Note: None of these characters are mine.
Settle
Kate flops back onto the couch with a sigh. Castle had shown up at her door that evening with dinner and an idea about the cold case they'd read through that afternoon. By the time he walked out the door, she was practically vibrating with tension. She can't concentrate anymore; not when he's around anyway.
She picks up the book she'd tossed aside when he knocked, flips it open, and takes a deep breath. It's his smell that's done it to her. She always associated men with odor and sweat or too much cologne. But not him. He smells like soap and books. She hadn't noticed it for so long.
This summer, after she finally left her private pity party and started trying to live a little again, she opened up a book for the first time since the gun went off. As she read through the first one, a nagging started in the back of her head. It grew more insistent through the second book, and even more so through the third. Book after book she tore through. She told herself she was just passing the time, but she told herself a lot of things those days. She was looking for something, but couldn't quite put her finger on what.
And then it hit her. She was looking for him. It was like when the salty breeze hits you when you're miles from the ocean. It's not the ocean itself, not even close, and though it makes you miss the ocean all the more, it's comforting to have a little piece of it, just for a moment. The smell of the books as she read, the smell that lingered in her memory as she closed each one to pick up the next – it was a smell she was all too familiar with. It was his.
After that, she paid attention everywhere. The bookstore she and her father drove to on the weekends. The little library in the town square. The shelves of books she and her mother had collected, lining the walls of her father's cabin. Each and every deep breath she took, new books and books dusty with age, they all smelled like him.
They say smell plays a prominent role in taste. Plug your nose, and a potato and an apple taste the same. She may have been devouring words, page after page, book after book, but it was the smell that made them mean something. Without it, they were just words. But with it, they were a connection, however distant, to the days she'd sat by his side. It amazes her to think that for three years she breathed him in, and for three years she didn't notice he smelled like the home and safety of the pages she'd always taken solace in. What amazes her more is that, now that she's noticed it, noticed him, she's still too foolish to make him hers. Here she is, hiding behind books, just like she's always done. Curling up in the crisp pages that smell like him, when she should be curling up in him instead.
A knock on the door pulls Kate from her thoughts. She shuts the book on her lap and tosses it on the couch as she crosses to the door. She opens the door, and he's there. But he always is, isn't he?
"What do you want, Castle?"
"You…but for now, I'll settle for my bag." He points behind her, and she looks where he's pointing, more to cover the hitch in her breath than anything else.
He winks and slips past her, crossing the room to retrieve his briefcase lying underneath her kitchen table.
She glances at the book lying on the couch, then at the books lining her walls. He doesn't smell like them anymore. They smell like him. How long before they fade? How long before she can't find him in them anymore?
"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to settle, Castle?"
She flips the lock on the door.
Thanks for reading!