Home Is Where the Heart Stops
xx
When Alexis leaves for the library, Martha isn't far behind her, escaping out the front door as if fleeing the overwhelming stack of breakfast dishes.
Beckett sits up a little straighter at the bar, realizes they're somehow alone. "You want help with all this?"
Castle throws his cloth napkin onto the counter, pushes back from the island and gets up. "No need." He gives her a wide grin. "As a friend, I couldn't let you do my dirty work."
She rolls her eyes at that - though she did ask him, 'as a friend,' to stay in her police car. She stands as well, folding her napkin and placing it on the counter. "I don't mind." Beckett follows him around the island to the kitchen sink, reaches for a pan still on the stove to place it beside the rest. "Got soap and stuff?"
"Under the sink, but really-"
"Castle."
He nods, stops talking. She maneuvers around him to gather the rest of the dirty dishes, realizes only after he's freezes in place that she's placed a hand at his hip to keep them from bumping into one another.
She slowly withdraws her touch. Something like tension unwinds from his body and he tosses her a crooked smile.
Oh, no. He's going to say something smarmy and absolutely ruin it.
But before he can comment, Castle winces and touches the side of his face, just above his brow. The bruise is pale, yellow and brown, and makes one eyelid crooked.
Beckett reaches out, curling her fingers around his to lightly skim the bruise. "Have you iced this?"
"Little bit yesterday," he says, his eye twitching at the nearness of her hand. Or perhaps it's just how tight the skin is here, swollen like this.
"Come on. You need ice, not standing around doing dishes."
"It's not that bad," he tries, but he does follow her to the refrigerator where she's opening the freezer side. "You can pull out the ice maker and reach in."
She hides her smile in the effort of collecting the ice cubes in her bare hand, how quickly he's given way to her. When she's turned back to him, he's opening a Ziploc bag for her. She dumps in the ice and he works on closing it while she shuts the freezer door.
"Teamwork," she says with relish, nudging him towards his seat at the bar. "You made breakfast - lots of breakfast - I can clean up while you ice that."
"You're a guest-"
"Don't be insulting," she says, poking his shoulder. "Hardly a guest. Sit down."
He obeys, though the ice dangles ineffectually from his fingers. She opens drawers until she finds a dish towel (right where she would've put them herself, if this was her kitchen), and she comes back to him at the bar with it.
He gives over the bag of ice and she folds it in the thin linen tea towel, all while he watches her. She brings the ice to the side of his face, not too gently.
He winces under the press of shifting cubes, tilts his head to one side - and into her other hand, where she has, unconsciously, raised it to keep him steady.
There's something warm and aware in the feel of his skin against her fingertips. The oil against her dry, cool fingers and the faint brush of his eyelashes at the top of her palm. She doesn't know why she's still standing here, doing for him when he can most definitely do for himself.
And then his own hand comes up to take over the job of icing his eye, just as it should be.
But instead of handing off the towel-wrapped ice, his broad palm lays over the back of her hand and his fingers curve at her knuckles. He holds her there, one eye closed and the other halfway to it, but there's not a trace of his usual charming smirk.
There's not a trace of anything. What's been stripped bare before her by this combination of a full stomach and the pain is something she didn't know existed. And she doesn't know what to do with it.
Beckett slowly works her hand out from under his, withdraws her touch from the side of his face. She folds her hands together just under her sternum, breathes slowly.
His eyes open. He straightens up. His lips begin to tilt into that slash of a smile, words about to form on his lips, and that's her cue.
Beckett turns back for the kitchen sink, knocking his hand away when he tries to snag her. "Don't push your luck, Castle. You only took a punch. Not a bullet."
He whines something she doesn't allow herself to register, and she shuts him out entirely by opening the hot water tap.
Breakfast was nice. She shouldn't push her luck either.
xx
