mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother's smile
-whose only secret all creation sings
- from spiralling ecstatically this, ee cummings
December 1: Cataglottism
"Morning."
Castle presses his mouth to her cheekbone, his lips brushing the silvery line that Tyson left there, hand coming up to cup her elbow.
Kate sighs, sinks into him just a little, her breath a cloud at his neck. "Hey."
He passes her a coffee cup, covers her hand with his own to wrap her fingers around it, make sure she has it securely. Last week she'd been ruminating over the case when he'd handed it to her and when he let go she dropped it; the coffee pooling in the snow like a crime scene all of its own.
He steps back from her, adjusts his scarf where she's nudged it aside with her nose, trying to find some warmth, some shelter from the wind that cuts bone deep. "What do we have?"
She half-turns back to him, the slope of her nose a siren song. "Looking like a suicide so far, but we can't be sure just yet."
"Oh. Poor guy." She starts striding away and he jogs a little to catch up, feeling ridiculous. He just keeps getting distracted by the condensation of her breath, the tops of her ears wind bitten and tender-looking, crying out for the healing balm of his mouth.
Kate crouches down next to Lanie, pulling on latex gloves as she goes. She won't wear real gloves, knitted ones, and every time she laces icy fingers with his he yelps, and every time she tells him it's too much hassle to keep taking them off whenever she has to look at evidence.
He's pretty sure she just wants an excuse to keep holding his hand.
"He definitely came out of the window, but whether he fell or was pushed I can't tell just yet." Lanie looks up at him, shoots a pointed glance from Beckett's coffee cup to his own.
He swallows, takes an involuntary step back, clutching his cup to his chest like that can save him from Lanie's wrath. "Uh, hey Lanie."
"I get that Beckett's your girlfriend and you're being all cute getting coffee for her," she stands up, jabs him with her pen. "But she's not the only one that needs the warmth and it's not like you can't afford it."
Kate raises an eyebrow at her friend, mouth dragged up at the corners with amusement. "Lanie, you don't even drink coffee."
"Yes, but I'd appreciate the sentiment."
Castle rubs at his arm with his free hand, shoots Kate a look like she'll help but of course she's laughing at him, her eyes too bright for a crime scene in December. "Okay, okay. Next scene, I'll bring you tea or something. But you'll have to text me and let me know it's going to be you handling the body. I don't want to accidentally buy a drink for Perlmutter."
"You got it, Writer Boy. Now, I gotta get this guy back to the morgue. Any longer and I'm gonna have to wait for him to thaw before I can open him up." Lanie laughs, waves her gloved fingers at Kate in farewell.
Castle hovers, his thigh just skirting Beckett's shoulder as she crouches next to their victim, her hands tender as she brushes snow from the guy's face. After a moment she stretches a hand up to him and he takes it, tugs her to her feet. "Where are the guys?"
"Inside, looking for anything in the apartment that indicates forced entry. He didn't have any ID but the landlord recognized him when he found the body. Anthony Ellis, forty six, no family that the landlord's aware of." Kate blinks, the compassion-heavy drag of her eyelids making her lashes brush her cheeks.
He stands at her back a moment, watches the body as it's loaded into the ambulance, feels her list into him. He kisses the shell of her ear, hopes no one from CSU is watching. "You okay?"
"Hmm?" she turns her head, nose brushing over his cheek. "Yeah. Just- suicides are tough."
He waits, but she doesn't have any more to give him. "I know. Come on; let's get back to the precinct."
CSU sweep Ellis' whole apartment, find only his own fingerprints. And it guts her.
That was Kate, once. That solitude. She's pretty sure that if someone had swept her apartment when she was fresh from the academy they wouldn't have found evidence of anyone visiting, any sign of life apart from Kate's own basic functions.
She's ruminating over that at the board, where she's tacked Ellis' picture anyway because he deserves at least as much care as her murder victims, when Castle comes up to stand beside her, his hip bumping against her side.
He sits, his hand covering hers on the desk, thumb carving out the valley between her middle and ring fingers again and again. "Definitely a suicide?"
"Yeah." She turns to face him, his eyes knocking the breath right out of her. "I, uh-" Come on, Kate. Breathe. They're just eyes, for God's sake. "No signs of forced entry and CSU found a suicide note. He had no family, his boss doesn't know of any friends."
His hand moves upward, his fingers braceleting her wrist. "So now you just have paperwork to fill out?"
"Yeah. Why, you trying to escape?" She grins, her tongue slipping out between her teeth. He bit her, once, when she did that. It didn't exactly make her want to stop.
He pokes her side, travels up her sternum to curl his finger in the hollow at the base of her throat, stroke out and along her clavicle. "No, course not. I just have plans for this evening."
"Plans involving me?" She hopes so. It is Christmas, after all, and even if she's not one to get excited over decorations and lights, she does so want to spend the season with people she loves.
He cups her cheek for a moment and then his hand is falling away, folding into his lap. "All my plans involve you."
He nudges at her, his hands bracketing her hips, peppering kisses to the side of her neck. She swats at him, uses her key to open his front door, turning back to grin at him.
He remembers the first time she ever smiled at him, how it felt like he'd tugged on some human string in the cat's cradle of her heart. And now all the time she lights up for him, her skin limned with love.
They get inside and she turns to face him, her mouth glancing across his, the so-familiar taste of her somehow still shocking. "Come with me," he says, a wash of breath against her cheek.
She grins, laces her fingers through his. "Where are we going?"
"My bedroom."
"Oh. Already? I was hoping you'd feed me." She smirks, tugging on his hand to get him moving. There's no hesitation, no trace of annoyance in her eyes.
He laughs at that, shakes his head at her. "I am feeding you."
He gets her into his room, has to wait for her to take her shoes off first and then battle with her, push her until her socked feet slide along the hardwood floor, but he gets her there. She stops in the doorway and he knows she's seen it, her body stilling under his hands.
"What is that? Did you bring me here to show me your advent calendar?" She turns to face him, that crease between her eyes that sometimes unmakes him but right now is mostly just delicious.
He kisses her, and God, she's so soft and warm and how did he ever get by without her? She slides her tongue along his, hums a sigh into his mouth, her hands cradling his cheeks. When he pulls back she's smiling, those gorgeous parentheses around her mouth that he sees so often now.
"No. I brought you here to show you yours." He tightens his grip on her waist, some distant part of him in awe at how he circumnavigates her even as most of him prepares for her to pull back.
Only, she's still smiling at him. "You bought me an advent calendar?"
"No. I made it for you." He lets her go, has to battle with the stupid thing a moment before he can get it off the wall but then he has it, can hold it up for her.
It's pretty basic, felt the color of moss, in the shape of a Christmas tree. Twenty four rectangular pockets and then a gold star at the top that serves as the twenty fifth pocket, but the look on her face-
Wow. It wipes his whole brain, his tongue suddenly this useless, heavy thing. "It, uh- there's chocolate. And something else. Oh, and there's another something else but they don't fit in there so I have them safe. You can take this to your apartment if you want, though."
"No." She's coming towards him, her fingers fluttering at the material, so reverent. "Can I leave it here?"
He brushes her hair back from her cheek to better see her eyes, cards a hand through her curls. "That means you'll have to come over here every day."
"Yeah."
He wouldn't let her have her chocolate until after dinner, and now she's deliciously full and sated, her whole body thrumming with a visceral awareness of him. His hands all over, his bare skin kissing hers.
He hasn't stopped touching her all day.
"You ready to open your first door?" He wriggles his feet, his toes pushing at the underside of her thigh.
She shifts, the hard ridge of his foot trapped under her. "They're not doors."
"Fine" He swats at her, gets his hands somehow underneath so he can tip her off of him and stand up. "You ready to open your first pouch?"
"You don't open a pouch." She takes the hand he holds out for her, can taste the sly grin slipping across her face.
He rolls his eyes (really, Castle?) and does this half-bow that puts his head at the exact right height for her to nudge her hip into his crown. He stands, rubs at his scalp and pouts at her. "Are you ready to look inside and then extract the contents of your first pouch?"
She smiles, shakes her head at him. "Let's go open some doors."
He stops her right as she's reaching out for the first pouch, his hand gentle at her bicep. "There's the chocolate like I said. And also a notecard with a word and its meaning on it."
Her head whips back around to face him, her gaze searching his face for some clue as to what that could even mean. He shrugs at her, this little-boy grin painted across his face. "I'm a writer and you're my muse. Stands to reason that I'd give you words. Just don't freak out, okay?"
She nods, her lower lip caught between her teeth. It takes her a moment to prepare for this and then she's sliding two fingers inside, fishing the notecard out first because she'll take words over chocolate any day, her eyes immediately drawn to the so-familiar handwriting.
And then she laughs, this bright, full-bodied thing that just bursts out of her, tastes effervescent on her tongue. "Are you kidding me?"
He grins, tugs her against him with an arm low around her waist, his tongue slipping past her lips before she can even process the sharp jolt of his hips meeting hers. He kisses her there in his bedroom with his notecard crushed between them like it's his last chance, his tongue travelling over the roof of her mouth, mapping the topography of her teeth.
She's panting when he pulls back, her chest heaving against his. He smirks, delighted with himself. "Can I give you your other thing now?"
"More? You're spoiling me." She laughs, reaching behind herself to fumble blindly for the pouch, get at her chocolate.
Oh, huh. Hershey's Kisses.
She unwraps it, slides it past her lips, watches him watching her. It takes him a moment but he gets it together, shakes his head and goes to his nightstand, gets something out of his drawer.
He holds it behind his back, shifting from foot to foot. "Some of these connections are a little farfetched. But I think you'll work out what I'm getting at."
He hands her the gift. Not wrapped, so there's no moment of suspense, no heady anticipation, but it's still good.
"Oh Castle. Like that first case, right? Like your book."
She tugs him in to her, her nose buried against his neck, fingers carding through his hair. Her gift carefully not between them.
A sunflower. She doesn't even want to start thinking about how on earth he found one in December because if she starts thinking about that then she'll start thinking about how he's given her twenty five pieces of his heart, one at a time, and she's really not sure she knows how to take care of it.
Cataglottism:
(n.) kissing with tongue