Lean Wide Out the Window
Castle grins like a champ and crutches past her, showing off.
"Fine, fine," she sighs, tossing her book down onto the couch. "You're so accomplished. Now sit down before you give me a heart attack."
"Why? I'm so good at it now. I can really move, Beckett. And it's fun - it's like in the stairwell when you swing down the last five or six steps-"
"Please tell me you don't do that."
"I... do that. You don't?" He gives her a mock horrified look. "Beckett. Come on. Where's your sense of fun?"
"Breaking my neck doesn't sound fun," she says, scathingly. "You really swing down the last five or six steps?"
"Yeah, you just grip the railing pretty hard and launch yourself-"
"Castle, I get the physics." Kate can't help the tremor of her voice and shuts her mouth until she can control it again. "Don't you think one broken knee is enough?"
"Yeah, but who says I'll break something?"
She just stares at him, but it's not that he's a klutz. Oh, he can be clumsy enough when she's got her fingers wrapped around his tie and leading him straight back to the bedroom, but once he's there, he's as sure and certain and accurate as any athlete. But.
"You gotta do more stuff just for fun, Beckett," he chides. He crutches his way towards her and removes his support, flops down on the couch beside her with his leg sticking straight out. He gives her those devilish and inciting eyebrows. Smug. Cocky. She really loves him like this.
She used to hate it. When did this happen to her?
"Fun," she repeats dryly.
"Be a little ridiculous on the stairs. Have a crutch race with me."
"I can't believe you ordered two pairs of crutches just so-" She stops, rethinks that even as Castle waits on her to get it. "Okay. I can believe it."
He grins.
She'd like to slide over into his lap and taste that grin, because there's fun and then there's fun, but actually.
He's right.
Kate leans forward, knocks his crutches to the ground and just out of his reach, and then she heads for the entry way and that second set. A laugh bubbling up when he finally seems to get it.
"Whoa, hey! No fair. You're cheating in crutch races!"
She lets the laugh fall right out and swings the wooden crutches under her arms, pivots to address him, already letting her momentum carry her heart higher, like the sensation on a good swing, legs stretched to the sky and head tilted back.
"Last one to the bedroom's a rotten egg," she says.
"Such a cheater!" he calls after her.
So what if she's on call? She can win a few crutch races while she waits to be pulled away.
"I can't go," she says flatly, not looking at him.
"But Ka-ate," he moans. It's not a whine; no, he can't help the growl under his words that belies the inflection of her name. He wants to whine, wants it to be that light and pathetic, but instead there's weight to it.
He really wants to get the hell out of here. Take her off somewhere and connect once more, make it just the two of them, like it used to be, instead of her and the boys, or even her and his daughter. He wants them.
"Kate. Come on. Bora Bora. My birthday. Some heat in the middle of winter."
"This research for your novel?" she says, a little too glib.
"Not that kind of heat," he answers, but there's no heat in that either. He wants it too much.
"I know it's expensive and you've already-"
"It's not the money," he mutters. "Who cares if I lose the money? I want to go away with you."
She squirms.
"Kate. We've been planning this for months," he tries. He hears the way his voice cracks and he hates it, but he is weary of being stuck in this loft. Crutches or not, he feels fine, and he wants Kate.
"Castle, I have no more vacation days," she says quietly.
So quit. He almost says it, flippant and stupid. But she looks at him again and his arguments die on his lips.
"I can't go," she states, still impossibly far away from him, standing in the doorway of his study while he's relegated to the couch once more. Stuck. Always stuck.
"You could. Just come with me."
"Castle." Tight voice, bare strings of her control.
"I thought you got fifteen days of vacation," he mutters back.
"Well, yes, technically. A week in Colorado, a week back here after your stunt-" she says 'stunt' like it's a dirty word "and now I have five days left. You want me here for Christmas Eve, Castle, or Thanksgiving? What about my birthday? What about-"
"Fine," he cuts her off. The stab of disappointment is echoed sharply now by the brutal blank bluntness of her words. Five days for the whole rest of the year, and he's not good at delaying gratification because Christmas seems so far off. Besides she wants to work on Christmas so what good does that do him?
He lifts his head to argue again, but she's come right up to the couch while he was busy being wounded, and she drops to her knees before him, her hands on his thighs. "Castle. I know you're disappointed. But don't you want to save Bora Bora for when this is out of our way?"
Her fingers slide under the velcro and the frustration clears from his head, travels south, makes a slow coil of need around the base of his spine. She doesn't fight fair.
"We'll do something else for your birthday. Something at home, just us. I'll make it special."
"You always make it special," he blurts out inelegantly, but that seems to do it anyway. Her smile lightens her eyes and she leans in to him, a soft and generous kiss that has her body following.
He lets her push him back into the couch, slides his fingers up under her shirt to feel the warm skin of her sides, the flare and flex of her abs. She settles carefully around him, avoiding his knee, and she's right.
Bora Bora is best left for when he's not so stuck, so restrained, because there are quite a lot of fantasies built up in his head for those beaches. But he really wants to go. He really wants Kate and sun and ocean and Kate and just - not this any more. He feels winter in his knitting bones and it's making him miserable. And he's afraid it makes him a misery to be with too.
"I can't take the day off, but I promise we'll celebrate your birthday in style," she whispers at his ear.
Stuck in a wheelchair? Sure. He wishes she had more vacation days. He wishes he hadn't broken his knee or even taken her snowboarding at all. How in the world can he wait until Christmas until - oh wait. She said Christmas?
He shifts away from her mouth and stares at her. "Does this mean you're planning to spend Christmas Eve with us? Full on Castle Christmas? Because that's what that sounded like. A promise to take the day off and be here."
She groans and drops her head against his chest; her words - when they come - are spoken right against his heart.
"Fine. Yes."
Christmas Eve. She's going to have Christmas Even with his family.
He really can wait. He's gotten so much better at waiting.
As she pulls on her clothes and slowly slides on her holster, she wonders if he's watching her from the bed. She imagines she feels his eyes trace her movements, imagines him sliding out from between the sheets with his usual grace to pull her back against him.
When she smiles to herself and turns around in his room, he's lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. Awake but not present. And with that leg brace still on, there's not much chance of him sliding with grace to wrap around her.
"Castle," she calls to him.
"Yeah," he answers, monotone.
"I have to go. Do you... want some coffee before I leave?"
"No, you're already running late," he says. It's not meant to be hurtful but it hurts anyway. "Besides, I'm not in the mood for coffee. Think I should cut back. Getting kinda twitchy and I don't have any way to work it off."
Oh. She hesitates at the foot of the bed and adjusts the strap of her shoulder holster, reaches for her coat. She came straight in to bed last night from a long and fruitless foot search yesterday, and she's headed out early now to pick up where they left off.
"Okay," she says finally. "No coffee. Well."
"Have a good day at work," he says tonelessly. His head rolls to look at her but then he winces and presses his fingers down under the brace. "It itches again."
She leans forward and captures his fingers. "He said it means you're healing. I'll get you one of those backscratchers at the drug store."
"In the meantime," he sighs, and dislodges her grip to slide his fingers under the velcro again.
"You're not supposed to take it off," she warns, catching his hand.
He growls and shakes her loose, presses his palm to his eyes as he lays in bed. She knows he's frustrated, knows he's so tired of the leg brace and the restricted movement and everything.
She knows. But nothing seems to help.
She almost wishes for whiny and petulant because at least that is the Castle she knows. She doesn't know how to help quietly frustrated and darkly moody.
"You'll heal faster if you follow the doctor's instructions," she says finally, splaying her hand at his thigh and stroking down his sweatpants. "Sooner you heal, sooner this comes off."
"I know," he mutters and drops his hand. "I'll just stay here and sleep."
She steps back, checking the clock again; she really has to go. "Sleep," she says dully. "Okay. Well. Yeah. Only five."
"You think you can get out for lunch?" he asks, a glimmer in his voice.
No. But. "I'll see what I can do," she hedges, leaning in over him and kissing his forehead. She'll rearrange everything to get back to the loft at lunch for him.
"No, Kate," he sighs. "Don't do that. I'd rather you do what you need to do and come home for dinner instead."
She presses her palm to his chest as she lifts, a faint sliver working like a splinter in her heart. "Right. Okay. I'll make it home on time tonight."
He draws his hand over hers at his chest, squeezes. "Go to work, Kate."
She does. She glances once over her shoulder as she leaves the bedroom, sees him easing slowly onto his shoulder, his hand out over her side of the bed like he's going back to sleep. But his eyes never close.
She goes to work, but leaves her heart behind.
