Lean Wide Out the Window
He and Alexis have already started dinner when Kate falls into the loft that evening. She's stumbling over plastic bag-draped clothes that she picked up from the dry cleaner, but she lets everything drop to the floor. Castle tries to rise and help her, and he forgets, twisting his knee.
Damn it.
"Stay," she mutters. "Stay there. I got this."
"I'll help," his daughter says quickly, jumping up from the table. Good girl.
He tried to make dinner for them, but the chair is too short for working cleanly in the kitchen and he didn't trust himself to stand without the aid of... something. Because of that he ordered crutches from the medical place Kate used - that will help - and they're supposed to arrive first thing tomorrow.
He watches Kate and Alexis take the bundles of laundered clothes back down the hallway and he sighs, rubs a hand over his face. He feels the headache sharply behind his eyes and drumming at his temples; he's had it all day and only when he's let himself fall asleep has it subsided. But he doesn't want more sleep.
He's picked at his dinner; he only ate half the sandwich she brought for him from Julio's, and despite their afternoon interlude and its pleasant diversion, he didn't have it in him to keep chewing. It just takes too much work. He's tired of work.
"Hey," Kate calls out. He lifts his head and sees her crossing the living room towards him, Alexis behind her. "I hope you weren't waiting on me?"
"No, no," he assures her. "Alexis made us spaghetti."
"You've barely touched your plate, Castle," she murmurs, leaning over to drop a perfunctory kiss to his cheek. And then her lips turn towards his ear with a so-soft brush, raw and beautiful, just for him. "Please eat."
He scrambles for words, for sense after that too-quiet plea, and he tries giving her a lift of his lips in smile. "I had a late lunch," he reminds her.
She stands upright with a grin that looks like relief, her lips wide and happy, and she curls her fingers at his neck, stroking, her body coming in close to his in the chair. "That's right. Me too." She says it like it's a secret, and then flashes him another smile. "I'm gonna get a plate and then we'll finish dinner."
It sounds light, but he hears the command in her voice and sighs, giving Alexis a look. She shrugs at him but he knows they were comparing notes back in the bedroom. He could practically see their mutual resolve to bully him as they came back through the living room.
"Okay, Castle, stop glowering. We gang up on you because we love."
He goes very still, very quiet, hand trembling on his napkin, but she doesn't seem to even realize what she's said. Alexis quirks an eyebrow at him - she must notice his unnatural frozen state - but she shrugs and sits down at the table. Did no one get that? What she said?
Kate comes back to the table with her own plate, a glass of white in her other hand, and she nudges the chair back with her hip, sinks into it. Her smile is still half crooked on her face, and she gives him a quick look, questions in her eyes as she pulls a knee up and takes her fork.
"How was the case?" he blurts out. Anything to avoid tripping clumsily back over because we love and she takes the bait.
"Boring, mostly. I promise. You wouldn't have been there even if you could have," she assures him.
Still, she launches into the details and they're talking easily about the case, Alexis inserting questions so that it truly is all three of them, not exactly appropriate dinner conversation but about as classy as it gets in his home.
They smooth right over her careless observation, the truth of it behind the joke, but it sticks with him, won't let go.
because we love.
He thought so. He thought so. But it's nice to have validation.
Kate can see that Castle is restless tonight in a way he hasn't been since before he broke his knee, and that makes her happy. He keeps roaming around in the chair, which at least gives him practice with it, but Kate stays firmly on the couch with a book until Alexis gives up trying to entertain her moody father and goes back to the dorm.
When they're alone, Kate takes a long look at him, debates what happens next in her head, and finally decides she's had enough.
"Come on, Castle. Bed time."
"But I'm not tired."
"I know. You slept all day. But I'm tired and I don't want you smacking your leg into the furniture while I'm trying to sleep."
He sighs but she sees a little flicker of amusement drift across his eyes. Kate lifts from the couch, drops her book over his shoulder and into his lap as she reaches for the handles of the wheelchair to push him forward. He grumbles something and clutches the wheels to stop her, tilting his head back. He opens his mouth to say something - probably another refusal - but she leans over him and drops a kiss to his lips, upside down and light, tasting peculiar, tasting familiar, but everything not as it should be.
He hums and his fingers are snaking through her hair at the back of her neck, tugging, and even though it's an awkward angle, the way his tongue searches out her mouth makes her want to see what else they can do like this.
A sudden breath and the nudge of his nose breaks them apart; she blinks and straightens, pushing his wheelchair towards the back bedroom even as she tries to still the thundering of her heart. The wheels slide noisily through his fingers; he's not quite holding on but letting the friction build, and it calls to a need in her that she tries to tame.
Kate leaves him parked beside the bed to make the transition while she brushes her teeth, refusing to watch and demean him further, but wishing the mirror was angled a little more so she could see him, make sure it's not too much of a struggle.
She rinses and goes to the bathroom, washes her hands, pulls off her dress pants and unbuttons her shirt. When she gets back to the bedroom, Castle is already laid out in the bed with a hand at his head, massaging his temples with thumb and forefinger, eyes shaded.
Kate watches him a moment, long and unguarded since he's not looking at her, and then she pulls on a soft jersey shirt and boxers, crawls to a sitting position beside him. He sighs and his arm drops, his hand resting on her stacked knees, eyes slow to open.
"You have a headache?" she asks. Can't help asking. Her hand travels without her say to stroke the flop of hair off his forehead. His eyes close again.
"Yeah."
"You didn't take any of the pain pills," she notes. She guessed maybe that was it - why he was so restless and rolling around the loft after dinner. "Makes you tired?"
"Yeah. I slept the whole day away."
"Sorry," she says, can't figure out why she's apologizing. And so much. Every other sentence out of her mouth.
"I'll live," he says shortly. Even though his hand is on her knees, he doesn't really feel with her. Present.
"Here," she says, briskly. An idea. "Come here." She slides her arm under his neck and shoulder, tugs him into her lap with his help. He makes a noise of appreciation and she straightens one leg out at his shoulder, leaves the other crossed to pillow his head. He's squirming into her now, eyes fluttering open as he grins up at her.
"I like this."
"I'm sure you do," she says dryly, but the smile tugs an answering one from her lips. "Close your eyes."
He complies happily, hands folded at his chest, his braced knee a beached whale in the bed. Kate strokes the sides of his face with her fingers, smoothing the lines at his nose and mouth with her thumbs, over and under, around and down. The tension in his body unravels, cord by cord, as she touches him.
"What're you doing?" he murmurs.
"For your headache," she says softly. "Hush."
He shuts up, but his lips part as his jaw goes slack. His lashes fall against his cheeks delicately, more delicately than they should for a man with such presence and those rugged features, his big hands. She spiderwebs her fingers across his cheeks and forehead and then she presses her thumbs into his temples slowly.
His body melts like wax in a flame, liquid in her lap, and she makes short circles at his temples, rolling the skin and the blood vessels below, easing the pressure that's built up in his head. She brushes her fingers along the sides of his face as she circles his temples with her thumbs, over and over, watching him totally and completely relax.
She feels it first at her thighs, and then hears the rumble vibrating in his chest. He probably doesn't even know he's doing it, and it makes her smile, makes her open her mouth and say it before she realizes she's saying it.
"You like that, kitten?"
"Oh, no," he groans, eyes flashing open.
She laughs, feels a little helpless because she promised herself she wouldn't, she really wouldn't use that nickname - not now at least - and yet there it is.
"That's not funny," he grumbles, trying to lift.
"It's - oh, it is funny," she says, bracing his head between her hands to keep him there. "It is, because now I see."
"I do not purr," he mumbles.
"Apparently, you do."
"Shut up."
He struggles again, but she's got him, and she tries to stem the laughter, tries to hold him in place. "No, no. Come on. I was helping. Lie down."
"You were drugging me with your - witchy fingers - blocking blood flow to my brain and trying to kill me, make me brain dead, I know your game."
"Lie down," she soothes, pressing her lips together to keep the laughter back. She knows her voice is tinged with it, but his grumbling is mostly good-natured and he really has nowhere to go. His head falls back in her lap, shoulders hunched, but she strokes her hands down his chest and up, frames his face so she can rub her thumbs over his cheekbones.
He's still taut with it, but she works him slowly, firmly, until she's making circles in his temples once more, humming back to him because she kind of wants to hear him make that rumbling again. Like a big cat purring, a lion lounging in the sun.
He yawns suddenly, face cracking with it, and she sees pink tongue and teeth, and then his nose rubs against her thigh on a sigh. She strokes the side of his face even as his body begins to melt again, and then she goes back to pressing her thumbs into his temples, easing his headache.
He's asleep in minutes, heavy in her lap, and she lets herself stay awake too long touching him, fingers mapping the contours of his face and skiing the slope of his throat, splaying out over the cotton of his t-shirt and back again. His mouth parts with a breath, his face half-turned into her, and she leans slowly back against the headboard and closes her eyes, hands still cradling his head.
He wakes disoriented and hot to the feel of her kiss cool on his forehead.
"Going in to work. Sleep."
He obeys even though he doesn't want to.
