Beckett lifts her eyes from her computer when she feels the disruption in the bullpen. He is stepping off the elevator with two coffees in his hand; she swears she can smell the wonderful aroma of coffee filling her bedroom. Her bedroom? No. The precinct.
She bites her lip, watches him heading for her.
Castle.
She sees the stunned look in his eyes and knows he's gotten the same Wall of Blue treatment downstairs that she got yesterday when she came in. Even the detectives stop to lay a hand on his shoulder or give him a grateful nod. He's been following her long enough to earn their respect, but now he's one of them. He's proven that - no matter what - he has his partner's back.
Her lips twitch. More ways than one.
When he gets to her desk, Castle hands her a cup of coffee with bewilderment in his eyes, sinks down to his seat. She sees him roll his shoulders, the shimmy of strain on his face. She remembers. . .more than she'd like to. He ripped out of the handcuffs to get to her. To make it stop. Ripped out of them.
She can't imagine what his body must feel like; she has no idea how his thumbs aren't broken. She did discover that he dislocated one thumb and did heavy tissue damage to the other. He doesn't seem to have any trouble reaching out for her though.
"At the risk of sounding entirely too cocky, I think I just got. . .applauded downstairs." He sets his coffee on her desk and lays his hands on his thighs, blinking at her.
"Welcome to the force, Castle," she says, pressing her lips together.
"What?"
"They all know." How you saved my life.
He has no idea what he's done; she sees it in his eyes. While her own consciousness had drifted somewhere above the whole thing, she does still have some of it in her head. Whatever he did, however he did it - most of that is gone. Flashes of memory. But does Castle remember any of it?
He deserves their applause. What Castle did was. . .miraculous.
When she saw, just past his arms, the machete blade lodged in the skull, she was certain the man was dead; he isn't. He survived. And she honestly doesn't know how she feels about that.
"I don't like it," he says softly, and his eyes cut to the detectives still regarding them. It might be awhile before this dies down, before the seriousness of what happened makes way for the inevitable gallows humor.
She watches him shift in the chair. "Are you sure you want to be here today?"
He turns his head back to her, a different kind of confusion on his face. "Where else would I - oh. No. I need to. . .be useful."
Beckett nods; if her body didn't hurt so very much, she might lean over and lay her hand on his knee, maybe even hold his hand.
But her body still hates her.
There is a hearing she has to attend - they have to attend. Castle follows behind her; she is stronger for the presence at her back.
When she opens the court room doors and slides into the bench seat behind the prosecutor's table, the ADA turns around and raises his hand to shake hers. She inclines her head towards him but doesn't offer her hand.
Castle sits just to her left, a thin line of space between them, almost none at all, but enough to keep them from jostling elbows. That is good. Necessary.
The ADA gives her a funny look, shifts to Castle. He glances over at Beckett, then to the prosecutor.
"Can't raise my arms too well; you'll excuse me." But it's not a question. Castle has been to a physical therapist almost every other day for his shoulders; he tore some ligaments. She doesn't think about how.
This might force her to.
When the man shuffles into the court room in leg chains that are clipped to his handcuffs, Beckett feels the shiver that passes through Castle. She lays her hand between them on the bench and touches her finger to his thigh. He takes in a long breath and looks straight ahead, towards the empty witness seat.
Beckett decides not to take his lead. The face that leans over her in her nightmares isn't this face; it's been twisted by the red veil of agony. She studies the man's pitted cheeks, too-bright eyes, the twisted corner of one lip. He is looking back at her as well; he studies. He doesn't seem to see her, only. . .autopsy with his gaze.
That is the face. That is the man. He is just a man.
Without his sharp knives.
When he turns to sit at the defense's table, she is given a brief flash of the nasty, inflamed wound running down the left side of his head, his hair in clumps.
Castle did that. With the machete. The machete meant for her. Castle did that.
She shifts her eyes away, feels everything rising up her throat, swallows hard to keep it down. Not today. She's an NYPD detective; she will do her job; she will testify in the preliminary hearings. Castle will testify. It will be mercifully quick.
The scalpel wound in his right forearm - she saw it yesterday when he rolled his sleeves up in the conference room. A pink pucker. Stitches. The sutures in the top of his thigh are from the filleting knife - when she had the opportunity to see them, she didn't look. She wonders now. Her own, rather superficial scalpel wounds are thin red lines that itch as they heal. Most are all but gone. The fillet wounds are stripes up her thigh, and then a pucker of stitches at the top stripe. Those still throb at night.
Soon. Soon it won't hurt so much.
Castle's left hand drops into his lap; he rubs at his wrist, just above the stitches. Kate reaches over, little flames of warning licking up her sides, and wraps her fingers around his scratching ones. He flashes her a look, part little boy caught out and part desperate man, and she squeezes his hand.
"We can do this," she says quietly. She is proud that her voice never once falters.
Castle keeps his hand in hers on the long walk out of the courthouse. A light touch, just fingers, because he knows that the stitches in her wrists are more irritated than his own, and if *he* feels the need to scratch at them all the time, she's got to be vibrating with the need. She also has some serious bruising. He thinks he still doesn't know the extent.
"My handcuffs weren't faulty," she says, once they are clear of the front doors.
"I heard," he sighs.
"Do you remember how-?"
"No." He pauses a beat, then turns his head to look at her, so strong and determined and unmoved. A rock. She is so. . .amazing. "Do you?"
She shakes her head. "Not. . .pieces. Just pieces."
"I've been. . .seeing a psychiatrist. Only way I could get some sleeping pills," he finally admits.
Kate's fingers twitch in his; when she speaks, he hears the sigh in her voice. "I went back to mine."
Oh God, thank you. He. . .he hasn't known how to bring it up, how to make her understand, but it looks like she already figured it out.
"It helps?"
"Does it help you, Castle?" Heavy sarcasm laces her voice, but her eyes are vulnerable.
"Not every time," he admits. "Sometimes it makes it worse."
She nods. "Did that, in there? Do you think that will make it worse for us?"
"Yes and no." He keeps them walking, heading towards the 12th but hoping they might stop at Remy's first for lunch. The hearing took all of their morning. "Yes, because it was good to tell the story. I needed to tell the story. And no, because I had to sit there in the same room as him."
Kate draws her fingers up into a fist, squeezing his, before releasing to hang loosely together again. "Opposite for me. Yes because I sat in the same room with him, looked in his face, and saw how wrecked he is, how damaged, how powerless. And no because. . .because I had to tell *my* story. Give it words; and words are power."
Castle stops them at the crosswalk, takes that moment to study her - the bruises lingering on her cheekbones, the crisscross of just-now fading red lines at her neck, her collarbone, disappearing down her chest. She wears her everyday clothes, doesn't hide any of it; he took her lead yesterday and rolled up his sleeves when he got hot, just like he would have before.
It was liberating not to care. And yes, people looked at the angry pink skin, the black stitches, they looked. They remembered, which was the worst of it. But he found *he* didn't remember quite so much.
"Next time, I'll tell our story, you face him down. Okay?"
She huffs a breath and tugs him forward into the crosswalk. They both hang back a little to keep away from the crowd; they've learned how to angle their bodies to avoid contact with other people.
Sometimes Alexis forgets and throws her arms around his shoulders. It dropped him to his knees last week.
"How long will you need physical therapy?" she says, once they've crossed to the other side and are out of the flow of heavy traffic.
"Three weeks. Supposedly. They do this really cool thing where they send sonar down into the ligaments and tendons and muscles. At first, it seemed kinda crazy, doing an ultrasound on my shoulders? But, Kate, wow. After they do that - it's like everything tight has relaxed."
"Oh. Ultrasound?"
"Yeah. It's amazing. Not just for pregnant ladies," he jokes, cracking a smile at her. His lips feel stiff at the gesture but when she catches it, her eyes flare, then crinkle at the edges.
It *has* been awhile, he realizes, since he smiled for no real reason.
Even for her.
He attempts a better one, letting it break open his face.
She's staring at him, something coming to life in her eyes, struggling out. "Castle. I'm only going to say this once."
Uh-oh. Don't make jokes about ultrasound?
"That morning you stumbled into the boathouse on the Hudson, that morning you. . .when he chained you up to that hook and said to me He's next and then pulled out his fillet knife-"
He doesn't want to know; he doesn't want to hear this. He needs. . .for it to not fill up his head again.
"I saw everything so clearly. What I told the judge this morning is all factually accurate. But what happened. . .what happened is that I saw my whole life in you, Castle. And all I could think to do was. . .was make it last as long as possible. If I could hold out long enough, then maybe Ryan or Esposito would find you before he could get to you."
He can't move. Can't keep walking down the street like none of this ever happened, like the reason he avoids contact with people is just some stupid sports injury or a work-related accident.
She crowds closer to him, forcing him back against the concrete of the building, people maneuvering around them to get to lunch or back to work, none of them seeing what's really happening here.
"Castle. You saved my life twice that morning. You got him before he could do anything. . .permanent. But when you showed up, you were a reason - the only reason I could see - to live, to keep fighting."
He shuts his eyes, has to breathe, tilts his head back to gulp air. He'd been at his apartment waiting on her for twelve hours that night, that morning. Eight of those she spent being cut open. And this - this foolish, stumbling arrival of his, getting knocked out and trussed up like a slaughtered beast - it was nothing to be proud of.
They are still inches apart, not touching, but he will do what he can.
Castle drops his head down, leans in, and hovers his mouth over hers, their breaths mingling, hot in the winter air. He touches his tongue to her bottom lip, then seals her mouth with his own, tasting her.
I saw my whole life in you.
He sees his whole life in her every day. And has since the day he met her.
Castle makes an appointment with a plastic surgeon weeks in advance, changes his mind at the last minute and gets them both in to his general practitioner. She resists at first.
"What's wrong with going back to-?"
Castle shakes his head. "To the ER? Where we can let some apprentice nurse with a two-year degree dig bits of thread out of our thighs? Out of our wrists? I don't think so."
She shoots him a dark look. "The ones in my thigh are absorbable sutures - dissolvable. They've already started to. . .work their way out."
"Ew."
She bumps his shoulder with a narrowed-eye glare, and then immediately shoots him an apologetic look. Castle shakes his head. "It's better. Hardly felt that."
He leads her towards the bank of elevators in the building where his doctor has his offices. Beckett presses the call button.
"My bruises are just yellow now," she says, giving him a small flicker of a smile.
"Good." She still sports a rainbow of colors, some of which he's managed to see again, fleeting moments on her couch, in his study, moments that go nowhere. They don't touch; they can't.
In the elevator as it glides upward, Castle takes a moment to really look at her. He's only been seeing the wounds lately, but today feels different; she looks different. The bruises around her collarbone, at her cheekbones are gone, her face has some color and flush to it, probably from the winter wind. Christmas comes at the end of the month and she looks. . .ready.
He hopes so; he's ready to be a different person too. Less. . .scarred. More whole. A lot of that depends on Kate, but they've spent so much time being careful not to touch each other, not to make the pain worse (because who else knows what this feels like than his partner?), that he doesn't know how exactly to be different.
Inside the office, she makes him go first. He's got the stitches in his left wrist, right forearm, his thigh; his doctor lifts an eyebrow at him as if to say All this? He gets a local anesthetic and turns his head away from it. He feels the tug against his skin, but it's over in moments.
When he passes Kate in the hall outside the exam rooms, she brushes her fingers down his forearm in askance. Castle rotates his arm and shows her the thin pink line, a little angry because of the poking, but healed cleanly. Her hand drifts to his right; he bares his forearm, lets her look, touch gently.
She nods at him and follows the nurse back.
Kate is sneaking him these intensely evocative looks the moment she comes back to the waiting room. He's already paid for them, and when he turns back around at the door, he sees her fingers running over the thick red lines circling her wrists.
He forgot that the wound went so far around, that the wire cut so deep. His stomach jerks but she reaches out her hand for him and grips his bicep, slides her hand down to his elbow.
Her smile is slow and pretty, lighting her whole face, and she's staring right into his eyes. He has to blink against the force of it.
As they leave, she slides closer to him in the hall. "No more stitches."
"Oh." Oh. Even in her thigh? Castle glances over at her; Kate's lips quirk at him. Guess those too.
She lets him have a closed-mouth smile, soft and beautiful. "It didn't hurt."
"Good," he says quietly, watching her beauty unfold the further they get from the doctor's office. She's nearly as tall as he is today, in those high-heeled boots. She's pulled her coat back on; she's buttoning it as they get on the elevator.
"It does feel good. Doesn't it?" she says back, and then takes his hand in hers. She doesn't have her gloves on even though he knows she's got them; she had them on earlier. Instead she squeezes his, keeps her eyes on him.
He tangles their fingers together and slides their hands into his coat pocket. She bumps her elbow into his side and presses her cheek against his shoulder for a second, like she's resting there.
"Let's not go back," she says after a second. "Not today. We can go back on Monday, but it's Friday and I-"
He glances over at her when she doesn't finish that sentence. Castle sees the dawn of her wide smile, the brilliant wash of light as her lashes lift and her cheeks grow round in the sharp angles of her face. Her lips spread, the lines around her mouth crease, her grin transforms her whole being - dark beauty and light gorgeous - pale skin and the black depths of her eyes.
And his. Isn't she? She transforms him too.
"Let's not go back," he agrees. It's only three, but a Beckett that wants to play hooky is so rare a gift that it's not even Beckett.
It's. . .Kate.
"Come home with me, Castle."
"Yeah?"
Her smile evolves into a smirk, her head tilts to see him better. "Yeah. It doesn't hurt at all."
Hurts she whispered to him that morning.
And now it doesn't.
She takes her time with him.
Slides her hands up his sides under his coat, paying attention. He quivers but he doesn't flinch. Kate pushes his coat off his arms and runs her hands across his shoulders, back down his arms, the length and breadth and width of him.
He's trying to touch her, but she wants to keep this slow. She never wants it slow. But she knows if she lets him touch her now, the way he wants to, it'll be all over.
She wants to see - everything. Wants to trace her fingers over his remaining scars, kiss the gulping place at his throat as he tries to keep it together, press her palms against his back and have him meet her.
"Kate."
Not a question or a demand, just the soft sound of this man saying her name with such sighing relief. As if he's finished a race or completed a quest - found the end - and found it rich with all the things he wants.
Kate works at his belt next, slides it through the loops slowly, feeling his hips buck against her hands. She grins at him, has to tamp down on the pleasure that blooms in her belly. Make it last, make it long.
"Come to bed, Castle."
She hooks a finger in his belt loop and draws him back to her bedroom.
Above him, with her hair falling down (he keeps lifting his hands to brush it back, tender), Kate takes her time, traces the ropy lines of his pecs (all that physical therapy), the hard edge of his collarbones, the twitching skin of his abdomen, lets her mouth follow after.
He breathes slowly, or well, she thinks he's trying to, but every so often, either it's the slow, wet trail to his belly button or the undulation of her hips, every so often his heart races and he gasps, unable even to look at her.
She pauses, waits for him to settle, and then starts again.
Over and over, touching every pore, every ridge, every pulse. Mouth and fingers and the soft skin of her thighs brushing him - him - Castle so hot and liquid and amazing as she sets their pace. Castle.
Suddenly he rises up, crushing his chest against hers, arms wrapping around her, trapping her. She laughs and bites the straining tendon at his shoulder. His strong and healed shoulders.
"No more, Kate, can't take it-"
She shifts back and he gasps, shuts his eyes, a shudder racing through his body that she feels deep; she watches it wash over him, trembling and strong and on fire. She settles; he moves; and Kate has to close her eyes this time, bury her face against his skin as it comes.
So close. So close.
"Castle, I-"
So close. She lives for-
"Yeah. Me too, Kate, love, now-"
"I think I lo-"
Oh.
A slow tug of awareness, and Kate smiles to herself. Shockingly lovely, just as intense as the first time. Even now, the heat of their bodies still vibrates in the sheets, the grey light of too-early a morning bathes her face. She hears the door click shut; that's it; and then the lock turns.
Not abandonment, no regret. None of that. Too tired, too filled, too pleased, too good for any of that to encroach on the dawn. Too alive.
Kate slowly opens her eyes, is greeted with the blue numbers of her alarm clock, and then the folded piece of paper propped up by a coffee mug. Her name is written in cursive on the note. Cursive. Sometimes he is such a girl.
She reaches out a hand for it, shivering in the cool morning air of her bedroom, still naked under the sheets. She pulls the note closer and opens it.
Alexis called; she's broken up with Ashley again and is on her way home. I stole your house key and I'll give it back to you at work today. Still. I wish I could've been here when you opened your eyes.
Kate curls her arm into her chest, bringing the note with it, closes her eyes for a moment to rest. She sees his face behind her eyelids, the crazy joy spilling out everywhere, the intensity of every touch - made more and deeper and electric by these long weeks without.
Her phone is on the bedside table; she plucks it from the charger and thumbs through the menu until she finds the camera. Before she can think about it and stop herself, she angles the phone, touches the screen.
She doesn't even look at it. She texts it straight to his phone and adds: I opened my eyes.
She drops the phone back on the table and sits up, shivering, reaches for her coffee. Still warm. Saturday morning and she meant to spend it with him, but there's no rush. No hurry.
This is just the beginning.
