Beyond the Storm
contains possible SPOILERS for February 4th's 'Recoil' (though I've only seen the promo that aired after the episode)
a tribute to cartographical for her fic '(love song, with two goldfish)'
The horse's pain never imagines a house beyond the storm.
-The Rain of the Ice, Eric Baus
The Horse
Kate studies him as he approaches: hair fixed after she ran her fingers through it before she left this morning, maroon shirt open at the collar, scarf threaded behind the lapels of his black wool coat. Those nice jeans she keeps putting her hands into the back pockets of - no wonder he keeps wearing them - and the toes of his Italian leather loafers.
He's giving her that secret smile, knowledge and contentment she can read in his eyes, and she stays where she is for a moment longer, her own eyes probably the same.
Castle steps onto the curb and she goes to meet him, takes the coffee he offers with that leer of I know all about you now, and she doesn't even mind. She lets the travel mug warm her fingers as they head for the crime scene, the cup pressed against her abdomen as she hunches her shoulders against the wind.
Castle's light hand at her back ushers her ahead of him into the tenement building. His head tilts to her, not far today since she's wearing her heeled boots, and he listens with only a few comments.
She offers the homicide like a story now.
It's taken her four years to figure it out, but she builds it layer by layer, more journalist than novelist because she hates to bury the lead, but she sees how he likes that too.
The details come quickly enough - male, 28, shot close range, bled to death - but as they survey the scene Castle picks up on what setting she doesn't give: crumbling apartment building, cramped one-bedroom with a bare overhead bulb, stove door open for heat, hand-me-down furniture.
They begin detailing the rest of the story together, plot lines back and forth, oh, what if coming thick between them, their bodies moving to the rhythm of their peculiar kind of love.
Just because she is watching today, doesn't make it any less natural, any less thrilling.
Them.
The Pain
Same fight, new spin.
A little more desperation on his part this time because their last fight about her mother's case had only killed off fantasies, had only broken possibilities - not realities.
Now if she kicks him out of her apartment, now if he walks out on her, it's so much more. It's her bed and her heart he leaves behind, it's his home and his love she rejects.
He thinks she feels it too. Because her words are tinged with a franticness, a plea for him to understand that he's never heard before.
"You can't do this, Kate," he says, the terrible certainty of it like a fist around his guts.
"He's proven that he's beyond the reach of the law," she croaks back, her throat working. She's not crying, not yet, but he thinks it's a close thing. "Castle, please. There's nothing left to do, no other way to stop him."
"You can't do this," he echoes again, all his words hollow.
"If I don't, they will find a way to bury me."
"The deal-"
"You've seen how well that worked for Montgomery, for Smith. Deals don't last. Promises are nothing. Either I do this or he holds a sword to my neck for the rest of my life. I will never be safe."
He shakes his head, but she's vibrating with an intensity that he realizes isn't fury.
She's not angry with him.
She's afraid.
He doesn't know how to reach for her, but she loosens her fists and takes a halting step towards him. She doesn't come any farther, but her eyes burn on his.
"I can't - can't move forward without this finished, Castle."
That wall again. Is this more infuriating rubble that's blocking their way? Still?
"Kate," he grits out and scrapes a hand over his face. "Kate, I think you've proved that we don't have to solve your mother's case for you to-"
"Not for me," she says quickly, and it's another step to match. "It's not just for me. It's for - us. We can't - how can we build on this if there's always a man out there ready to take it all away?"
He blinks, stunned and disoriented by her switch of perspective, not sure he can follow.
"Castle, we can't be - us. We can't - I can't have that, can't have what I want knowing this man will do whatever it takes to keep me silenced. I don't know what future you've already written for us, what that story looks like, but he could rip it away. He'd do it the moment our guard was down. Our future is-"
She halts and it hits him finally. What she's saying. What's she envisioned. What she's afraid of.
Not just that she could lose him. Not just that this will cost them. But that the cost might one day be one she absolutely can't pay.
That the cost of letting Bracken go free with only a desperate bluff to keep them protected might one day mean her child's life.
"But killing him," he groans, drops his head into his hands.
A future paid in blood.
A life for a life.
"You have to be with me on this," she whispers.
He can't.
The House
Her pulse pounds so hard in her body that her wrist throbs with it, her gun hand tremoring at her side. At rest.
Finally.
Castle ignores all hope of keeping up appearances and wraps both arms around her in a crushing embrace. She lets her forehead find his neck and buries her face into his chest, her gun trapped at her side, her heart unsyncopated to his so that it is a constant pressure of beats between them.
"You're okay," he's saying roughly.
She's a little broken inside, she thinks, but she's okay.
She nearly killed the senator. She nearly let him get killed. She nearly-
"You're okay," he says again, holding her tighter now and his voice practically gone. Was he yelling for her? She doesn't remember.
The ambulance is screaming away with the man she shot in defense of the senator's life, the ambulance is carrying it all away, but somehow it still remains.
She saved his life.
"You're okay," he says again, his fingers digging tight into her ribs and shoulder as he holds her.
She lays her cheek against his chest and lets her lungs work in complement to his, inhaling every time he exhales.
She never imagined she'd be defending William Bracken's life.
Or that it would feel. . .so powerful.
To know he was hers for that moment of clarifying terror, to hold his life in the balance and feel the scale tipping, to struggle for it in the long night of her soul, and then to know now he owes her.
She's okay. But.
This is something entirely new.
Now what?
The Storm
He pushes his fingers to her skin and skims the form of her.
She laughs and stills his touch, rolls him over so she can sit astride him, her thighs flashing pale and blue in the dark room. He loves the way she feels; he's so caught up in the way she feels, alive, and he grips her hips as wildness vibrates through him.
Hard enough to bruise.
She's already bruised. Few more won't hurt.
She saved a man's life today.
She presses her palms to his chest and rides, her eyes unable to keep hold of his, but that's okay, he can rein it in for her, he can keep her moving, he can do all the work if this is what he sees over him, if she's the one gasping his name.
He reaches up and tangles a hand in her hair, pushing it back to see more of that expressive face. She groans and falls down over him and it is just a slow and hot and smooth canter of their hips.
He presses his mouth to her jaw, her lips, always deeper, and she hooks her knee at his thigh and rolls them over once more. A jarring landing, and she moans; he has to grit his teeth and take a moment to keep the hoof-beat of his heart from stampeding right out of his chest.
Their foreheads kiss, mouths open and not quite touching, and then they gallop, together, in sync like so many other things, a tight and fast race to the finish.
Beyond
"He thinks I've proven myself," she says quietly, shaking her head.
Castle shifts from foot to foot and tries not to interrupt.
"He thinks I've shown my loyalty, that I'm the same as every other corrupt cop he's taken. He's trying to give me money."
He wants to laugh. It seems impossible a situation and yet here they are.
Three days ago he was begging her not to assassinate Bracken.
Now she's turning down dirty money from the man.
Her fingers twitch against her thigh like she might be going for her gun. He sinks down to her desktop and watches her pace.
"He tried to bribe me," she mutters again.
"Well, he did say that it was more like a thank you," Castle deadpans.
She jerks her eyes to him in such a flaming sense of indignation that he can't hold it. And he laughs.
Kate blows out a slow breath - he at least managed to unwind her tension one degree - and then she comes to sit beside him on her desk, their thighs touching.
"So now he thinks you're on his side," Castle murmurs, shifting his hand from his own knee to hers, a brief stroke, before withdrawing. "This is a good position to be in. And I wonder if. . ."
"What?" she asks quietly. Listening to him now, ready to hear his advice.
He lifts his pinky finger so that he can stroke the outside of her knee now, thinking outside the circles he's making. For once his thoughts don't circle each other.
"Castle, what?" she says again, a little more urgently, like she needs him to be right about this.
"I wonder if you should tell Gates. Make it official what the situation is, keep it quiet. I think as former IA, she knows how to keep an investigation off the books."
"Oh," she murmurs, eyes blinking at him, her body leaning away as if she has to see him better. "I never . . .that could work."
"That could eventually send him to prison," Castle adds.
"Eventually."
"Not a sure thing," he admits.
"But it's more than what we had. It's a place to start." She presses her shoulder to his and they sit side by side in front of the half-erased murder board, letting the silence settle deep over them like snowdrifts.
"Let's go home," he says finally, always the one to say it first. He gathers his coat from the chair and then hers as well.
She hums a moment, not moving, and then lifts up from the desk and turns to him, lets him help with her jacket. She snags the lapels of his coat, pulling them closed, and then smooths down the material for him.
"Those. . .stories we tell," she murmurs, her eyes seeking his. "Those dreams. Visions of the future."
"Yes," he affirms. "About us."
"About us," she echoes, the faint shade of a smile haunting her face.
"Has that changed?" he asks quietly. Because it has for him. They fought this time too, but they fought for each other. And for their future. And found a new way, a new path.
"Those stories have a place to start now," she says clearly. Decisive.
"Once upon a time," he begins.
She takes his hand in the middle of the precinct and walks out with him at her side.