Chapter Two

Love, you're in pieces, there's no one left to lay you down or say it's okay
On the worst night, of the worst year, though we might fall we'll go out punching

"Kate?"

"Mmmh?" Her voice is a low, exhausted murmur, muffled by the soft pillow her face is buried in. He presses his palm gently against the warm skin of her back and she hums contentedly, stretching out a little more. She doesn't say anything else, and he feels her breathing start to even out again.

"Kate," he calls softly, fighting the urge to laugh as she huffs her discontent.

"What's a girl got to do to get some sleep, Castle?" she mumbles, trying to bat away the hand he uses to brush her hair away from her cheek. "The shower, almost against the wall… the bed, you can't seriously want more?"

"I was just going to say you'll ache in the morning, if you sleep like that," he tells her quietly, moving his hand up to rest over her shoulder. She smiles, catching the fingers at her cheek.

"Mmm, thanks," she offers softly, an apology in her voice as she shifts onto her back and stretches, before rolling over and draping herself over him. She sleeps closer these days, and it's not because she's scared of the nightmares. "God, I think you broke me," she adds contentedly, laughing and continuing quickly when she realises what she's said. "Just… let me have that one? Please?"

"Just this once, but only because you're half asleep," he accedes, wrapping his arms round her. "It was pretty incredible though," he teases lightly, smiling. "I guess that's the… other effect of red wine, huh? When you can stay awake long enough to enjoy it."

"Pretty hard to get any sleep with you around," she teases gently, sliding her fingers slowly into his hair.

"I'm going to take that as a compliment," he murmurs, laughing at the answering smile on her face. "Yeah, definitely a compliment."

"Full of yourself, aren't you?" she asks, grinning at him. It's a grin that's soft at the edges though, one she reserves just for him when there's nothing but soft sheets and the moonlight covering them.

"Hey, you weren't complaining against the wall with my fingers–" his words come out muffled as she claps her free hand over his mouth and he laughs, kissing her fingers lightly. "It's true, and you know it," he murmurs. She laughs, and her eyes soften again.

"Can't deny that," she agrees eventually, settling back against him with a lingering kiss. Neither of them have ever denied that what they have is explosive. What he wasn't expecting though, is the amount of gentle intimacy that they haven't even had to work at. Even when it's been tentative and she's been scared, it's still been there. "You're really not going to let me sleep, are you?" she asks, smothering a yawn as she rests her head against his shoulder. Her voice is soft, but there's understanding there. He knows she's exhausted. There are large expanses of the last six months that can be explained away by nothing but sleep, and he's encouraged her to get as much as she can in during the last week.

She's needed to heal, physically and emotionally.

Sometimes he can't let her sleep though. Sometimes, he needs her to be awake and talking and moving. This is one of those moments.

He lets out a breath as she scratches her fingers lightly against his scalp, lets her touch soothe him like it always does. Except, sometimes it doesn't just soothe. Sometimes it sends a kaleidoscope of images flashing around his brain, bouncing off the sounds that reverberate through his mind and make him flinch even though they're not real. Cemeteries and snipers and takedowns and trials and the aftermath, bouncing against glints of light and gunshots and shouting, screams and tears echoing around them all. And the one image that he just can't erase. Her, lying slumped against a wall in yet another abandoned warehouse, blood streaming from a cut on her temple as she tells him that she doesn't think she can move.

It was close. They both know just how close she came.

"Rick?" she asks softly, stilling her fingers against his scalp, flattening them behind his ear until he opens the eyes he didn't realise had slammed shut. "Hey," she whispers softly, her eyes gentle and completely awake as she brushes her fingers against the soft skin right behind his ear. It's how she said I love you to him, before she could actually find the words to say it back. He loves it almost as much as he loves hearing the words from her. They started with a touch to his ear, and it might've changed over the months, but it still exists. Her lips touch his in a whisper of a kiss as he starts to relax. "Battle wounds?" she asks softly, and he knows his fingers tense a little on her shoulder at her words. "Don't," she urges softly, taking his hand off her shoulder and tangling their fingers together, tightly. "Please, don't think about it tonight."

"Kate!" his voice sounds tortured, even to his own ears. The ground is hard and unrelenting against his knees as he drops beside her, but he doesn't even notice. He can't hear anything, can't see anything, but her.

The takedown was brutal, and he knows, he knows that they still don't have enough.

Not even close.

"Kate." He chokes on his breath as she finally opens her eyes. Blood streams from a cut on her temple as she stares at him, her eyes wide and uncomprehending. He can just about make out Ryan and Esposito's voices from the muffled cacophony making his head spin, but their footsteps pounding across the concrete towards him still make him flinch. He sees it in her eyes too, the fear, but she doesn't move.

Not an inch.

Ryan and Esposito's hands land on his shoulders, hot and heavy, one on each side. He can't hear what they're saying, but he knows what they're doing. Protecting their own. They're cops. The three of them, Beckett, Ryan and Esposito, they will always know how this goes better than he does.

She came in here alone. With Jordan Shaw, Marcus Gates and the rest of the FBI agents, but without her team. Without the people who know what she's doing before she starts to do it. Ryan and Esposito were guarding the only exit, and she made him stay outside, which meant that he stayed with the ones with the guns.

Standing outside, they heard a sickening sound that turned out to be her taking one hell of a slam against the other side of the nearest wall and all he could think was that he wished he'd tried harder to talk her into staying with him, with them. He had argued with Alexis in the precinct that morning, the worst they've ever argued before, and Kate had been there listening to every word. There had been tears on her cheeks when Alexis stormed out and he finally found it in himself to turn to face his partner.

And then she had told him that there was no way in hell, Castle, that he was going anywhere near the warehouse they were planning to storm.

They had argued, bitterly. The last words they had exchanged before they left the precinct had been in anger, but when she turned to him one more time and told him to stay outside, her voice had been so quiet and Alexis's heartbroken face had been flashing so brightly in his mind and he couldn't find it in himself to put up any more of a fight.

So he had stayed, even as she strapped on her vest and followed the FBI in without a backward glance.

"Castle, we gotta get out of here, bro," Esposito warns quietly, snapping him out of his flashing memories, and even though his tone is calm and controlled he can tell from the man's posture that he still has one hand on his gun. He can still smell the residue from the recently discharged weapons, and his stomach churns as he prays that no more shots have to be fired before they can get the hell away from this place.

"EMT's are outside," Ryan contributes when no one moves, the tremor in his own voice far clearer than Esposito's. Rick is frozen though. Frozen in place by the look in her terrified eyes.

Frozen in place until she moves.

"Beckett." Esposito crouches beside him, Ryan doing the same on his other side. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that he would be able to see their battle ready grips on their weapons at this point, if he could see anything but her. "Becks. Hey, girl," Esposito continues, his voice quiet and soothing but riddled with tension.

"Castle," Ryan hisses, when her eyes don't sway from his for a second.

"Kate," he chokes out eventually, feeling Ryan and Esposito's hands steadying his shoulders as he almost pitches forward. "Kate, don't make me carry you again," he says quietly, feeling the boys avert their attention as he finally, finally gets a flicker of acknowledgement from her. "Say something, Kate," he urges, reaching a hand out. "Take my hand, please."

"Castle," she gasps out weakly, on lungs that sound like they're barely functioning.

"Kate, it's okay," he breathes, laying a hand on her knee. "We got you."

"Castle," she manages again, her voice tighter, more panicked. "I don't… I don't think I can move."

And then the cacophony of sound starts up again as Ryan and Esposito's panicked calls for help blur into a swirl of noise and sound and colour that all spins around her eyes.

"Rick," she whispers, and the urgency even in the quietness of her voice that finally breaks through the scene flashing before his eyes also tells him that it's probably not the first time that she's called his name. He shakes his head sharply, trying to get rid of the image of her lying against that wall. She's here. Warm and soft and naked against him, running her fingers through his hair. "Hi, there," she whispers eventually, obviously seeing something change in his eyes. He manages what must be a smile at best in her direction and she lets out a sharp exhale, her worry clear even though she's smiling. "I'm fine," she whispers firmly, framing his face with both hands. "I'm here, Rick. I'm moving, I'm doing everything I used to. If I'm not mistaken we just had some pretty energetic sex, more than once," she murmurs softly, and he doesn't miss the way her eyes soften, as they always do when she talks about their sex life. "And you've been at work with me. You've seen me chasing suspects and taking down bad guys. I'm fine," she finishes softly.

He knows she's right, but that's not all.

"I do see all that," he agrees quietly, finding that his voice almost breaks. "But then I see how you can't lift your arms above your shoulders. Or how you can't walk for a day afterward."

She closes her eyes at his words as her fingers slide from his face to his shoulders, and he knows that even though it's the truth, he's hurt her. She is still his fearless, amazing, extraordinary detective, but she's also the woman in his bed with tear tracks on her cheeks as her body doubles in on itself because she's pushed it too far. She has surgery scars and bullet holes, and now muscles and ribs that have taken a hell of a beating that even six months haven't quite healed. Not to mention a shoulder that needed a month of intensive physiotherapy that almost made her pass out from the pain before Gates would even consider letting her back in the field.

He knows how the physiotherapy went first hand, because she was sleeping in his bed by that point.

"And then sometimes I can't walk for a day," she agrees very softly, and he tries to shake the imminent, swooping flashback from his mind when he sees the moisture pooling in her eyes. It is horrifying for him, the flashbacks and the dreams that he doesn't seem to be able to control, but she's the one living it. It shouldn't be her having to comfort him or talk him down.

He shakes his head, opens his mouth to say something and then slams his eyes shut as suddenly she's slumped against the wall again, lights flashing and sirens screaming. He remembers the feel of her knotted, blood stained hair as if it's that beneath his fingers rather than her skin and the soft cotton of his sheets, remembers the smell of that damp, abandoned warehouse that he can almost taste at the back of his throat instead of the calming, relaxing cherry scent that followed her out of the shower. He sucks in a sharp breath, feels her hands on his face again, and eventually hears her voice from a distance as it slowly breaks through the sirens in his mind.

When her tears fall onto his chest, there's something heartbreakingly physical about the sharp, cool moisture that finally snaps him back to the present. She doesn't move her hands to wipe away the tears and something deep inside him feels dangerously close to shattering. It's a familiar feeling, the one that threatens to overtake him every single time this beautiful, guarded woman lets him see her cry.

"Kate," he chokes out eventually, and he isn't surprised to hear that his own voice is hoarse with tears. She presses her fingers into the skin behind his ears, and suddenly he can hear the battle she's fighting to control her breathing.

"Rick please, don't do this," she begs him quietly, dropping her forehead to his. It jolts him, but he revels in the pain, traps her in his arms. "I can't," she sucks her breath in sharply, words lost amid tears and panic and what he now knows is love, and she exhales on a sob as he drops his forehead to her shoulder. She slides her hands, tangles her fingers in his hair. Her fingers are almost bruising against his scalp.

It helps.

"Think about," she starts, but he hears her choke on another sob and he can hear her control slipping, hears the memories and the pain threatening to swallow her too. He moves, slides a hand that's shaking to press into the tightly knotted muscles at the small of her back that he had worked so hard to ease in their shower. Because this is his turn to stand tall. This is what partners do, and as he presses his fingers into her painful muscles, she manages to suck in a breath. "Think about that night, on the roof," she whispers shakily. "Do you remember?"

"I remember," he whispers, reaching his other hand up to wipe the tears from her cheeks. "You looked so beautiful."

"I looked a mess," she whispers, smiling through her tears. "Close your eyes," she urges gently. "Forget about everything else, just remember that night on the roof. It was cold," she whispers, and her voice is a calm, soothing balm against his ear. He doesn't know when she got so close, or how she sounds so much like a port in a storm when he can feel the dampness of her tears on her cheeks. "So cold," she whispers, scratching her nails lightly against his scalp. "You dragged all those blankets up and we were still freezing. You said your neighbours looked at you like you were mad for a couple weeks, but the wind was still almost biting," she whispers, and he tightens his hold on her back, remembering the wind like it's whipping her hair against his face as she speaks.

"I kept you warm," he whispers eventually, brushing his lips against her cheek. "You smelt like…jasmine, some kind of flower." She nods in recognition, and he feels her smile against his lips.

"It was Alexis's shower gel," she whispers. "I'd run out. You took my keys the next morning and brought everything in my bathroom back with you." He laughs, because it's entirely true and because most of it hasn't made its way back to her own apartment yet. She had to get another key to her apartment cut too, when he wouldn't relinquish that either. She smells like cherries now, but he remembers vividly how she smelled that night. "You kissed me," she whispers, turning a little more so her lips brush against his. "Do you remember?" He nods and she kisses him again, light and teasing.

He's back there, back on the roof with her too small, shivering body tucked carefully into his arms and the blankets, her lips cool and tentative against his. He kisses her again, moving his arm carefully around her body to avoid the arm that's no longer in a sling, like it was that night. As she breaks the long, lingering kiss and pulls her lips away from his, he realises that the wind isn't whistling around them and she has settled them down in the warmth of the bed, helped him to ease back against the pillows without him even noticing, and oh.

Kate.

Sometimes he forgets that he might base novels on her, this extraordinary muse who is the love of his life, but that she has learnt him inside out too with nothing to show for it but her ability to talk him down. She knew exactly how to replace the terrors in his mind with a memory that engulfed him, appealing to all of his senses. When he writes, he doesn't just see the scene, he smells and tastes and feels it too. He remembers the same things in real life, good or bad. When it's bad, the memories swallow him whole. When it's good, they lift him up and she knows. She knows and it makes him fall in love with her even more.

Her thumb brushes against his lips and drags him right back to the present, to this amazing woman. He can't help himself, crushing her in a hug that's too tight for her still fragile body.

"Rick!" she gasps breathlessly, but he can hear a lightness in her voice that wasn't there minutes ago. "Rick, you gotta let me breathe," she whispers, catching her breath slowly as he releases her a little, touching her shoulder gently out of nothing but instinct. Her fingers slowly work their way back into his hair, soothing him in the way that failed earlier.

"Kate," he breathes, faltering before he even begins. His eyes are heavy and her damn fingers are working their magic and there just aren't words for the way he feels about this woman. "I…" she moves one hand, touching her fingers to his lips for a second before stretching over him to turn out the lights.

"Sleep," she whispers softly, tucking herself against his body as her fingers continue their soothing, tingling caress. It takes him longer to open his eyes but when he does she's watching him, gorgeous, wide and sleepy doe-eyes focused so intently on him with an expression that takes his breath away.

As he closes his eyes and succumbs to sleep, he hears her softly whispered, "I love you".

tbc