be good at pining away quietly."
Kate half smiles at him. "You're not that quiet."
"Ah, no. True."
She slides his laptop towards him. "I could be kissed."
He laughs at her, wipes his hand down his face. "Oh really?"
"It would be nice."
"Yeah, you actually are on the good drugs, aren't you?"
"Yeah." Kate curls a hand over his knee, a rush of ownership. "Doesn't mean it's not true. It's more true-"
He silences her with a brush of his mouth over hers, lips soft and wide, warm.
When he lifts, he smooths the hair away from her eyes, the backs of his fingers curling at her cheek. "I do love you."
She sees that too. She would say something in response, something to reassure him, but she's too tired to try.
Castle doesn't seem to be concerned. He's not smiling but he isn't fearful. Or sad. And that's good.
"Just get better, Kate. Heal. Then we'll talk again. But probably with a lot more subtext."
She grins, even though her eyes are slipping shut. "It's a date."