The Great Story


The wolf appointed to tear me apart
is sure making slow work of it.

Dean Young, 'Could Have Danced All Night'


II. Slow Work

x

Castle lets out a bark of pure agony, slams his head back into the padded table. His physical therapist, Mike, ignores him.

Hurt isn't harm, hurt isn't harm, Castle chants to himself.

Mike said it once, at the beginning, or maybe Kate, after one of her own sessions - something her therapist told her. She has the same guy as before (which guts him out: she has wound care specialists on her contacts list; she has a team of professionals she knows at heart; she's done this all before. Getting shot is routine).

But damn if the hurt doesn't feel an awful lot like intense harm. Harm he will never recover from.

His arm is shaking so badly it sends vibrations into his whole chest, and the pain there echoes back to the pain in his shoulder.

"Fuck," he snarls, tipping his head back. Sweat pours down his face, the divide of his spine. He's gasping instead of doing the breathing counts; he's a failure at therapy. "Just shoot me. Put me out of my misery. No, don't shoot me, that doesn't seem to work. I'd like the lethal injection this time. Never fails. Cool and blessed relief."

Mike is watching his arm waver like he's not even listening. He probably isn't. Castle's jokes are falling way flat. He can't think clearly enough to joke, but he keeps trying.

But he wouldn't mind an injection of something at least.

Castle grinds the back of his head into the padded bench where he lies flat, feet braced, knees shoulder-width apart, keeping form with supreme effort of will. His arm is stretched merely outright, held up under his own power.

His shoulder is killing him.

Mike presses the heel of his hand to the front of Castle's shoulder, keeping the shoulder blade in place as Castle's arm bobs and weaves in the air. He's supposed to be holding it steady, but that's not happening.

"Five," Mike intones. "Four. Three."

"Two-One," Castle rushes and lets his whole body collapse.

Mike sighs, gives a slight shake of his head. Castle isn't supposed to collapse; he's supposed to use muscle to control the descent of his arm, but the hell if he can actually accomplish that at the end of a two-hour PT session.

"Have you been doing your exercises?" Mike asks him. "At home. Like I told you."

"Home is in flux right now," he croaks. Drags his good hand up to his face and wipes sweat from his eyebrows where it always collects. Salt granules from the two hours of sustained torture are gritty under his fingers. "Home isn't home."

"I don't know what that means, but I do know that you're not here in my office twenty-four/seven, are you?"

"No," he gets out, tries to remember how he's supposed to be breathing. "I'm thankfully not here all day every day."

"When you're not here," Mike says, using a finger to gesture for Castle to roll over. Like a trained dog, Castle does, with a great deal of difficulty, only to have Mike's hands land on his lower back, kneading. "You need to be doing the exercises. Keep the record in that blue folder I gave you, mark off the day and time and reps."

"Yeah, ye-ow." Castle jerks as Mike's thumbs press and hold the knots that have formed in his lower back. This is honestly the sole reason he keeps coming. He would have given it up before now if Mike's post-torture therapy massage weren't such unmitigated bliss. "That's - the spot."

Mike says nothing, no amusement, but no serious retribution either. Castle wonders if he ought to switch to Kate's PT, since their relationship seems to be filled with a whole lot more conflict and tension. The constant beratement necessary to stiffen the spine, get moving.

Castle could really use a dominant personality beating against his own these days. Kate hasn't been...

She's faded.

Whatever conflict and tensions they used to have, whatever spark, has been subsumed in pain and grief and desperate gratefulness. On both sides, he thinks, not just her. She's not the only one so sickly grateful to have a life together still that all problems or issues are met with that submissive wash of how can this be at all important.

When Castle sits at his desk and she curls on the couch with the heating pad and they just stare at each other, so pathetically grateful they're here... none of the petty arguments, none of the larger and more pressing issues either, really matter.

Mike's hands reshape the curves of his spine and Castle groans, pressing his face into the towel where his head fits the padded hole. One of the physical therapy assistants has come over and is now gripping his ankles while Mike holds his back in place. She lifts his feet up, his knees bending, and she pushes his feet back to his ass.

He grunts as his spine pops and adjusts; relief floods him like hot tears, and it takes a moment for him to realize.

He's really crying.

x

Alexis is his handler for this afternoon, it appears, because his daughter is waiting in the lobby on one of the plush couches with a Sports Illustrated open on her lap. When she sees him, she jumps up, and the pages flutter like a spooked bird.

"Dad," she gasps.

"I'm alright," he gets out, ashamed of the blotchy ugly cry still showing on his face. He thought it would be his mother. "Is Gram with Kate?"

"Yeah, her dad is showing the loft to some friend of his."

"Oh," he says, his heart picking up. "That's good."

Alexis nods hesitantly, but Castle is too tired to tease it out of her right now. If she's not happy about them renting out the loft for the year, she can speak up. Until then, Castle can't.

He just can't.

"You ready?" she asks, flashing the new key at him. "We're picking up Kate and Gram on our way."

"Oh?" He catches sight of the fob and lifts an eyebrow. "We're leaving from therapy?"

"Kate's idea. She says at least you'll both sleep through it."

He feels about as tender and raw as a plucked chicken, only no one has shown up with that comforting killer cone to break his neck. Riding in a car for hours really doesn't feel like a good idea, but the passing out part will probably happen. "Everything is packed?"

Alexis is trying to herd him towards the door, and he lets himself be herded like a good barnyard animal. "Car is packed. We have snacks. I made a playlist. And Hayley has a set of keys. Everything has been taken care of, Dad."

"Are you driving us the whole way?" At her nod, he finally allows himself to be steered out the door. "Since everything has been taken care of. You mind if I lower the seat and crash?"

"So long as I don't," she says cheekily, grinning at him.

"Lame. So lame." But it lifts his heart, so heavy in his chest, and Castle uses his good arm to hook her around the shoulders. "Thanks, baby bird."

She wrinkles her nose at the sweat still damp at his t-shirt, but she pats him consolingly. "Alright, Dad. Come on. I called the housekeeper but Gram has been threatening to cook."

He groans as they shuffle down the sidewalk, and the sound comes from the ache in his bones, the grind in his shoulder, but he tries to cover as best he can, playing it off as mock distress instead of real. "Don't let Gram near the kitchen, pumpkin. You know better."

"She wants to be helpful, since she can't stay."

"Neither can you," he grumbles. "You have a whole semester left because of us, and-"

"No. Dad. Really. It's not your fault I bombed summer school. I just wasn't interested. And it took too long to decide my major and I had to have 6 more hours of upper level sociology, so-"

It is their fault, but that's so far down his list of burdens. "Well, my PI business is all yours. You do what you like with it. When we get back-" His voice falters.

Alexis gestures to the changed light, waits for him to cross the sidewalk ahead of her. But he can't come up with the end of that sentence, for what happens when he and Kate can finally face the city again.

"Will you be back?" Alexis says, her voice so quiet that she sounds like a little girl again.

"You know Kate," he answers. A slow breath that doesn't disrupt the ache that has spread across his chest. "She won't let it keep her down. She'll be back."

"And you with her."

"Of course."

Alexis sighs and drops her cheek to his good shoulder, snakes her arm through his. "Of course," she says, squeezing. "Of course. Thank God for Kate."

x

He jerks as he comes awake, sloughing off heaviness, struggling.

"It's me." Her face above him, her hand on his chest as if to hold him down. Maybe she is. She smiles. "We're here."

He groans as he shifts, wishes he hadn't slept the whole way. His shoulder is throbbing. He should have stayed awake to keep the joint loose. "Did Alexis drive?"

"She did," Kate assures. "They went on inside, left me to wake you."

He blinks and turns his head. He's still in the front seat with the seat back lowered all the way down. The SUV they bought is parked on the gravel drive before the Hamptons house, and instead of feeling relief, like he expected, there's a tension across his shoulders that's not dissipating.

With the seat lowered, he's practically in Kate's lap in the back. She has a hand on his good shoulder, fingers rubbing lightly at his shirt over his heart. "You okay?"

"I thought it would be different," he admits, grimacing. "Thought it would - solve the paranoia."

She sighs, but he sees the way her eyes travel the lines of the house through the open windows. The cool air of November, the dark conifers, the shadows. "The pool is heated," she murmurs. "Remember when you took me here, the first time together? October. It was warm then too. Warm for fall."

"Mm." He can't bring himself to lift up; it's nice with Kate's fingers rubbing over his shirt. Though she keeps herself very carefully still. Even now. He sighs. "Maybe it's because murder found us here too."

Her eyes drift down to meet his, the gold flecks alive and drawing green. "It did... but wasn't it fun? It used to be fun."

He reaches up and closes his fingers around her elbow, his thumb making slow circles against her skin. To remind her. Reassure her. "It was the best," he promises. "It will be again."

"But right now?"

"Aren't you tired?" he gets out. The most desperately honest he's been in a while. "I can't move without thinking it through, every step of the way, is this going to work, can I reach, will it hurt."

"That fades," she murmurs. "Eventually."

"And until then."

She bites her bottom lip. "I don't - want to keep waiting for until then. I did that once before, Castle, and I nearly lost you. Putting it off until it was almost too late."

Astonishment drops him off the cliff. He rolls forward and toward her, all on his good side, but he uses his stiff shoulder to draw an arm around her waist. He buries his head in her lap, and she drops her hands to his upper back, rubbing slowly.

He doesn't want to hurt her. He doesn't want to lose her either. Or have her lose him.

"We won't stay here forever," she tells him roughly. Her fingers come to his nape and scratch lightly at his scalp. "We can't stay. This isn't our life, it's vacation."

In November, after they've had a summer of trying so hard to live with it.

"A vacation, Rick."

He nods into her lap. But he could use retirement, not merely a vacation.

She pats his back. "Then get up, get moving, before Alexis worries. It'll take me long enough as it is."

He swallows and lifts his head. "Do you want the chair?"

She scowls, but he sees her consider it. "No."

Then it really will take a while.

x