She hadn't blinked when she'd asked the bored teenager behind the desk for one room, hadn't flinched when he'd told her he hoped she and her husband would enjoy their stay, hadn't hesitated to walk inside, flick on a switch, and sink down onto the drab bedspread. She gingerly stretches her arms and arcs her back, exhaling sharply.
He deposits the duffel bag in the corner of the room, feeling a quiet rush of shame that she has absolutely nothing, nothing but the clothes, still vaguely damp with rainwater, plastered to her body. He stands awkwardly, watching her as she slowly draws her legs up, crossing them under her on the bed.
She smiles thinly at him, smoothes her hand over the space next to her in invitation. "I promise not to be too rough," she says.
He supposes he can't begrudge her borrowing his coping mechanism. "I'm more worried about whatever mutant bedbugs might be on that thing," he says as he settles down next to her, shifts to face her. "I'm going to be lying awake in terror all night."
She sighs, wraps her fingers tightly around her shins. His comment was too close. There's not enough that's funny about this situation.
He waits for her. He likes to think he's an expert at it by now.
"We need two guns because I don't have mine. Because I resigned," she says, starting, near as he can figure, at the end.
"Beckett," he breathes. Already, already this story is twining around his throat, cutting off his air, already this story is not one he's sure he can manage, and she's barely even told him anything.
"Gates had already suspended Esposito and me. We found the guy. Cole Maddox. I didn't tell Gates. Dragged Espo with me to his hotel. Found Montgomery's files, but I wasn't being careful enough, and he got the drop on us and went to the roof. I followed him." She pauses, a spark of something catching in her eyes, sadness or fury or regret. "He got away."
"How?" he growls, because it's suddenly vital that he know everything, that she gives him all the pieces of her story.
"We fought. He was –" she licks her lips, glances away briefly – "he was stronger than me. Better trained. He left me dangling from the roof. Ryan caught me as my fingers slipped. He'd told Gates. They came with backup."
"God," he chokes out, his eyes stinging, his chest aching with the sudden slam of knowledge, the burning realization of just how close he'd come to losing her again, a heartbeat of time and the strength of Ryan's hands the only things that dragged her back to him. So close, too close to someone from the 12th knocking on his door instead of Beckett, someone with sympathetic eyes and somber words that would keep him from ever being whole again.
He drops his head, focuses on the faded paisley of the bedspread, forces himself to keep breathing despite the heartache of all their almosts. She ducks her chin to catch his line of vision. "I remember – his hands were around my neck, and I couldn't breathe, my vision started tunneling grey, and still, all I could think about was a name. All I needed was the name of the man behind it all."
He can't help it, can't stand it, lurches forward at her, skims his fingers lightly along the column of her throat. He can see it now, the darkening capillaries, the spindling veins underneath where Maddox's fingers must have pressed down. Her breathing quickens; he can feel her rapid exhalations across his nose, but she lets him touch, lets him drag his hands along the sharp angles of her vertebrae, the smooth lines of her neck, the arc of her trachea, still dragging air in and pushing it out, somehow not crushed under the pressure of a man's violent fingers.
"When I was clinging to the roof, when I suddenly realized I wasn't getting back up – the name wasn't enough anymore. The name didn't mean – I might have thought it was enough to die for, but I didn't want to live for it."
His hands keep skimming her neck, then trip down, reach a recently-risen welt on her collarbone. He keens, low, in the back of his throat, needing to see it, see her, understand what's happened to her through the map scrawled over her body. She takes her hands off her shins, lifts them in permission, supplication. He tugs her jacket off her, carefully, but she can't avoid a quiet flinch as she rotates her shoulder back to let him tug the damp leather away.
He can feel his breath pushing out of his lungs in sharp, staccato bursts as he unbuttons her shirt, needing to see the story written on her skin, the story she's given as much as she can with her words (her words will never be enough, now, he will always need more of her). He gets to the bottom button, his fingers stumbling over the fabric, faltering over the smooth skin of her stomach, and it's the second time in a matter of hours he's done this but the first time he's really seeing, his vision blurred but not entirely clouded, now, by a haze of lust and love and adulation. He pushes the edges of the shirt aside, sees a darkening bruise over the bottom of her rib, a red weal just at her hip; he sees, now, what he couldn't before.
The mark blazes an angry trail down, over her hip and under her jeans, so he unbuttons them, pushes her back onto the bed, tugs them down her thighs and then off her legs, needing more, needing all of her. The denim pulls at her, clings to her skin, but she lies there silently, staring up at him with dark eyes that radiate understanding.
There's another bruise darkening on the inside of her knee, the skin just starting to shadow, and he hovers over, leans his face close, brushes his lips over the injury. "You," she breathes out, voice thin, thready, and he will never, ever get sick of hearing that word from her lips. "I wanted to live for you."
He drops his head onto her thigh, overcome by it again, overcome by her, lifts a hand up and drags it over the rough lace of her bra, the cool skin of her stomach, down over the damp cotton of her underwear. "I don't want to hurt you," he murmurs into her knee.
"You won't hurt me," she says, shifting, squirming so that her legs fall further apart.
"The day you've had…" he starts.
She lifts a heel and uses it to kick him gently on his shoulder, drapes her calf over his shoulder, and his hand is still resting between her legs and he can feel the quivering of her stomach, the desperate need that sets her muscles vibrating and transfers over to him, makes him gasp into her leg. "I will hurt you if you don't get moving," she breathes.
He laughs against her leg, circles his hand lightly, gently at the very bottom of her stomach. She hums, low and frustrated, in the back of her throat, nudges the bottom of his scapula with the foot that still hangs there. He lets his fingers dance up, strokes the soft skin around her navel, feathers a light kiss on the inside of her lower thigh.
"Castle," she exhales. "Stop teasing." She props herself up on her elbows, sees something in him that has her tilting forward, folding in half to grab the lapels of his shirt, dragging him forcibly up to her and then leaning back, still clutching him, pulling him so that he's lying over her in the bed. He can feel the heat of her skin through the fabric of his shirt; her hands rove up and down his sides, smoothing over his flanks as her teeth scrape along his jawbone.
He can't help but groan as she wraps her legs around his waist, the heat of her thighs burning through the denim of his jeans, their hips clashing as she arcs up and he rolls down, and then her hands are on his belt and she's murmuring too many clothes against his lips and he forgets about everything but the warmth of her mouth, the fast-burning fire of her body.
She's tangled against him when they wake in the thin morning light, and it's so right and so wrong all at once. The planes and slants of her body nudge against him: the sharp arc of her ankle bone at his calf, the jut of her elbow into his stomach, the curve of her nose against his collarbone –- the way she's pressed into him, angles jarring against angles, is everything he's ever wanted.
But the sheets are pilled and threadbare. There's the darkness around her throat from when a man tried to crush her windpipe. He can't be sure whether she's naked because she wants to be or because she has absolutely nothing.
He shifts, feeling it acutely, the pull of desire and wash of pleasure at her naked body, the sting of heartache that they are here now, a nowhere hotel, that every day will draw them further away from home, from the morning after she deserves.
She must feel him move; she hums into his collarbone, scrapes her teeth over his skin, and oh, oh that's no good. That's too good. "Morning," she whispers, her voice rocky with sleep.
It shoots straight to his core and he has to still himself, suppress a groan. "Hey," he murmurs, brushing his hand along the top of her head as she curls closer, contracts herself into his torso.
He tries not to read into it. When they'd been in his loft, when she'd pulled him into his bedroom, she'd been commanding, the lithe length of her body over his, pressing him into the bed, pinning his wrists, holding him down. Last night – she was still everything from every fantasy he's ever entertained, but she'd pulled him over her and kept him there, and while he hadn't noticed at the time, he can't help but realize now that she's balled into herself against him. Like she's making herself a smaller target.
She can't be consciously aware of it – her mouth is moving lightly against his chest, her hand starts stroking down his side, and she's making a light, nearly-inaudible humming noise in the back of her throat.
He lifts his head, squints over the pillows to look at her father's watch, propped up on her nightstand. "It's nine," he murmurs, trailing his fingers down her bicep.
She arcs, unfurling her body slowly, wincing slightly as her legs stretch out and her back straightens. She blinks muzzily up at him, smiles languorously. "Too bad," she husks, leaning into him again, brushing her lips along the stubble of his chin. "I had plans for you this morning."
He groans, dips his chin to lightly kiss the tip of her nose. Maybe he was imaging it, earlier – maybe she always sleeps curled up tightly. He's so used to reading every rise and fall of her lips, ever swing and hitch of her step in the precinct, but she's a foreign creature in bed, exotic and unfamiliar, and he can't let himself think he can understand every twitch of her body in this context with the same expertise.
"When do you think Esposito'll get here?" he asks, reaching out to run his fingers along the plane of her stomach. If they're fast…
"No, Castle," she says, her voice lilting, teasing, a little breathy. "I'm getting in the shower." He opens his mouth to suggest where they could go with that, but she cuts him off. "Alone. And then you can get ready, and we can try to make some kind of plan."
She brushes her hand over his chest, rolls over to get out of bed. He can't stop the pained noise that reverberate through his throat when he sees her back. Her skin is a violent, livid purple across her left shoulder blade, just over her left hip.
"Hmm?" she murmurs, turning her head back at him, following the trail of his eyes to her shoulder. "Oh." She shakes her arms gently, rotates her neck in a slow circle, catches his gaze again. He knows he's not doing a great job at schooling the stricken look off his face from the way she smirks at him. "Did you miss the part where I said I fought with a highly-trained sniper?"
"Kate," he whispers, trying not to sound too raw. Every mark across her skin is a visceral reminder of her mortality, and now, in the clear light of day, his writer's brain is churning in a way it wasn't before, replaying the ways she would have gotten every bruise, every scrape.
She stands, walks around the bed to get to the bathroom, reaches out a hand to wrap around his foot on the way. "Stop thinking so hard, Castle."
He can't control his brief, leering smile – despite his worry over her, he woke up with her in his bed and now she's walking around the room, comfortably, gloriously naked. "That's not the on—hey!" She's flicked the arch of his foot in a way that's shooting spindles of pain all the way through to his toes.
"Be good," she says in a throaty voice that invites him to be everything but good. "Espo might get here soon. I have to shower."
"Can I at least watch?" he asks, falling back into the bed, stretching his arms over his head and letting his eyes travel slowly over her body.
She firmly shuts the bathroom door in response.
