Thanks for all of the reviews for the last chapter! Wow! Thank you! And I'm glad you liked it. Really glad. Really!
There are some fluffy moments in this chapter, so if you don't like fluff, don't read. :)
Disclaimer: still don't own anyone.
After the scream and the crash, Rick dropped his gun and raced toward the study. "Beckett!" he shouted. When he got to the door of the study, he realized that he couldn't see anything, so he jumped back to the living room and grabbed the first thing he found: a candle in a glass jar that was sitting on a table a few feet away. Before he got back to the study, he registered the sound of somewhat loud, controlled breathing coming from the study. When he made it inside with the candle, he noticed Kate sitting, or rather sprawled, in the middle of the room next to an end table, her laser gun discarded on the floor to her side. A lamp was broken on the floor side of the table, and she was holding out her foot in front of her, still breathing deeply through her mouth. He bent down by her, and after setting the candle safely out of the way, gently touched her arm. "My God, Kate, what happened? Are you okay?" he asked her, fear and concern for her dripping from every word that he spoke.
She breathed a few more times through her mouth, obviously in pain and trying to climb over the pain so she could talk. "I ran through the doorway," she started, gritting her teeth and taking another couple of breaths. "I forgot about the step in here and I rolled my ankle." Another deep breath. "Stupid. And then I crashed into the table." She looked to her side. "Sorry about the lamp. I'll replace it."
"Beckett, don't be an idiot. I don't care about the lamp. I care about you."
At the simple declaration, her eyes whipped to meet his in the flickering candlelight. His hand moved to her back and rubbed it, trying to soothe her even though he couldn't take the pain in her ankle away. "Do you think it's broken?"
She looked at her ankle in the dim lighting and pulled her pant leg up a bit. She attempted to move her foot gingerly, and she was relieved that she was able to move it around a bit. It still hurt like hell to move it more than a few millimeters in any direction, but she didn't tell him that. "No, I can move it, so that's good. But it hurts. It's probably just a sprain."
"Just a sprain is bad enough, Kate." He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. "I can't even take you to the hospital to get it x-rayed." He glanced toward the window even though they couldn't see anything outside. "God, I'm so sorry, Kate."
She was touched by how dejected and concerned he sounded. But made her more mad at herself, because she was the one who caused this. It was her idea to play laser tag, and then she got the brilliant idea to run in here. And she forgot about the sunken part of the room. And then she remembered Rick getting caught up by the step a bit before the lights went out, when she was giving him grief about always falling down, where he pointed out that it was her doing the main amount of falling. And now she'd fallen again, but this time she'd certainly made a grand mess of it, breaking a lamp and spraining her ankle. At least it was only her ankle; the rest of her felt fine; well, the rest of her except for her head where she'd hit it on the table as she fell. She'd probably need something for that eventually.
But looking at his face in the dim light, she could see that somehow he blamed himself, even though that was stupid...she knew it was all her fault. "Castle, snap out of it. You have nothing to be sorry for. It was my own stupid fault."
"I should have..." he searched for something to say. "I should have closed the door to the study. I didn't even put any candles in here." She could see the regret etched in his face, hear it in his voice.
"And I shouldn't have run in here. Don't beat yourself up over it. I just beat my ankle up enough for the both of us." He winced at her words, and she was instantly sorry she'd uttered them. "Come on, Castle. You're not responsible." She rolled her eyes at him, even though it hurt her head, and she couldn't stop the involuntary grimace, which of course he noticed. He eased down more until he was sitting next to her legs, facing her. He stretched an arm across her lap and leaned closer to her.
"Kate? What else hurts? My God, it was the table, wasn't it? What part of you hit the table?"
"It's nothing, Castle."
He got one of those determined looks on his faces, one that he only got when he was deadly serious about something. His voice was steely when he spoke again. "Kate, you roll your eyes at me at least twice a day. Never have I seen you wince when you do it. Did you hit your head on the table?" He stared her down, blue eyes to hazel, but she didn't speak. "I need to know, Kate," he insisted, more softly.
She took a breath but made a conscious point not to roll her eyes again. "Yes," she confirmed simply.
"Where?"
"Left side, above my ear, but toward my face more," she admitted in a resigned voice.
Without saying a word, he raised his right hand and oh, so tenderly, threaded his fingers through the long brunette strands to gently cup the side of her head with his whole hand, to see if he could feel a bump without putting too much pressure on any one spot. Instinctively, she leaned into his touch just a bit. He was sorry to feel the bump where she had come in contact with the edge of the hard oak table, but at the same time he was relieved to find that the bump wasn't larger. They sat for several long seconds, their faces just inches away from each other. Then he could stand it no more, and his face moved forward and he kissed her tenderly, just brushing his lips against hers. Then the hand that was in her hair moved to the back of her head as he pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her in an embrace. She leaned into him and breathed in his masculine scent. She wrapped her arms around his torso, and the pain in her ankle was momentarily forgotten as she just let herself revel for a few seconds in the wonderful feeling of being held by him, and of holding onto him. So far, they'd always kissed if they'd been close to each other. They'd never just held each other, and she thought, with a tingle of contentment in her belly, that this was another new feeling that she could get used to.
After a few minutes, she heard him whisper again, "I'm so sorry."
She hated to hear that remorse coming from him, for something that was so not his fault, so she pulled back slightly and told him sternly, "Castle, I told you to stop that. This was my fault. Not yours. So knock it off, okay?"
He looked at her, but the concerned look never left his face. "Can't I just be sorry that it happened to you?"
"No, because I know you're blaming yourself for something. So stop it or I'm going to have to shoot you."
"Fine."
Then she happened to glance down to the floor where she'd dropped the laser gun. Quick as lightning, she grabbed it and fired a blast of light right at the center of the vest he was still wearing, which lit up and flashed. His mouth dropped open and she put down the gun and laughed. "There. I shot you anyway. And that means I win," she added smugly.
Then he laughed with her. "Geez, Beckett, the things you won't do to win a game of laser tag."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
They eventually decided they needed to get back to the kitchen. Kate asked for some help on her right side, thinking Rick could help her hop back to the kitchen to start dinner, since any further laser tag was out of the question. But Rick quickly nixed those plans and, amidst her protests, simply picked her up bridal-style and carried her to the kitchen, where he set her on one of the swivel chairs at the counter. "Hey, Beckett? Have you looked at the size of this place? If you try to hop around here on one leg, that leg is going to be ridiculously sore in no time." He pulled out the chair next to her and gently lifted her leg onto the cushion of the chair. Then he grabbed the flashlight from the counter and shined it on her ankle to get a better look. And when the light came on, both of them emitted twin sharp gasps of air as they saw the ankle, already swelling and starting to turn a little purple around the outside.
"Stay here," Rick ordered as he grabbed something out of a drawer and disappeared toward the front of the house.
"Where else would I go, Castle?" Kate muttered to herself, stating the obvious.
He came back in a few minutes later holding a gallon-sized plastic bag filled with snow from outside. And not only that, his face was red from the cold and he looked like he was all of a sudden going prematurely gray from all of the snow that was on his hair.
"You went outside? In a blizzard?"
He brushed his hair off and shivered before he placed the bag of snow gently on her ankle. "Voila! Mother Nature's ice pack, for the swelling. I figured the blizzard might as well be good for something. And when that melts, there's plenty more where that came from. Now just sit and talk to me while I get dinner ready."
"What are we having anyway? What can we have with no power?"
"Beckett, I told you not to worry. How does steak sound to you?"
"Sounds disgusting if you want me to eat it raw."
"Oh, it'll be cooked. How do you want it?"
"Medium-well, please. But how are you going to cook it?"
"I'll show you later. Are you okay to chop some veggies?"
She nodded and he started getting things out of the refrigerator. She sat back and watched him, because his attempts to get everything out of the refrigerator fast were pretty comical; he didn't want to let too much of the coldness out of the fridge if he could help it. However, she thought that his antics, while admirable and quite entertaining, probably weren't making a whole lot of difference in the inside temperature of the refrigerator than if he'd just gone about the process the normal way.
So they cut and they chopped, and they laughed at Rick's stories from some of his first book signings, and at Kate's more unusual adventures from when she'd been a new cop on patrol. Rick thought kabobs were the best for the cooking situation, so when they were assembled, he left the room with a plate full of them. He returned a few minutes later and stood in front of her. "Come on. You want to see how I'm cooking them, so we'll go see it. But you're not hopping, so get that idea out of your head right now." It wasn't a tone that she heard very often from him, but she still wasn't one to just acquiesce without putting up some sort of a fight.
"Castle..." she warned.
"Stuff it, Beckett. Do you want to sprain the other ankle? It's dark. Even with a bunch of candles, it's still dark. So I can either carry you like I did before, or I suppose I can give you a piggy back ride. So what'll it be?"
He had a point, damn him. So she went with option two. "Turn around, Castle." He grabbed the bag of snow off of her ankle and then turned around, and she boosted herself onto his back. She hugged his broad shoulders so as not to choke him and laid her head on his shoulder. It made for another sweet type of embrace...that is, until he started making horsey sounds when he'd taken a few steps. With her lips close to his ear, she replied "Castle, if you giddy-up or gallop, I will bite your ear." He stopped.
He carried her to the three-season room, which was noticably cooler than it had been in the other part of the house. But she could see and smell the kabobs grilling on a grill that was built into an inside fireplace. "In the summer, you can open up this room. I do have an outdoor firepit, but this grill is nice to use because it's in the shade, but you can still get the ocean breeze when everything is opened up. We use this a lot in the summer. We could even make s'mores for dessert!"
He sat her down on the wicker couch and put the snow bag back on her leg. He left the room and came back with a few blankets. He sat down next to her and snuggled right down by her before she could even think about it, drawing the blankets around them and over them. Aside from the snow on her leg, she had to admit that she was warm and quite content, despite the fact that almost the same position less than twenty four hours ago had made her pretty uneasy.
They decided to eat right in that room, and let the fire keep burning for warmth even after dinner was done and they'd taken the cooking grill off. Rick took a small plate up to Martha, and let her know that Kate had hurt her ankle and wasn't able to move around very well.
When dinner was finished, they moved into the living room (Kate opted for another piggy-back ride and told Rick that the threat of ear biting was still in effect for any horsey sounds or gallops), where Rick moved the couch directly in front of the fire. After he filled a new bag of snow for her ankle, he retrieved the bottle of wine that they'd started earlier, and they settled down to watch the flames dance around in the fireplace. While Kate was still getting used to this new 'closeness' thing with Castle, he apparently had no hesitation on that front. After he had everything they needed, he settled himself in the corner of the couch and pulled her back to rest against him, which afforded her the opportunity to stretch out her leg on the rest of the couch and afforded him the opportunity to put his arm very snugly around her. And even though he did break away right after they were settled, it was only to get a couple of pillows to put under her lower leg so it could be propped up higher. She felt thoroughly touched by the gesture, not only that once again, he'd thought of her and what he could do to make her leg feel better, but that he'd gotten up even after he was finally settled and comfortable just because he wanted to make sure her leg was all right.
They settled back down under the blankets and just talked about random things as they sipped their wine. Castle made no attempt to kiss her, which she found...odd. He just seemed content to be sharing her company and cuddling with her in front of the fire and the blizzard continued on outside. As they talked more and more, and polished off the last of the bottle of wine, Kate relaxed more and more into him. And somehow, it didn't feel strange anymore, to be sitting there like that, with him. Somehow, it only felt...right.
I was going to go a teensy bit farther with this chapter, but I thought that seemed to be a good place to end it. Hope you enjoyed it!
I think some of you are more devious than me...when I ended the last chapter, I was fully intending that she'd gotten hurt. But there were several people who thought she was just tricking him, so in honor of your deviosity (if you've read 'The Plan', you'll get that), I put in that bit where she did zap him with the laser tag gun. And after it was written, I could see that it would totally be something that she would do.
Thoughts?