"Fuck," he whispers into the back of his hand, the moment the shower's on to cover the sound of it and he steps under the spray. He spitefully refuses to relieve the tension by himself, ignoring the way his balls ache and the arousal claws behind his navel.
What kind of idiot is he?
The woman of his dreams – the love of his life, he's certain of it – blatantly offered herself to him and he turned tail and ran. Even if it was just to catch his breath, because he was certain that he was going to pass out if he spent another second in the ruins of her wall. He's never fully realized until this moment how much of his own wall he's built around both himself and around her. Less of a wall, really, and more of an airlock. He's succeeded, the past couple of months, in keeping her from leaving, yes; but he's also tried (and mostly failed) to keep her from burying herself any further into his heart, under his skin, than she'd gotten before it all went to hell that terrible bright spring day.
It's with an uncomfortable stir of guilt and shame that it occurs to him that he's held her at arm's length as much for his own protection as her needs for her recovery. And worse, that he's still babying her. She needed help to deal with it during the sniper case, but she'd handled it. She'd accepted help and been able to move forward and function not just passably, but exceptionally.
They're just finding their feet again. She's healing. He is, too. He won't be her absolution. And he has every right to slow things down, to not let proximity and removal from the stresses of their daily lives give her a confidence in them that she's not ready to face in the real world. Every right to turn her away on the basis of protecting the delicate and lovely balance they've found until the world stops shifting beneath their feet, and they can explore further on solid ground.
But maybe there's no such thing as perfect timing. Maybe it's time for him to trust her recovery, to put his confidence in her again to know what she wants, to have faith that she would not seek him out if she didn't want him. She's her own woman; she doesn't need him to protect her from what she wants. Especially if, by some miracle, what she wants is him. God knows he wants her, and the last thing he needs is for her to think otherwise. It's not precisely how he envisioned it. They're living in the oldest romance cliché in the book. But it's their time, and damned if he's going to let it pass him by.
A quick wash off and he cuts the water, drying and brushing his teeth with an economy of time and ceremony before he pulls on the soft flannel pants and wills his body to behave itself. His years of fantasies spool through his mind, none of them can hold a candle to the reality waiting for him in the other room.
His heart stutters when he sees her. She's fallen asleep, curled up to the wall and hardly visible under the covers, taking up an almost impossibly small space on the bed that doesn't fit with the way her presence fills a room when she's awake. It's... charming. His face cracks into a smile, and grows wider still at the corner of the bed turned down in invitation.
Extinguishing the candles and letting the fire burn low, he hesitates a moment more before delineating the past from the future and sliding under the heavy quilts. She stirs at the shift in the bed, hazy eyes shuttering open and the back of her throat producing a familiar happy whine he's only ever heard her make around her first cup of coffee. Not that he's ever mentioned to her, on implied punishment of death if he did.
"Still awake," she insists, sitting up and trying to blink the sleep from her eyes to prove her point. It would be more convincing if not punctuated by a stifled yawn. "Castle?" The question lingers in her voice, and underneath it, worry that he's changed his mind. He definitely hasn't.
"In the morning," he promises, "sleep now."
She's clearly exhausted, because she doesn't protest any. Castle finds her hand beneath the covers and squeezes, not sure what else he can or should do.
"'m cold," Kate grumps, tugging his arm, and he's all too willing to follow her lead (balance has been restored to the universe), laying next to her and making no further movements to touch - letting her decide just where her boundaries are drawn. Apparently, they aren't, because in half a second, she's weaseled her way under his arm, resting her cheek on his chest not unlike the last and only time he got to hold her this way. It's cold this time – maybe he should have tended the fire? – but he thinks, this time, they can keep each other warm, and they'll finally get the ending they deserve.
"Castle?" she murmurs into his chest, sounding terrifyingly like she did on that day in the freezer, so much that it transports him right back there, to the moment he held her and she passed out on him before she could finish… whatever it is she was about to say. His throat constricts.
"Hmm?"
"I remember." She – she what? He can feel his heartbeat pick up, and he's sure she can too, her ear right over it. She burrows in, petting his arm as if to steady him before an uncertain reaction. "My shooting," she clarifies, unnecessarily. "What you said."
Did it come back to her? Did she lie in the hospital when she said she didn't remember? But then… she wouldn't have come to him tonight if she didn't know. She wouldn't have reacted so strongly to the sniper case. The pieces fit in at last, and any remnant anger he could feel for her dissipates. She couldn't deal with it then. She's been able to deal with it, now, and he could never hold onto anger when she's guilelessly come clean. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks that this should be more of a surprise to him. But it isn't.
He gathers her as closely as he can, twining his legs with hers and pythoning his arms around her until she's almost on top of him, looking up into his eyes at an odd angle with trepidation.
"I know," Castle combs his fingers through her hair, avoiding the snags and snarls as best he can. "I think I always have."
Her responding exhale is soft and followed quickly by a notable lightness in her body, relaxation and nearly immediate sleep. As ever, Castle is not far behind.
Her shock of dark hair and the cooling coals of her eyes stand in stark contrast to the pale halo of her skin against the milky grey light of morningtide. The contours of her cheek; the marble column of her neck; the pugnacious set of her mouth; the shadowy crag of her collar bone; and... lower. Lower. Lower.
The events of the night before must be affecting him. There's the same gravid weight of her that settles as an ache in the back of his throat. There's something more now, too.
For all the late night musings and half-baked fantasies he's had and thoroughly, sometimes guiltily indulged himself in – starring, featuring, produced, and directed by Katherine Beckett – they've never come close to this. She's stunning and seductive and smoldering and somehow chaste and real, more real than she's ever been dressed in the battle armor of her job, encased by her arms' lengths sarcastic flirtatiousness.
The robe from the ensuite falls open, cascades off her shoulders to reveal damp skin. He absently concludes that she must have gotten up to bathe and stoke the fire some time in the night. As it falls in slow motion to pool at her bare feet, she silently pads toward the bed – the bed they shared – standing above him with a peculiar question in her eyes, her whole bare body on display and lit in soft sfumato by the crackle of firelight behind her.
"Castle..." the garroted strangle of her voice pushes all of the oxygen out of the room. "I'm naked…"
It's the most unnecessary statement she's ever made. That's usually his domain. But it grounds him in this version of reality.
"Castle?" He hasn't said anything. He can't seem to think of a way to remedy that.
She hovers above him, strangely serene and patient, almost shy. Waiting. Waiting for approval or dismissal. Waiting for him to cast her out or pull her close. Waiting for him to catch up and make up his mind.
"Yes," he manages the monosyllabic answer, permission and plea. "Yes."
Standing on sleep-unsteady feet, he gathers her to him, pleased distantly with the way she steps so readily into him, instinctively bracing against his chest and gazing expectantly up into his cloudy eyes. The descent of his lips upon hers is a slow burn, the lowering of their freckled eyes harmonious and inevitable, until the bursting second of contact breaks him from his reverie. Something primitive kicks in in the back of his mind and he abandons chivalry, shoving inside her mouth, craving her with sudden desperation that's boiled to the surface at last after more than three years' tight containment.
The taste of her is spark to fuel and he is quick to light. Their sweet and gentle tingling of affection of the night before, the shy touches and the half-guilty gazes are gone, replaced by a gale of need. Kate carries with her everywhere a current, and under his hands, he feels her go live. Shuddering and pressing to him at the lightest touch to the pale silver of her side, she whines into his mouth, encouraging him, begging him, arching up into him and haphazardly clawing at his flannel sleep pants. Foregoing tenderness, Castle grabs at her, coiling a hand around her hip, fisting his other in her hair and manipulating the tilt of her head, allowing him unobstructed access to her mouth as he spins them and guides back until her thighs back to the bed.
Shivers run through her, delicious electric and reacting and receptive to his every movement. Insinuating his knees between hers, he slowly pries her legs apart, stepping between them. She finally manages to liberate him from his sleep pants, giving him no time to redraw the boundaries. Her hand scorches around him and Castle feels more than hears himself groan what might be her name when she gives his throbbing cock a possessive squeeze, running the pad of her thumb over the sensitive head.
She stiffens. He stops, questioning her with his eyes and searching for any indication that he's done something wrong. She shakes her head no, resuming a tentative stroke.
"Alright?"
"It's just," she breathes, her eyes widening a bit as she grasps him, "it's… been a while. I haven't… since the shooting?" she pleads with him to fill in the gaps.
Oh. Oh. He hadn't brought anything. In fact, he'd very carefully not looked at that display when he'd been in the inn's store, not only not wanting to be presumptuous, but not wanting to even be tempted by the thought of something more. And he's hardly the playboy he used to be. The days of carrying a supply in his wallet are long gone, and he's grateful for that, for her settling influence on him especially, but not for the bind it puts them in.
"I didn't bring anything," he admits solemnly, "but we have other options," he considers dropping to his knees right there and showing her one of them, "many, many options."
She shakes her head, smiling ruefully, her nerves broken through and replaced with casual relief. "Oh, I've got that taken care of," she covers his hand with hers, guiding it up her side and over the pale, silvery underside of her bicep, pressing his fingers over something just under her skin. "No, I just meant that I'm going to need to take this-" her other hand squeezes him again, making his stomach contract and his eyes close as it judders through him, "-a bit more slowly."
He curses softly in understanding and relief, nodding his head. "So much for the shared brain thing." Kate laughs, just a bit off in its tone, nipping his jaw and brushing her cheek against yesterday's stubble before seeking his kiss again.
She can't remember ever being so nervous, ever being so filled with need of someone and simultaneously terrified of having her need satisfied. It's just Castle. Infinitely patient, accepting, completely crazy about her Castle, but the confidence she's tried desperately to maintain is failing her now. What if she's still not right? What if she's not the same, or they don't match, or it hurts?
A tickle of nausea stirs in her stomach. What if she doesn't live up to his expectations? She knows, gut-deep, that this is her last first time, but it feels like the first – far more long-awaited and just as pale and nervous.
Begging entrance to her mouth with the tip of his tongue run across her bottom lip, swollen from where he's been grazing it with his teeth, Castle sets about easing her mind and body. She opens for him, letting him explore, slowly but no less enthusiastically this time. She's so deliciously distracted by the winding of his tongue around hers, by the insistent sweetness of his fingers twined with hers, and so focused on the slow and steady strokes she's maintaining – he seems to like that; it's a good start – that she's failed to notice his free fingers creeping lower and lower, until she buckles unexpectedly at the touch to her inner thigh.
Breaking their kiss, she leans her forehead against his, watches with lust-tinged fascination the rise and fall of her breasts with her tight and heaving chest even though they've hardly gotten started. She's doing her best to contain her reaction to him as he strokes her outer lips, cups her with his broad palm and tells her something she doesn't fully hear, but nods her agreement to.
The rain that slowed to a steady susurration for a couple of hours howls back into a rage, wind rattling the old glass window by the desk and she feels her skin separate from her body for a fraction of a second, feels the life rapidly leave and re-enter her heart.
"Hey," Castle husks, so strangely and wonderfully easy in his surroundings and his own body, "relax. We're going to take this slow."
She tries, and finally succeeds – somewhat – melting on his hand when his fingertip sparks lightning through her body, finally stroking her clit with the lightest touch she could imagine, as if he still can't quite believe she's his to do what he wants with. She crumbles, a keening whine bubbling from the back of her throat as he sets a steady rhythm, leaning over her. And then he begins talking and she's already close, half out of her mind and half out of her body while the flames lick at the edge of her consciousness, narrowed down to the apex of her thighs.
"That's it," he encourages, and he's so convincing, the dark contrast of hunger and patience swirling in his eyes. He guides a finger inside her and refuses to relent when she clamps around him as he drives her pleasure up. Castle keeps whispering his encouragement to her, batting her hand away from his cock and telling her regretfully, "this is going to be over too quickly if you keep that up."
She has to grab onto something, have something else to ground her while her body tenses and her toes curl and her calves cramp, body held on high. One more pluck of her strings, just one more. Her fingers fist in his hair, pulling him down for a kiss he returns eagerly, pouring all his longing into her in a way she can feel and drink in.
"Castle," she begs against his lips, his name feeling full and right in her mouth, "please. Make me come, please…"
One rough scrape of his thumb across her nerves is all it takes for him to burn away her consciousness, for her to call for him and lose all the sense in her body for a moment, registering only distantly that she's fallen back on the quilted bed. There's nothing she can do but wait.
When she comes back to herself, Castle's laying beside her, propped up on one elbow and watching her with a feral intensity that's only just contained. He's uncensored, fully himself and fully in his own skin. She likes what she sees. Rises to pull herself closer to it, meeting him at eye level and whispering her gratitude. For his time, patience, for always seeming to know what she needs even before she does.
He doesn't say anything else, just sits up, bringing her with him, and rests his back against the massive wooden headboard, sitting crosslegged and holding her. Kate realizes he's waiting for her to make the next move, to tell him how far she wants to go. She rights herself, straddling his hips and reclining into his lap, letting her slick folds rest over his straining length. There's a finality in the first touch, and a beginning in the same breath, the ending of one cycle and almost the beginning of another. He hisses with pleasure and she can see the want boiling in his eyes, his intense expression eye to eye with hers, and the knowledge that she has this effect on him – not the fantasy of her or the old her, but the real here-and-now Kate – emboldens her, brings her back into herself even though the blood pools in her cheeks and her thighs still tremble when she rocks on them.
Guiding his hand from her hip up to her breast and shimmying with delight when he grasps her in just the rough way she likes, she feels the fire pool in her belly again, her body needing to be filled just as fiercely now as it feared it earlier. Already elevated again, she gasps when his cock twitches vitally underneath her and she knows neither of them are long for control. His groan is a question mark and she answers it with a joyful exclamation before tilting her hips up just enough to position him at her entrance. With a biting kiss to distract both of them, she sinks down, taking him all at once and she's so full she might burst into a thousand little embers if her skin wasn't containing her separate parts. The hand that's remained on her hip guides her, taking control from the bottom, and he starts slow, holding her still as he can while he gives her a few experimental thrusts, each pulsing along her front wall and allowing him a little deeper with every return until he bottoms out and she can feel his balls resting against her.
Their teeth clash every so often as his thrusts become rougher, as her hands claw at his back and yank at his hair, anything – anything – to bring him closer. She'd open herself up and let him crawl into her if she could. Castle is her loving crucible, his every touch and welcome invasion of her burning away her fears and doubts and the goddamn bullet scar he pushes her back momentarily to kiss. He forges her, melting her down wherever he touches to leave her stronger and more resilient when she cools, if she ever does.
Castle gives a jerk to her hips that changes the angle just a fraction. Tears sting in the corner of her eyes and she can't contain a scream from the overload of body and mind when he brushes the spot deep inside her, hitting her on every stroke as she explodes and still he doesn't relent. The bruising intensity of his grip on her is delicious, a show of his strength and of how he knows instinctively just how to handle her. When he begins fucking her in earnest, he doesn't give her any time to come down, and soon she loses all track of time and space again as if gravity ceased to exist and concentrated itself where their bodies are joined, pulling and pulsing too much to withstand. He throws himself over the edge with her the last time, sealing their lips together once more and flooding her body with warmth.
The grey daylight begins to light the room, only distinguishable from night in its blurry luminosity. She lies panting on his chest, counting stray freckles she'd never noticed from a distance and worrying the bone of his shoulder between her teeth. Castle murmurs nonsense to her and he keeps still, save for the occasional transient shiver, and stays softening inside her.
She thinks that they should be buried in these smoky quilts.
The rain at last tames itself to a steady patter and the county finally gets a crew out to fix the bridge two days later. It's with a somber sluggishness that Beckett stirs her fingers around in the warmth of a mid-morning bath. Castle sighs, his whole chest expanding humidly and falling back again, leaving her bonelessly sunk into him, too lazy to do much more than appreciate the nudge of his cock against her thigh.
"Guess we have to go home," she throws out, pressing her cheek to the crook of his arm with such force that she wonders if they'll fuse.
"Hn." It's not his most eloquent response, as if he hardly heard her and his mind is far away, but she can hardly fault him for it. There's much to think about. Some they've discussed – keeping Gates in the dark as long as possible, for starters – and some they've not.
"It's going to get complicated," not quite a question and not quite a definitive statement. Maybe she just wants to hear him say it so that she doesn't have to fear it alone.
"Yes," he answers simply. He knows as well as she does that there are a lot of unknowns – about the partnership it might cost them, the crap she's going to deal with at work, the undue interest once the press gets wind. It's worth it. But it won't be as easy as this.
"But not right now?" she asks hopefully, reaching behind her and guiding him to her entrance, sinking down on him and shuddering with new familiarity of enveloping him, of the layers of them, of his arms around her and her body around him.
The writer kisses her hair, murmuring into the waves that have begun to dry on their own, clumping together and sticking in messy sections. "But not right now," he agrees, rocking his hips into her and sloshing the cooling water off the lip of the tub. "Not right now."
Now's not the time for sadness. A part of her wants to pretend that they can stay here forever. A tiny, hopeful part of her thinks that some day, when their exhaustion is no longer relieved by a night's sleep and some pleasant diversion, they'll come back and they will stay and that their voices will endure in the cracks between the logs of this tiny sacred space. But there's work to be done and she knows that they can't outrun what's waiting for them at home. She doesn't even really want to try. She just wishes she could freeze them here for a little longer, that's all.
"You know…" he poses playfully, sly insinuation rumbling through his voice, "it is still raining." His palm plays across her breast, spreading the thin sheen of rose oil that floats on top of the water over her and kneading tenderly while he grasps the papery skin right over her pulse point between his incisors and holds it there.
She cottons on. "Driving back could still be dangerous. We have no idea what other roads are out."
"It'd be foolish to risk it so soon," Castle says sagely, sighing happily when she rotates her hips, allowing him a deeper angle. "They can hardly fault us for not getting ourselves in undue danger again." A far-off clap of thunder outside seems to agree with him and she does not startle at all.
"Just to be safe," she says, and kisses the crook of his arm, and follows him happily back into their little snowglobe world where nothing else exists.
Thank you all for the wonderful response to this one; I hope part two has satisfied expectations and then some. As always, I love to hear your thoughts.
Oh, and for any inquiring minds, the title comes from a Percy Shelley poem titled, "The Cloud." It's one of my favorites and I found it somehow fitting.